Steve Bissette talks about Marvel/Disney, Jack Kirby, and THE AVENGERS film...

Above photo: Kirby toughness… comics legend, Jack Kirby. (I swiped this photo from Bleeding Cool. Thanks, Rich.)

The great Steve Bissette talks about Creator’s Rights, Work-for-hire, Marvel/Disney, Jack Kirby, and THE AVENGERS film in "Marvel/Disney v Kirby: Do Avengers Avenge… Or Not?":

DC Comics, Paul Levitz, and Jenette Kahn started working out ways to work royalty shares with Kirby while he was still alive (using Super Friends as the initial vehicle).

Marvel hasn’t. Marvel has repeatedly demonstrated, from the late 1960s to today, that they’re not even remotely interested in "working out ways" to resolve this.

Fine. It’s their business.

And they’re getting no more of mine.

For me, it’s simple: the judgment of 2011 was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Do what you want; I’ve had it with Marvel as a consumer at this point.

I won’t be seeing The Avengers movie. I will encourage others to avoid it, if and as I can.

The thought of sitting through another bloated multi-million dollar-budgeted charade about how "it’s right to fight for justice" when Marvel/Disney can’t cough up the equivalent of, say, one day’s shooting budget for catering or grips to toss a bone to Jack’s heirs—well, that act of enduring that film isn’t at all attractive or appealing to me any longer on any level.

THE AVENGERS? It’s a sham.

And…

Work-for-hire does not, ipso facto, mean a creator or co-creator benefits not at all from their creations earning (in this case) billions for the parent corporation. I earn royalties on Swamp Thing to this day. Every quarter, they show up. I earn more royalties for John Constantine, Hellblazer; when the movie option yielded a movie, we each banked a $45,000 check from our fraction of a percent of our co-creator shares.