Marvel fans are hyped for next month’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Sam Raimi’s highly anticipated MCU entry will bring Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) back to the big screen. It will also debut fan-favorite comics character America Chavez, played by Xochitl Gomez. Chavez will break barriers as the first gay Latina superhero to join the MCU. But what of the writers and artists who created the character?
Chavez was created by Joe Casey and Nick Dragotta, making her comics debut in Vengeance #1 (Sept. 2011). Casey recently discussed Chavez’s big screen debut in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, where he called out Marvel for their treatment of comics creators. While seeing a character you created on the big screen is undeniably exciting, what’s less thrilling is the lack of compensation and profits-sharing from Marvel Entertainment and Disney.
Casey said he received a “pittance” of an offer for Chavez’s Multiverse of Madness appearance. His relationship with Marvel dates back to the late 1990s, where he wrote on titles like Uncanny X-Men, Cable, The Hulk, and Iron Man, among others. Casey has also seen massive success as one of the creators of animated franchise Ben 10, and is one of the heads of Man of Action Entertainment (Ben 10, Generator Rex, Big Hero 6). As part of the negotiations team between Disney and Big Hero 6 (2014), Casey has firsthand experience in negotiating better rates for creators, a position not many comic book writers find themselves comfortable in.
“The fact is Marvel owns America Chavez. That’s not in dispute on any level, but there are still systemic flaws in the way that creators are neither respected nor rewarded,” Casey said. Casey wouldn’t say what the offer was from Marvel, but similar agreements were made in the $5,000 range. It’s frankly an insulting offer given that these films regularly gross hundreds of millions of dollars. And these films wouldn’t exist without the characters that these writers and artists created.
“Marvel has paid me nothing for America Chavez, not only for appearing in the Doctor Strange sequel, but in numerous animated TV episodes, for the numerous action figures they’ve made of her, for video games she’s appeared in,” he said. “They seem to be fine with that.”
While the money is not a make or break issue for Casey (again, he co-created Ben 10), he felt compelled to speak out. “For me, it’s not about money. It’s not even about the respect. I would never expect to be respected by a corporation, … If I’m in a position where I can afford not to take their insult of an offer, and be able to talk about it, maybe the next guy — where that kind of money could change their life — would get a fair shot of receiving that money.”
Fellow creator have also called out Marvel for their stinginess with regards to creators. While they all acknowledge that Marvel owns the rights to these characters, they cannot help but feel jilted by insulting offers. Comics creator Ed Brubaker, who revived the character Bucky Barnes and turned him into the Winter Soldier, discussed the issue during an appearance on Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin’s Fatman Beyond podcast. Brubaker noted that he earned more money for his cameo performance in The Winter Soldier than for his creation of the character itself, adding “There’s nothing preventing anyone at Marvel from looking at how much the Winter Soldier has been used in all this stuff and calling up me and Steve Epting and saying, ‘You know what, we’re going to try to adjust the standard thing so that you guys feel good about this.’”
Last year, Disney sued the families of Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, and other creators in an preemptive attempt to challenge copyright termination notices that have been (or will be) submitted by these creators’ estates. And it’s not just a Marvel problem: the estates of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the men who created Superman, sought to reclaim their copyrights of the iconic superhero. The case spent years in litigation, only for the courts to side with DC Comics.
This sets up a David vs. Goliath battle between studios and their armies of lawyers and comic book creators who lack the funds for a protracted legal battle. Given that Marvel and Disney have raked in billions of dollars from the Marvel cinematic universe, it seems like a massively cruel oversight to deny these creators adequate compensation and acknowledgment.
(via THR, image: Marvel)
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