‘Yes, But What Have You Done for Me Lately?’: Intersections of Intellectual Property, Work-for-Hire, and The Struggle of the Creative Precariat in the American Comic Book Industry

Abstract

The comic book industry has significant challenges with intellectual property rights. Comic books have rarely been treated as a serious art form or cultural phenomenon. It used to be that creating a comic book would be considered shameful or something done only as side work. Beginning in the 1990s, some comic creators were able to leverage enough cultural capital to influence more media. In the post-9/11 world, generic elements of superheroes began to resonate with audiences; superheroes fight against injustices and are able to confront the evils in today’s America. This has created a billion dollar, Oscar-award-winning industry of superhero movies, as well as allowed created comic book careers for artists and writers. However, the work-for-hire contracts used by comic book publishers are alienating creators from their content; intellectual properties and derivative works are owned by companies and not the creator, under these contracts. These contracts also create other insecurities for artists and writers by not providing benefits like insurance, retirement funds, and salary wages, something common in the “gig economy.” This is disheartening to the creator, leaving them internalized with the idea that they are “not writing the great American novel… just writing funnybooks.” In some ways the era of social media and crowdfunding is allowing these creatives to challenge this traditional approach of content creation, and raise awareness of these issues. However, these solutions are not perfect either. Although these solutions do away with a lot of gatekeepers, they also do away with quality controls and often times fall short of fulfillment because of the logistic challenges.