Iron Spike: Pretty much every move I’ve ever made in comics since age 25 has been inspired by the 70-year-olds I saw in comic con Artist Alleys, cranking out sketches of characters they created but don’t own, to pay their doctor bills and nursing home fees.

Pretty much every move I’ve ever made in comics since age 25 has been inspired by the 70-year-olds I saw in comic con Artist Alleys, cranking out sketches of characters they created but don’t own, to pay their doctor bills and nursing home fees.

Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman, 61, at his clerking job in Los Angeles, 1975

And fun fact: technically, they weren’t allowed to do that. It’s copyright infringement. But the publishers turned a blind eye, because it did no real harm, and trying to stop it would be a PR disaster.

We should ban corporate ownership of copyrights and patents. Allow them only to lease rights from the personal owners.

Martin Nodell and Jerry Robinson. Their memories still break my heart.

My entire professional writing career is designed with them in mind. I think of Bill Finger and Jack Kirby almost every day.

It’s why they are so desperate for AI. They can obscure the contributions of the artists into being a “cleanup team.”

I realized the tech bros are like Syndrome from "The Incredibles" but instead of being jealous of superheroes, they hate creatives. "When everyone's an artist, no one will be."

I think about Jim Starlin and how he created Thanos, the antagonist of a movie franchise that has grossed so many billions of dollars and Marvel was just like "here's a ticket to the premier of Infinity War" smh

Premiere fml

It wasn't quite like that for Starlin, who was reportedly satisfied with his compensation from Marvel Studios. www.inverse.com/entertainmen...

Jim Starlin reveals why Marvel still needs Thanos — and the problem with Eroswww.inverse.com “Pip will be the comic relief,” Starlin tells Inverse. “Eros, on the other hand, he's an interesting one. I have no idea what they're going to do with him. I sort of left him as a sociopath and he is ...

The saddest part was that by the 70s Siegel’s partner Joe Shuster was nearly blind and couldn’t even do sketches.

It's infuriating because they made things that are so cool people are eager and willing to keep throwing themselves at the big 2 and giving them their labor and skill, but they were so poorly looked after. I was going through my dad's stack of 80s and 90s comics yesterday. God.

I rememeber meeting a shakey Jerry Robinson at NYCC, stuck in the far corner of artists alley with a thermos & sandwich at a small table. I went over to the DC booth ( which had a megasize Joker film banner) and asked why they weren't looking after him. 'He doesn't work us' Fuck these companies.

I bought a giant print from him one year at, maybe, Baltimore and got him to sign it. I really need to get it framed.

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When I started working, I was 18 and did caricatures in a theme park alongside dudes as old (or older) than my dad, many who had lost their long time jobs at the animation studios here when disney closed them, grinding here now to pay the bills. Still think about this a lot.

And the amount of Non Disclosure Agreements Marvel/Disney has served to old artists and families to get any financial restitution ( usually a pittance compared to what the Disney earns on the material ) is sickening.

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