It’s funny you say that when your posts on a comixtalk webpage say otherwise.

http://tinyurl.com/63muvx

Regarding my situation, yeah one of the reasons I initially went toe to toe with Kurtz and Kris over rights stuff was that, well, I have a good deal. I got paid a great deal of money, and even crafted a seperate deal. I’ll stay connected and making money no matter what they do with Hero By Night from here on out if they did so without me, but they’ll likely sit on it, and thats fine too. I count myself very lucky because I have other things that are “not for sale” (like Yirmumah)

I do think about the other creators now, some of I’ve talked with personally, and how they don’t have it so good, or didn’t have it so good. I’d hear Lowell’s name brought up a lot, never got a chance to talk to him, and I tried seeking out his information from day one when I heard “the rumors” , but I always wondered why if he was done wrong, or he felt disgruntled about it, why he never made a public comment on his deal. I’d encourage other creators (I think like Kris said) to shout it from the rooftops the minute things start to go sour, especially if the company is giving you no clear answers.

Sometimes there are NO clear answers that can be given, but that can be an answer in itself in good communicative companies that don’t wait for the shit to hit the fan before addressing something. And in a case with ANY company, if they’re trying to play a game they don’t actually have the money to play, and if they’re doing it as a public company, but telling creators who aren’t being paid to “be quiet” , that is a real ethical problem for the creators. Did anyone take any basic ethics courses or have those at a job?

I’ll take my lumps now, because ultimately it doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things. But at least future creators who might be searching online for information about a bad situation like this, can clearly find it, and it’s not a rumor, it’s just the plain truth.

However some combination of money/control/future profit sharing at which any deal can be a “good” deal for a creator. What’s important is that they know what’s the most important to them in determining that.

Clearly with your and Scott work - “Control” (creative and business) and “Future Profits” are the most important issues to you as creators - and so from that viewpoint self-publishing your own work is the only solution - but those aren’t necessarily the same values every other creator is going to bring to the table.

Contrast (to hammer a big geek point) Alan Moore with Garth Ennis. Both are “superstar mainstream comics creators” (whatever that means), but both bring very different values to how they interact with “the Man”, what types of properties they work on, and how they work on them.