(This is a piece I recently wrote for the Crazy 8 Press website blog (where I publish much of my prose writing) that's as relevant to Charlton Neo as it is there.)
Having spent more than a
little of the past forty years laboring in the comic book field, a majority of
the stories I’ve written were about OPCs (Other People’s Characters), from the
Atom and Archie to Superman and Scooby Doo. I’ve never had a problem with that;
as a lifelong comic book fan, I was always happy to get my paws on the classic
characters I grew up reading. But a writer comes to these established and long
running characters weighed down by the character’s
baggage, allowed to bring to them a certain limited amount of individual
interpretation but always bound by what came before...and with full knowledge
that no matter what story they tell, things have to be reset to the status quo
when they’re done.
Still, along the way, I
managed to create a few new additions to the DC Universe of characters. A
sorcerer here, a spy agency there, a science fiction hero way out there in deep
space...but though I created them,
they aren’t really mine. Mainstream corporate comics operate (for the most
part) under the work-made-for-hire provision of copyright law, meaning that the
corporation is considered the legal “author” of the work. The actual creators
have some (small) equity in the creation, but no real control over its destiny
or use. The editor, as representative of the “author,” has more control over
the character than does the creator and the corporation is free to make
whatever changes or alterations it deems necessary.
I’ve also written a
considerable number of words in prose for OPCs, including the Green Hornet, the
Lone Ranger, Star Trek, Doctor Who, the Avenger, Batman, Superman, Wonder
Woman, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Archie, Powerpuff Girls, and others, and I’ve
enjoyed them all. But, again, these characters were all well established before
I got to them and I was obliged to leave them pretty much as I found them once
I’m done. As much fun as I’ve had with all the neat toys in those different
sandboxes, I always knew they belonged to someone else and that when I went
home at the end of the day, I had to leave them where I had found them for the
next writer to play with.
 |
| Takion by Walter Simonson |
The difference between
writing OPCs and your own creation is the same as the difference between
running a race with and without leg irons. In corporate comics or prose
featuring licensed properties, you’re hobbled by the rules of the characters’
owners. But with your own characters, you’re free to run like the wind, limited
only by your own imagination.
And, thanks to a paradigm shift in publishing, I’m free to write my characters,
my way. Of course, I was always free to write
the stories...I just wouldn’t necessarily have had a venue in which to publish them so someone other than
myself could actually read them. But thanks to Crazy 8 Press and Charlton Neo
for comics projects, now I do. And what I write remains mine, to do with as I
wish and retain full rights to them
should I ever be lucky enough to have any of them optioned for licensing or other
media.
Maybe corporate comics and
book publishing can offer me greater exposure (although neither seems to be
offering much these days in the way of anything except to the Big Names who can
sell Big Numbers), but they take away much more by what they demand in exchange
for the privilege of being published by them. Junker George and F.B.I. Special
Agent Irwin Benjamin in the ReDeus
stories, shabby and put upon little Weekly
World News investigative reporter Leo Persky in a quartet of tales
(previously published in R. Allen Leider’s Hellfire
Lounge anthology series and soon to be included in my upcoming Crazy 8
collection of short stories, In My
Shorts: Hitler’s Bellhop and Other Stories), the comics characters Blank
and Neo (and others to follow) in various Neo publications...mine, mine, mine, all mine.
As Janice Joplin sang,
“freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” but in this instance, I
think it means everything to gain.
© Paul Kupperberg
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