A few years in comics will teach you. I parlayed my bottom-quarter high school GPA into “smart enough to know better.”

That’s what people are reacting to. It’s like getting a razor blade wrapped in cotton candy.

The credit problem Mark Waid points out is heinous, but corporate ownership of someone else’s creations is almost as bad.

If someone wants to sign up with Marvel or DC to work on Spider-Man or Batman, that’s great. But in all other cases, you should own what you create. Some creators have had their characters and stories taken away from them due to the stipulations of this contract… or one with less BS folksy worded nonsense meant to lull you into signing away ownership of your own work. That they signed- that others throughout the history of comics in America have signed even worse contracts- doesn’t make it anywhere near okay.

Work for hire needs to stop. Corporate authorship needs to stop. There’s still plenty of money to be made without scamming creators out of ownership of their intellectual properties.

And I’m laughing at Manga Blog’s “ooer, there are people who hate Tokyopop for reasons of their own!” comment. Laughing a LOT.

Take a proactive stance regarding bringing in ACTUAL new talent.

Thank you.

And here I feel compelled to defend my employer. While Dark Horse, like any company, does have its flaws, respecting creators’ rights is NOT one of them: The copyrights and trademarks to any creator-owned properties are retained by the folks who create the work (see: Sin City, Hellboy, Concrete, Samurai: Heaven and Earth, etc.), and it’s the central issue the company was founded on back in 1986. While most of our creator-owned contracts do stipulate that media and digital rights will be under Dark Horse’s stewardship, even those deals aren’t cut without the involvement and consent of the copyright and trademark holders.

We do publish a lot of licensed properties, and often publish Dark Horse-owned properties, so work on those books will necessarily be work-for-hire, as will most coloring and lettering jobs. But whomever has claim to the copyright and trademark will always be stated as such in the indicia, and we try to be diligent about including copyright and trademark lines in promotional materials. It’s never our intention to come across as owning any IP– creator-owned, licensed, or otherwise– that we don’t actually own outright.

It’s a privilege to work with the creators we attract, and it’s in our interest to do right by them legally– else they’ll stop coming around. That’s certainly drilled into those of us in Editorial from the start.

Respectfully submitted.
Katie Moody
Associate Editor

Oni Press does not retain the trademark of ANY book we have ever published. Similarly, we have NEVER retained or even shared copyright on ANY project we have EVER published.

I’m very afraid the “kinder, gentler” approach they use, which also is very effective in glossing over all those annoying legal clauses that benefit and protect the creator, will dupe a naive kid just chomping at the bit to break into comics.

They do their darnest to make the informal “pact”, a mere formality really on your road to comic stardom, seem like anything but the legally binding agreement it is.

We have a good review of the contract over at Unscrewed.

http://www.unscrewedcomic.com/article.php?story=tokyopop

You can bet TP will be placing their logo and copyright notice on any work in any media. I’d be happy if TP tied the use of credits to the use of their own branding — if it is truly impossible to fit any logos or credits in there, then it should apply to both the publisher and creator.

The point of using ‘plain English’ in transactional contracts is to ensure that the other side has a clear understanding of its rights, responsibilities and obligations if it chooses to enter into the agreement. It’s a tool that is particularly useful when at least one of the parties is not sophisticated, and is not an attorney.

This contract does not use ‘plain English’. Tokyopop is using this agreement as a tool of persuasion, without giving creators the benefit of any alternative perspective. It’s appalling.

I guess I shouldn’t expect that in the future.