Who sold all of that Silver Age Original Artwork from Marvel? 3 3

[comicwiz]

On 6/17/2021 at 7:03 PM, Buzzetta said:

The 1975 contract is online for anyone to read through.  So even when he came back in 1975, it was that the, "Writer / Artist grants in Marvel the sole and exclusive right to all Material delivered to Marvel hereunder including, but not limited to, (a) the exclusive right to secure copyrights (s) in the Material in the United States, Canada, and throughout the world, (b) the magazine rights therein of every kind, (c) all film and dramatic rights of every kind, (d) all anthology, advertising and promotion rights therein, and (e) all reprint rights.  The exclusive rights herein granted shall be Marvel's property for the period of the copyright and any renewals thereof."

Marvel owned it all.

He signed his name to it.  

His choice. 

As far as why Marvel settled instead of going to court.  Settling does not mean you are wrong.  Settling sometimes means that you recognize that the cost fighting it outweighs the settlement.  In another case you may know you are right but you are worried about the perception from the public so you do a settlement with a NDA.  And yes, there are instances where you know you are wrong and want something to go away as quickly as possible. 

The problem with settling, which is why I say I would not have offered him a single page can be provided by the example of NYC.  The city offers way too many settlements even when they know that the person is full of it and the case is meritless.  It's easier to pay the person to go away than tie up more of the city's time.  The problem is that there are too many that make claims out of NYC because it basically comes to an attempt at 'free money."  

They even tell you on their city website that they prefer to settle.  https://nycourts.gov/courthelp/GoingToCourt/settlements.shtml

Free money. 

 

This is why I would not have given Kirby a single page.  Give a mouse a cookie and then every other artist wants to know what they can get outside the contract that they signed. 

A condensed excerpt from one of the instalments I wrote:

 

.. copyright law had changed in 1978, forcing changes to work for hire contracts, and creators not only began holding meetings and talking seriously about unions and organizing, but there had already been a number of instances where artists were asking for their art to be returned.

One of these artists was Jack Kirby... TCJ's Michaeal Dean writes "the basis of the dispute starts with Kirby's longtime creative home, where he was asked to sign away all rights to the Marvel-published characters he had in fact created. As a coercive gesture, the company informed him that it would hold hostage all Kirby original art in posession until he agreed to sign a special release form that was required of no other Marvel freelancer. Kirby refused to sign the document, and Marvel, in turn, refused to return his original art."

Edited June 24, 2021 by comicwiz

[Buzzetta]

16 hours ago, comicwiz said:

There's just too many people on record, and not 40 or 50 years later with bad memory recall, but within a few years of Irene Vartanoff producing the list, speaking out about incidents. After Steranko, the "I was there" angle to offer a contrarian viewpoint or to cover for someone has lost its effect, and just isn't enough to discount the dozens of others who have stated otherwise.

 

@Buzzettacurious, where in that article did it mention about art being thrown away?

That might have been the Shooter claim that I should have linked.   I had a bunch of articles open across a bunch of different tabs when I linked those last week. 

[Buzzetta]

5 hours ago, comicwiz said:

A condensed excerpt from one of the instalments I wrote:

 

.. copyright law had changed in 1978, forcing changes to work for hire contracts, and creators not only began holding meetings and talking seriously about unions and organizing, but there had already been a number of instances where artists were asking for their art to be returned.

One of these artists was Jack Kirby... TCJ's Michaeal Dean writes "the basis of the dispute starts with Kirby's longtime creative home, where he was asked to sign away all rights to the Marvel-published characters he had in fact created. As a coercive gesture, the company informed him that it would hold hostage all Kirby original art in posession until he agreed to sign a special release form that was required of no other Marvel freelancer. Kirby refused to sign the document, and Marvel, in turn, refused to return his original art."

And I stand by what I said.  I would not have given him a single page unless compelled to do so by law. 

[kav]

1 minute ago, Buzzetta said:

And I stand by what I said.  I would not have given him a single page unless compelled to do so by law. 

Is there something in the law about implied agreement?  You work for 15 years without getting your art back, you agreed to that?

[comicwiz]

9 hours ago, Buzzetta said:

That might have been the Shooter claim that I should have linked.   I had a bunch of articles open across a bunch of different tabs when I linked those last week. 

That's what I figured, the only time I'd really read about art being discarded (well technically, cut up and incinerated) was the Marv Wolfman story during the time he was an intern at DC.

Edited June 25, 2021 by comicwiz

[comicwiz]

9 hours ago, kav said:

Is there something in the law about implied agreement?  You work for 15 years without getting your art back, you agreed to that?

This is from that link I posted above telling the story of Marv Wolfman as an intern saving DC art from being cut up:

Circa 1967-68, a young New York fan named Marv Wolfman was just edging into the comic book field. Such scripting triumphs as Tomb of Dracula and The New Teen Titans still lay several years in his future. In the late '60s he worked for a couple of summers as an "intern" (gopher) at DC Comics, performing whatever odd jobs needed doing around the offices.

One of which was to cut up original comic book artwork to prepare it for incineration.

For, believe it or not: Until the early 1970s, DC (and doubtless other companies, as well) routinely burned all original art once it had been printed, presumably so that no unscrupulous artist or writer (or editor!) could sell entire covers and stories to some Godless foreign land which might re-publish same without paying for the privilege. Also incinerated on such occasions was unpublished artwork, which was often stamped "WRITTEN OFF": i.e., DC had decided not to print it, either because a feature had been canceled or for some other reason.

One of the takeaways here is the publishers themselves seem to be operating under the advice counsel (some of it bad, some of it with merit) that if art ended-up outside of the US, they may have trouble defending their copyright. A simple (and reasonable gesture) when artists requested their art be returned is to have them sign something saying they wouldn't be a party to having the work reproduced in such a manner. If it somehow did, it would fall back on them. I know some historians have written on early accounts of art turning up at conventions, in some cases artwork that didn't belong to the artist peddling it, and describing this as some way for frustrated artists to stick it to the man. However I don't think any artist would have an issue with signing on such a request because they would be invested in securing their works, and any art "bootlegged" in this manner would be counter-intuitive to the progressive movement at the time toward returning rights and paying royalties to creators. But even more to the point, if you're going to hold the art back for whatever ridiculous reason you invent, particularly if the reason is found in some unusual copyright violation risk, don't hold it against one freelancer only, hold it back from everyone.

Edited June 25, 2021 by comicwiz

[Prince Namor]

Life is like '12 Angry Men'. Some people are Henry Fonda and some people are Lee J. Cobb.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Prince Namor

[shadroch]

Wasn't there some sort of ruling or opinion issued that said the comic companies didn't own the artwork because they failed to pay sales tax on the purchases?  I remember somebody comparing it to Al Capone in that Marvel was brought down by failure to pay taxes.

[shadroch]

Marvel started returning  current artwork around 1975, and DC did it a year or so earlier. I believe Seagate/Atlas, the company Martin Goodman started in the 1970s was the first to offer the artists their art, and also paid higher wages and royalties.

The Academy of Comic Creators, or whatever its official title was, started advocating for the return of artwork as well as royalties in the early 1970s.  I have no idea how he did it, but Stan Lee was actually its first President.  So you had the Stan, the free lance writer, leading the fight against Stan, the EIC/ Publisher of Marvel.  I'd have loved to be in the room for those discussions.

One could make the argument that both Martin Goodman and Stan Lee , as well as Neal Adams and Jim Shooter were the ones responsible for ending the old work for hire contracts that ruled the roost the first forty or so years. 

 

 

 

Edited June 25, 2021 by shadroch

[Aman619]

Haha. Good luck with THAT argument !  Lol

[Randall Dowling]

1 hour ago, Prince Namor said:

Life is like '12 Angry Men'. Some people are Peter Henry Fonda and some people are Lee J. Cobb.

FTFY

[Prince Namor]

1 hour ago, Randall Dowling said:

FTFY

LOL thanks! I fixed it!

[Bird]

3 hours ago, shadroch said:

Wasn't there some sort of ruling or opinion issued that said the comic companies didn't own the artwork because they failed to pay sales tax on the purchases?  I remember somebody comparing it to Al Capone in that Marvel was brought down by failure to pay taxes.

I haven't studied it, but accumulated some knowledge (I think). I believe at some point it was posited that, if Marvel owned the artwork and it had value then the warehouse full of art was a valued commodity that Marvel would have to account for on their corporate taxes. Hence the order for Irene to make her list and a softening on the position that they needed to keep it all. But this is my gist as I have read about it over the years. 

[comicwiz]

51 minutes ago, Bird said:

I haven't studied it, but accumulated some knowledge (I think). I believe at some point it was posited that, if Marvel owned the artwork and it had value then the warehouse full of art was a valued commodity that Marvel would have to account for on their corporate taxes. Hence the order for Irene to make her list and a softening on the position that they needed to keep it all. But this is my gist as I have read about it over the years. 

I've not heard or read anything about the tax angle. That said, there is no question Marvel viewed the art as being a commodity. Photos taken by Irene Vartanoff in the first warehouse it was stored would lead someone to think otherwise. And there is no question that the original purpose in Barry Kaplan ordering an audit was to properly insure it. Once the audit was completed, they came to the realization that there was an asset management component, particularly that giving Vartanoff the duty of managing who got what, and tracking where things went, was just as important as securing it. After the first location was ramsacked, they moved the art to a different, supposedly more secure location. However, the total number of pages in the mid-70's were already being averaged (for insurance scenarios) at $100 per page, which took the total to several million based on how many pages were accounted. My impression is that it never was insured, certainly nowhere near the low estimate used back then, and if it was insured it was for a fraction of the value, if it was insured at all. The latter is not my own opinion, but Vartanoff went on record stating the same. It's possible that insuring it may have brought undue tax attention to the company's assets, and why it was abandoned, but I honestly doubt anyone back then cared anywhere as much as Irene about any of it. And a relational note on the thinking back then of better managing where the art went, the list was not only compiled vaguely, but only given to Sol Brodsky. It was believed keeping the list in the hands of the fewest people possible was the best way to secure it. This is an important fact because one of the best examples of the seeming lack of regard for the treasure trove stored in the vault at the time was when Shooter was ordered to call the police on the art being stolen, he said he didn't have any list to go by to know what was taken - something Vartanoff quelled by saying that because the audit was ordered for insurance purposes, that accountants needed to keep a record of it by law. Her quote specifically: "...besides, Sol Brodsky was alive and well at the time they moved, and I know that Sol never lost a darn thing in his whole life."

Edited June 25, 2021 by comicwiz

[shadroch]

29 minutes ago, Bird said:

I haven't studied it, but accumulated some knowledge (I think). I believe at some point it was posited that, if Marvel owned the artwork and it had value then the warehouse full of art was a valued commodity that Marvel would have to account for on their corporate taxes. Hence the order for Irene to make her list and a softening on the position that they needed to keep it all. But this is my gist as I have read about it over the years. 

 That was different.  This was New York State sales tax.  As I recall the story Neal Adams studio was audited and the auditors wanted to know where the art was, since it wasn't sold. Adams was given some time to produce the art to show it hadn't been sold, and when DC refused to give it to him, they opened themselves up to fifty years of sales tax evasion. Since they hadn't paid sales tax, they couldn't say they had purchased the art and ownership reverted to the artist. I guess I read it in an Adams interview but it was a long time ago. 

[Prince Namor]

I used to see Neal at about 6 or so shows a year... it's been awhile since I've talked to him, but I'm going to definitely ask him if he's at Baltimore this fall.

[Bird]

2 hours ago, comicwiz said:

I've not heard or read anything about the tax angle.

I may be conflating the tax angle with the idea that Marvel would have to pay to insure it and whatnot as you explain in your post. 

[gunsmokin]

On 6/22/2021 at 1:00 PM, pemart1966 said:

TERRIFIC!  Thanks for posting!  All of that art should still be out there....

In case anyone was wondering if there were more photos that Kaluta took that day, I followed up and asked him and here was his response..

[kav]

[bc]

On 6/22/2021 at 9:31 PM, Terry_JSA said:

I wonder where these are today. Wouldn't be surprised if they were sold off in private sales and are sitting in someone's personal collection.

The OOG splash page sold in a 2019 CLink auction for $14k:

https://www.comiclink.com/Auctions/item.asp?back=%2FComicTrack%2FAuctions%2Fbids.asp&id=1333289

-bc