The Comics Journal interviews Chris Roberson. It's quite a good read. He talks about DC's recent practice with NDA's, which Brian Wood recently described as "the devil".
He also mentions a proposal by
Kurt Busiek that seems pretty obvious to me but which, of course, the Big Two will never go for: retroactively apply the terms of modern contracts to all previously-published works. From here on in, start paying Kirby's heirs, Heck's heirs, Romita, Thomas, Friedrich, whoever, the same royalties that they would get if their books were published today, or were adapted into a movie, TV show, action figure, etc. today. (Course, Mark Millar claims he and Hitch aren't getting squat for the Avengers movie, and Len Wein gets a creator credit for Lucius Fox but not for Wolverine -- so it's not like modern contracts are perfect. But people who get paid are much less likely to sue.)
And this:
And regarding iZombie, the impression I got from your previous statements is that DC currently holds the rights, up until the books go out of print, and then they revert to you. Is that correct?
No, it’s actually tied to new work no longer being commissioned, which is suggestive in and of itself that the creator-owned contracts within DC have been changed, so that going out of print is no longer the trigger. Suggesting that someone at DC realized that that maybe wasn’t the best way to go. So now with iZombie, the rights will revert a certain amount of time after Mike Allred and I are no longer commissioned to do new work.
Iiiiiinteresting.
It really is a very good read.
And so are Busiek's comments in the thread I linked, as usual; among other things, he responds to the calls to unionize by pointing out that comics creators can't, that modern law prohibits the unionization of freelancers (and things like the SWG and SAG were grandfathered in but could not be formed today). There are a number of other creator comments up at the top, too, from Brian Wood, John Layman, and Cameron Stewart.
