The Never Ending Interview: Day Two
One question a day will be addressed, for as long as it remains interesting to me, and the questions keep coming.
Today’s question was asked, in slightly different versions, by a couple of different people, so I combined them into one.
Amalgam Man: What would it take to get another Marvel or DCU book from you?
Bill: It would take being asked, of course, but since I’m plenty busy on my own projects, it would also take being offered one of the “I’ve always wanted to do that (character/team/book).” There aren’t many of those left, but I have to admit there are a few.
I’m not at all against doing work for hire, on company owned characters, but I am against the recent trend of, “We direct the story from on high and you just write what we tell you, and then get ready to rewrite a lot, because we change our minds two or three times a day,” that seems to be in effect lately.
Because candor is more than a bottled city, and something of a goal with this daily exercise, I’ll risk exposing my weak underbelly, by giving you something of a direct answer to a direct question.
At Marvel I’ve always wanted to do Doctor Strange or Thor. I got to scratch the Thor itch a little bit with my Warriors Three mini series, and besides, Thor has
been written awfully well lately, so that desire isn’t as acute. I mostly yearn to work on those things that aren’t being done well (according to what wisdom has been given to me). Doctor Strange would be the thing then, provided I was the only one using the character at the time and didn’t have to comply with whatever else is happening in the fictional universe today.
At DC I would probably not be able to refuse a chance to take a second run at Shadowpact, but this time with exclusive use of the characters, and absolutely, written-in-stone guarantees of not having to tie in with whatever else is happening in the fictional universe today. Also, I created a character for the DCU called The Veteran. I think he could work nicely as the star of his own book.
That said, let me assure you that both companies and both fictional universes are getting along just fine without me. Neither are camping out on my doorstep just now, which is no tragedy.
Since it relates to the discussion above, and since a coincidence of timing has forced me to work it out, I’ll treat you to my recently codified five rules for ever again working on licensed material (which also would apply to company-owned books):
A reasonable page rate.
Payment on time
A good artist, who draws the story, and does it on model (in the cases where the look of a character has already been long established).
I’m the only writer on this property at the time that I’m doing this series, and I don’t have to coordinate with any other books, editorial decrees, events or crossovers. While it’s perfectly reasonable to get the most from your properties by having several series using this setting/team/characters at once, using different writers, then I can’t be involved, since the joy of coordinating big stories with multiple writers is entirely gone from my life. Past field work in big company universes have eaten all the rations of it I ever had.
As long as I’m having fun doing it.
That’s it. Those are my unreasonable demands for any future work on such things. It’s not rocket science. If these rules also work for other writers in our field, I invite you to make use of them as standard boilerplate, to be included within any agreement you make. To answer the above question simply then, this is what it would take.
