Saturday 5 January 2013

Truth, Justice & The Corporate Conscience

Editorial cartoon in WAP #4 (July 1988)
by Dave Sim
(Click Image To Enlarge)
STEVE GERBER:
(from Truth, Justice & The Corporate Conscience, WAP #4, July 1988)
...Keep Siegel and Shuster's long years of agony in mind each time you sign a DC or Marvel voucher and every time you read the words "work made for hire" above your signature. Ask yourself what traditions you're helping to perpetuate. Ask yourself whether you really feel invulnerable to the kind of strong-arm business tactics that, for a time, made a mail boy and a recluse out of the creators of Superman. This year marks the Golden Anniversary of Jerry and Joe's 1938 release form. Fifty years of screwing creators is about forty-nine and-a-half too many.

Steve Gerber (1947-2008) was a comic writer best known as co-creator of Howard The Duck. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall Of Fame in 2010.

On his My Rant Blog, Steve Bissette details the content and historical context of the 9 issues of WAP!, "the forgotten activist pro-zine", published between 1988-1989, which included contributions from Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Dave Sim and other comics creators.  

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the cartoon, though in hindsight, it turns out that Levitz and Kahn were actually the ones preventing DC (as a company) from 'exploiting' Watchmen.

Paul Grist

James Robert Smith said...

Yeah, let's all feel sorry for Alan Moore for losing control of his direct copy of characters created by Steve Ditko, Joe Gill, Pat Boyette, Pete Morisi. Boo hoo. Poor Alan!