'For 20 years nobody has brought an idea to a publisher and had any rights in it.'
1971 Publisher's Roundtable Interview With Stan Lee, John Goldwater, Sid Jacobson & Will Eisner
In March 1971, the National Cartoonists Society published their Professional Report. I’ve had a copy of this report for a while now, but, frustratingly, it is incomplete.
Part of the report was handed over to the state of the comic book industry of the time. A group of publishers gathered on 20 January 1971 at the Lambs Club in Manhattan for a discussion about the state of the industry. The discussion was moderated by Howie Schneider, aided by Gil Kane. Those taking part were Will Eisner, John Goldwater (Archie Comics) Denny O’Neil (National/DC Comics), Stan Lee (Marvel Comics), Sid Jacobson (Harvey Comics) and Murphy Anderson, who just happened to be there.
The panel reads like a convention panel, and perhaps it was - hopefully someone out there will know. I am aware that The Comics Journal did mention this transcript, as has Sean Howe, but, as far as I’m aware (and, again, happy to stand corrected), this is the first time that it has been reproduced, albeit with the beginning of the conversation missing (if you have that part of the conversation, let me know).
During the conversation some highly revealing comments from Stan Lee and John Goldwater about the state of the industry as they saw it, and the fact that Joe Simon was making royalties from Harvey Comics - before royalties in the comic book industry were widely introduced - and had been doing so since he and Jack Kirby had worked on Boys Ranch. Also of interest, and often overlooked, is Gil Kane talking about his blacklisting by printers.
Enough from me, have a read for yourself.
(We begin with Will Eisner in mid sentence)
Will Eisner: …who is the buyer of the creative output, as we are in this case, generally has to tailor the product so much to the market. So, it's still a tailor-made thing and it still answers specific problems. So, therefore, as an open market for young men wanting to get into educational comics, I don't know where he could go today on a large scale. I couldn't say there are 6 or 8 publishers, and they buy so many pages a month and therefore if you can interest them in a story, you can sell it to them. It opens up a tremendous challenge. We're solving it in our own way. It's been difficult but we've been opening up in a larger scale.
Gil Kane: Then you would say it is a narrow and extremely specialized area and not one, at this point, that could accommodate.
Will Eisner: It would not provide a substantial after-market for comic artists on any large scale. Oh, I wanted to add one more thing. It requires, and this is the real challenge, it requires a different kind of artist then we have seen. It requires a much more disciplined, a much more educated artist or cartoonist then it has in the past.
Stan Lee: What do you mean by educated. Educated in some sort of area or do you mean with just school education or educated in the media?
John Goldwater: Technical skills!
Will Eisner: I used the wrong word. Sophisticated with a certain amount of technical skill.
Stan Lee: I mention that because I have had some experience in this during the war. I produced, God knows how many, comic book instructional manuals and training films and so forth. I drew some myself - which may surprise you - wrote them all and worked with other people who drew them for me. These were as technical and as disciplined and as tailored as anything could be. They were on such subjects as the operation of a 16mm Ribald camera under battle conditions, the maintenance and nomenclature of certain kinds of tanks. They were very technical and dry, and it was our job to liven them up a bit and make them palatable and understandable.
We did one for the finance department. They were having trouble training finance officers in the field, and they couldn't get finance officers into the field quickly enough so that some men weren't being paid and it was becoming a big problem. Through the use of comic books to show how fiscal officers should pay men we reduced the training period required for a fiscal officer from 6 months to 6 weeks.
Now the point I'm making is this. We used men who had some experience drawing comics and some experience, just as illustrators and we showed them how to draw comics. I would think actually you call them educational comics; I would think you might just as easily call them special purpose comic books. I would think that any special purpose comic book could be done by any of the artists in the field today and it is up to the editor or the publisher, or whoever is in charge of the project I would think, to just explain how the job should be done. There are certain rules and regulations that the artist has to adhere to - just as there are in working for a regular newsstand comic book. I just don't think there is a special breed of man who can draw well, again, we have done just recently, in the past 10 years, we have done industrial books for Birds Eye Food, Red Cross, Social Security and there is no problem. They're done with the same artists. You might not recognize them. They do different kinds of layouts, and it's structured differently, but the same artists.
Gil Kane: I would like to direct one more question to Mr. Goldwater. Mr. Goldwater, as publisher of Archie the largest selling teenage magazine around and obviously one of the largest selling groups of comic books in the world. I happen to know that several of the artists who have been working with you are probably the longest employed for a single employer of any company in the field, which would suggest a certain stability and growth.
Do you foresee a growing market for artists and writers? Do you have people that you work with regularly and, in effect, have a highly specialized group of people?
John Goldwater: - We do have a highly specialized group of people, and this is something Denny brought up before. I would say the artists that started with me almost when I created Archie, many years ago are still with me. But the fact is that during the interim, the period of time since 1942 when I first created Archie, until the present time, we have developed many new artists, many new writers, who have gone ahead into motion picture writing and TV. We think the comic book business is a great school.
I think it's a reservoir of talent for people who go on for bigger and better jobs. We have had people who write novels you know very successfully. I think that partly due to the training that they got in our shop. Several of our artists not only do illustrated work for us but they do paintings to bring an added income. That's another field of development. We are constantly in touch with artists school - asking for talent. Each year we take two new people and develop them either as writers or as artists. One other thing that I have done in our shop, and I think some of the other publishers have done it also, is to try and get each artist to write a story. Now it has taken me many years to convince some of the artists to write stories because they say well, we're going to lose a lot of money when we write stories because it takes too long. So, I pointed out to him that writing a story is one of the most satisfying things that he could do, and it would give him another dimension. So therefore, I trained them, took them along and there isn't a single artist, I can't think of one, in our shop who also doesn't write stories. So that we have a large reservoir of story writers and artists, and I feel the opportunities are just infinite.
Sid Jacobson: I'd like to make an observation. Our books, Harvey Comics, and Mr. Goldwater's, in terms of Archie, our attitude toward what the medium is seems to be a certain kind that differs from Stan's and Denny's and those, let's say represented by Marvel and National. I think that where Mr. Goldwater said that this is like a school or testing ground; a way to learn perhaps other skills in other areas, this seems to be an attitude that very much permeates, I think, our type of books, which cater to a younger reader and less sophistication and I think there is a different intent and a different idea as to what it is all about from National and from Marvel and I think they are looking for something out of it, of the book itself, and out of the career in those people involved in our shops.
Gil Kane: One of the things that I wanted to ask you is, do you have many young people breaking into your publishing house?
Sid Jacobson: Now and then. Really, not many. When I get someone coming in, I'm rather surprised.
Howie Schneider: Let me ask a question in relation to the members who will be reading this - Is the comic book business expanding in any way? For example. Archie Comics is successful, Harvey Comics is doing well. Will is doing well with his educational comics and so on and so forth. But are there new titles coming out. Like for example in comic strips, comics strips are very successful but there are another 140 banging on the door every day. Are there new titles coming out? Is there a breeding ground for a new creative work or are you just very successful with what you've done. Is there a place here for the new creative cartoonist who wants to get into comics or is it a closed shop?
Sid Jacobson: I think, again by using the quote in a different way, that Mr. Goldwater used when he said there used to be 40 or whatever houses in, I forget the date, 1954, now there are 6 or 7. Actually I think that the amount of titles are way down than what was there before. I think that the comic magazine as we know it as a viable force seems to be less than what it was 15 years ago. However, I think there are new ways of using the comic medium. New forms, where comics are being used like paperbacks and in other ways and certainly comics, in a way, has been part of the growth of television.
Howie Schneider: Suppose I had an idea, could I do a comic book and bring it up to John Goldwater’s place or bring it up to Stan Lee's place? Suppose I wanted to express something in a comic book form. Is it possible for someone to do this?
John Goldwater: I think it would be silly for any publisher or editor to refuse to look at any new ideas. But let's get to the crux of the problem. The crux of the problem is not the publisher. The crux of the problem is in distribution.
What we're faced with is a monopolistic situation in distribution. So therefore, what we're up against is the inability of a small publisher, and each one of us are regarded as small publishers, to challenge any wholesaler who has his own territory and when we come out with a new title and we pass it on to the wholesaler and the wholesaler says to us, ‘How much is there in it for me? Why don't you fellows figure out how many returns you’re going to have and I'm going to charge you for those returns.’ So therefore, any publisher is wary of putting out a new magazine. I know we are. I'm sure the other publishers are in the same situation we're in.
So that when you talk about the urbanization of the cities and you walk along 1st Ave. or 2nd Ave. or 3rd Ave. you see all these ‘Mom and Pop’ shops are gone where they used to work 12 hours a day, which were the backbone of the comic book business, that's gone. So, the comic book business has to be essentially so creative and turn out such a great product that it will sell despite the distributor.
Howie Schneider: Well, I don't see how a business can be creative and at the same time make it so difficult for new creativity to exist. I don't know. I would like to hear what Stan has to say about that.
Stan Lee: I would say that the comic book market is the worst market that there is on the face of the earth for creative talent and the reasons are numberless and legion. I have had many talented people ask me how to get into the comic book business. If they were talented enough the first answer, I would give them is why would you want to get into the comic book business. Because even if you succeed, even if you reach what might be considered the pinnacle of success in comics you will be less successful, less secure and less effective than if you are just an average practitioner of your art in television, radio, movies or what have you.
It is a business in which the creator, as was mentioned before, owns nothing of his creation. The publisher owns it...
John Goldwater: Well, I'm the creator also.
Stan Lee: Well, if the creator is fortunate enough to become the publisher, then he owns it; yes.
Howie Schneider: Or vice versa.
Stan Lee: It is a business where John is absolutely right in what he said about the distribution. We are penalized for the fact that we have a very inexpensive product. For the fact that the news dealer, for the most part, doesn't care much about comics. A lot of them consider comics a nuisance value. They clutter up the store, they bring a lot of kids who stand around and thumb through them and can't get rid of the kids. I must say I think that one of the problems is the publishers themselves have never really had enough respect for their product and have never really tried to up-grade it, in the way that I feel it should be up-graded.
I think there are very few products in the artistic field that have as great a fan following, that have a world of customers who want the product as badly as kids want comics and nothing is done about this. I shouldn't say ‘nothing’ - but I think comparatively little. I think if a motion picture company had a picture that people wanted to see they would find a way to get it out. Their problem is people don't particularly want to go to see their pictures. We have products, every publisher has some products that people want but I don't know what they spend their time doing but I feel they don't spend enough time figuring out, maybe changing the price structure, maybe doing something else about the distribution, I don't know. I'm not privy to their counsel. But I think this is entirely where the problem lies. The product is good. There is a demand for it. There seems to be difficulty in getting the product out where it's wanted.
Howie Schneider: That little spot that everybody skirts around the creator having a piece of the pie. Is that an eventuality, do you think, John, do you think that will happen?
John Goldwater: In my shop, everybody who creates has a piece of something. I don't hold anybody back and I don't know why anyone else should. For example, on reprints we pay them for reprints. I don't know if anyone else does but we do. Now I'd like to comment on what Stan Lee said.
Denny O’Neil: Do you pay full price for reprints?
John Goldwater: No, we don't pay full price.
Denny O’Neil: Will you divulge what scale you pay?
John Goldwater: No. I wouldn't care to. I don't want to set any patterns in the industry. That's up to each individual publisher.
But I would like to comment on what Stan said. And that is this. Despite all the hurdles and barriers that people have to surmount in order to get into the comic book business, I wouldn't discourage anyone. I would never tell anyone that the comic book business is the worst business. I think it's an excellent business for talented people who can write and draw, and I would encourage anybody to come into my shop because we have had people, as I said before, who have been trained in our shop. Why should you discourage any talent. My goodness. You should encourage as much as you can.
Anybody who has writing talent or artistic talent and help them all you can. If the comic book business is too narrow or too confined for them, then they can go on to other fields. This is what happened to people who worked for me and I'm only too happy to boast about the fact that people who've been in our shop have gone into better fields I don't want to term it better, but other fields - and have made an enormous amount of money and self-satisfying success.
Denny O’Neil: First of all. I didn't know that Mr. Goldwater paid residuals but I sure as hell hope that it catches on because National, when you sign that check you have given away everything. You don't even have the damn paper the thing is written on.
As for getting into the field. I have to agree with Stan. I couldn't, in conscience, encourage any writer who wanted to make a decent middle class living, to get into it. I think I have the highest free-lance page rate in the business and I made $10,000 last year from comics. I do novels and other things to flesh that out. I made that doing 34 scripts. They weren't all full-length books but most of them were. I submit that that is, and I'm also generally considered one of the top 5 most skilful people in doing what I do. If I was one of the top 5 bank clerks in the country, I wouldn't be making $10,000 a year out of my back clerking.
Howie Schneider: How did you get into comic books?
Denny O’Neil: I was not trained in it. I was trained as a journalist, as a newspaper reporter. I got into it thru Stan back about 5 years ago at the height of the camp thing when it was a lot easier, when they were actively, both National and Marvel were both actively looking for people who could write and draw to come and take some of the burden off the, as I understand suddenly fell on the shoulders of you people who have been doing it for 20 years.
Will Eisner: I want to ask a question that I think is pertinent to this and maybe stop the rambling, because I think its rambling a little bit. Does anybody here have statistics…
John Goldwater: What have we been rambling about Will?
Stan Lee: I think it’s been very germain to the cartoonists and writers.
Will Eisner: No. No. I meant this last part, because I think we were getting away from what I thought the moderator asked, which was what are the opportunities or what is the market for the writer or the artist - the creative man. I want to ask a question because I haven't got the answer. I'm not involved in this field that actively.
You're an editor Stan, you’re an editor, so you’re involved in the buying acquisitions of new features. How many new features does anybody imagine have been bought, not necessarily comic books, how many new titles, how many new features have been bought this year in the industry Can anyone hazard a guess?
Stan Lee: I can tell you. I can't give you a number but let me answer by saying it's a very incestuous thing. We may introduce, John may introduce a number of new features but that doesn't mean new openings for new people because the new features are usually done by people who were doing the old features, whose strips have been dropped and they now do a new feature. It's not the same as new newspaper strips.
Will Eisner: Then perhaps my question should be said this way. How many new men, new talent, new artists, have found a niche, have appeared, have sold a piece into the comics this year.
Gil Kane: Surprisingly, I may be able to answer that. Most of the major companies, for instance National has a very large list of artists and writers and over the last few years there has been an enormous turnover and different stations and different positions and ultimately enormous influx from fan artists and fan writers. I would say that at this point possibly a quarter of the people working there are new people new to the field within the last five years and a good many of them have entrenched themselves into a position of pre-eminence and are very solid workers in the field. However, one of the reasons they make up 25% of the field is because the field has diminished. In other words. If they had gotten in 15 years ago, they would have made up I% of the field. It's simply the number of men working for most of the companies that I either know about or deal with has diminished considerably.
Will Eisner: Then am I to understand that a young man coming out of art school today at the age of 18, 19 or 20 with talent, the kind that John described, good writing, good drawing ability combination, what are his odds? Would he choose the comic book industry versus say doing story boards for television? What are the odds for him to get into this market?
Gil Kane: One of the things that I found is that it is almost impossible to get somebody to make a cold turkey, dry, dispassionate decision to come into comics. It generally takes dedication and fanaticism. The people who want to get into comics are nearly always people who have been priming for it for years and by the time they make the transition its almost an invisible transition because they have been getting in by degrees over the years.
Comic artists develop into comic artists simply because they love the field. Everything is thrown in their way to dis courage them, I think the prices are bad, the fact that they're competing against professionals who are becoming absolutely impossibly good at what they do. But still they keep coming on and, as a matter of fact, in their just relentless drive to come in they keep setting new standards for the old pros who must constantly raise the level of their performance a notch higher in order to maintain the difference between what the pro does and what the dedicated fan is beginning to produce.
Sid Jacobson: I think almost always comics has been a mass media in the amount of titles publishers put out, an impersonal kind of magazine or in an instance of Stan's, almost a strictly singularly personal kind, but in most instances very impersonal where one person will work on his feature or that feature or write this or write that, where there isn't an identity of the individual to a feature and along with that, it is a kind of economics that I think the publishers have convinced themselves of so that they cannot give royalty. I think almost in toto no publisher really wants anyone to come in with a new feature. I think there is a kind of economics that they are unwilling to give a royalty for it or an ownership and whether truthful or not they have convinced themselves that they can't afford it with this kind of a structure, I think that the individual in it can get very little but a learning ground for going on to something else in whether a comic strip or different forms of media today than are used in comics.
Stan Lee: Let me just say in a weak defence of the publishers, weaker than I'd like to be. So many men in the industry, so many artists and writers talk about this royalty bit and I think it is a very legitimate request, but as I've told so many of them so many times, you can't get blood out of a stone, and unfortunately comic books, every individual book and every individual story doesn't throw off the big profit that an artist and writer would like to hope it does. Many books lose money.
Sometimes publishing comic magazines is like producing Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum You don't make much from any single slice but if you just turn out enough you make money. Some publishers lose money on the publishing and make it back on the distribution or whatever. It is not what I would call a tremendously healthy field, very rarely has been except for certain periods.
I don't think all our problems would be solved if artists and writers got royalties. I think we'd have happier artists and writer certainly and I think it would be a nice gesture, I think maybe a share of the profits would be more equitable and I think there would be many disappointed artists and writers who would find that the profits are not that great. I just want to say this is one of the reasons that I have advised people to think twice before getting into the comic business because I don't know how the publishers, some of them, become as wealthy as they seem to be, because I have been told so often and I have no reason to doubt it, that there has been so many years. when the books lose money or just barely break even or don't throw off that big a profit.
Now if you're in a field where you want royalties and you want a share of the profits and profits are not that big, you have got to be a simpleton to stay in that field or else there is just something wrong somewhere.
Let me ask you a question then John and maybe I'm being defensive because you criticized what I said before. But when I advise artists and writers to get out of this business or to think twice before they get into it, to be more accurate. Why do you take umbrage with me? It sounds to me from everything you've said as though...
John Goldwater: Because I think it’s a wonderful apprenticeship. Why deny a young fellow the opportunity of coming to a publishing house and getting acquainted with the pros in the business and learning from the pros, and then going on from there to something else if they want to. I don't say that being a comic artist or a comic writer is the pinnacle of anybody's career. It certainly wasn't mine.
Stan Lee: But isn't it pathetic to be in a business where the most you can say for the creative person in the business is that he's serving an apprenticeship to enter a better field? Why not go to the other field directly?
John Goldwater: He's doing something that's soul satisfying. Do you want him to go out and sell shirts. I mean he is better off doing comic books because he loves it. He doesn't want to sell shirts. I used to sell shirts, but I didn't like it, so I went into the comic book business.
Denny O’Neil: That's quite true and it’s a shame because I write books and films and ghost writing to kind of support being able to continue to do comic books because I like the medium that well. I think it's a rotten shame that if I chose to, I could not work entirely there. That I have to take ‘X’ number of outside jobs a year.
Howie Schneider: What do you like about it so much?
Denny O’Neil: I like the idea of the visual story telling. That's a big question. I like certain kinds of effects, certain kinds of freedom, I like certain pieces of the tradition that have grown up that I can't use anywhere else. It's a thing that I have an aptitude for. Comic books are what taught me to read.
John Goldwater: Now this is a beautiful statement. Now why would you deny a man like that the opportunity of going into the comic book business when he loves it so much.
Howie Schneider: Why does the comic book business deny him the opportunity?
John Goldwater: The comic book business doesn't deny him, it gives him the opportunity to advance his career. Gives him the opportunity to associate with people who have had vastly more experience than he's had. So, he's able to do other things. He's able to write for other media. Together with his comic book work.
Howie Schneider: But he wants to do comics.
John Goldwater: Yes, but he does do comics. He doesn't have to spend every waking hour doing comics. Because I think it would be boring. Even though I love the field myself.
Stan Lee: I think what John just said was interesting because I don't think that a person who does advertising or I don't think Will in the work he does or a screen writer feels, well, this is boring, and I want to do something else also. See, there is something very unique about comics.
John Goldwater: I think you must have misunderstood what I said.
Stan Lee: Well, possibly I did. But there is something unique about it. Now when you were talking and, this is not the publishers fault unfortunately and I don't know how this got started, but again I don't want to labor the point but I think it is as important but I think the whole purpose of this conversation is for members of the cartoonist society who might be considering entering the comic field. Well, that's why we’re discussing it. Unfortunately, in the comic field the artist, the writer and the editor, if you will, are the most helpless people in the world. Because the printer, who belongs to a printer’s union can suddenly say, ‘We're not making enough money.’ Because he says that the printer raises the price $1.00 a hundred
John Goldwater: .... $1.00 a thousand.
Stan Lee: Which is tremendous. Now that could represent to my publisher and probably to John $100,000 additional a year
John Goldwater: Almost $200,000.
Stan Lee: Well, there you are you see almost 1/4 million dollars more that they have to spend a year. Now - in any other field if this happens in the steel industry, they simply raise the price of steel. They don't limit the people who are working for them. In the comic magazine business, the publisher takes it on the chin. There is nothing he can do. If he's totally cold and callous he cuts the rates of the people who work for him. If he's not, and most of them are not, he absorbs the loss somehow. But every time you get an increase like that, you as an artist or writer or editor in the field have less opportunity to get a raise or bonus or whatever because your boss is paying more money to turn out the same product. He doesn't raise the price of the product more than once a decade, just about, and that is a small raise.
So, you're terribly vulnerable in this field, much more so than any other field. I'm not espousing a union incidentally, which wouldn't help. Because what are you going to strike for and against whom. It is a unique situation which needs really a lot of thought on the part of the publisher.
Howie Schneider: Let me bring up this point. I don't want to get deep into it - but you all know about - for example - the field is moving into new areas. For example - Phoebe Zeitgeist - there is Goscinny and Uderzo who put out a book of cartoons a comic book actually in hard cover - beautifully drawn and color illustrated. There are a number of French books and there are a number of ones done in this country Barbarella, for example, and there is also the underground comics there is this new medium that Gil Kane got into Black Mark, which is a visual novel so to speak. There are pseudo-pods reaching out in all directions in this business that are enabling people to sit down and express them selves with complete freedom in the comic book form and get it somehow on the stands. They don't get it on all the stands that most of your distributors do, but they get it on the stands. Now do you people consider these people to be a good influence or a threat or what?
Gil Kane: Or an indication?
Stan Lee: Let’s let a publisher answer that first.
John Goldwater: It depends on the contents. A book like Black Mark I think is great. I think it's a wonderful idea to go ahead and escalate, so to speak, the comic book medium into other forms. This is what I'm talking about. That's why I would encourage artists and writers. Perhaps they could get into this type of field. I'm certainly opposed to the underground comics. I think they're horrible.
Howie Schneider: Opposed to them on the basis of content?
John Goldwater: Yes. I'm only talking about content.
Howie Schneider: Well, there are a number of underground comics that are not necessarily pornographic.
John Goldwater: Well, if they weren't pornographic, they would be able to get regular distribution. If they're unable to get regular distribution…
Howie Schneider: Suppose they don't want regular distribution?
Will Eisner: I think we ought to go back to what John said. Because I think he said earlier the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter, gentlemen, is distribution. The underground comics are a reaction against the constriction and the bottleneck of distribution. That is the heart of it, and you can stop right there, because any other discussion is an exercise in futility.
Howie Schneider: But what I want to know is how you view the. As something that will go away or…
Will Eisner: No. I think it's marvellous, and I wanted to say that since I can talk freely because I'm not in the eye of the storm. I'm just on the outside, that is the hope of the future. Now if I were a comic book artist, if I were Will Eisner of 1938, 39 or 40, that's where I would go. That's where I would go because that is the future. The future I s there because they're selling to a market. Some of them have achieved as much as a 50,000 circulation. The price doesn't mean very much because their market is intense. That is the new area, and I think this business is growing in that direction.
Howie Schneider: There is a big animation house that's doing animated film of one of R. Crumb's cartoons.
Stan Lee: Krantz, I believe. I think I agree.
John Goldwater: That's your friend.
Stan Lee: John, everybody is my friend.
John Goldwater: Except those that head the…
Stan Lee: I'm always surprised to learn I'm wrong about that. At any rate. I was about to say that I agree with what Will said and I sometimes wonder why the publishers themselves are so relaxed about all this because it seems to me that eventually what is going to happen is there has to, either the field will die because it's going nowhere or there has to be a breakthrough and the comic book publisher either has to be a part of the breakthrough by publishing things such as the book we have been referring to, Gil's Black Mark, or why would anybody stay in the comic magazine field if that other field really begins to expand. I see Will Eisner disagrees with me.
Will Eisner: I think, yes, I do not quite disagree with you. I think you keep skirting the point, Stan.
Stan Lee: What point?
Will Eisner: The enemy is not the publisher.
Stan Lee: I'm not saying he is.
Will Eisner: The enemy, this is in italics, the enemy is the distributor, and this is what the creative man is always having to contend with.
Stan Lee: The creative man has nothing to do with the distributor.
Will Eisner: Yes, he does. Because the publisher is nothing more than a man who has the acumen to assembly something. A publisher's function is that of a packager and assembler.
Stan Lee: Let me mention one thing which will be sacrilegious. Has it ever occurred to anybody that maybe the distributor is not as big a problem as we have all been led to believe. Now, I'll give you a case in point.
There is a new publisher named Sol Brodsky who has gone into partnership with a fellow named Isreal Waldman, and they have come out with a new company call Skywald. Everybody said, this man will die. Well there is a distributor named Cable, maybe not the world's greatest or the world's worst, I don't know, but they seem to be getting Brodsky's magazines, just like that, on every newsstand that I see. In fact in some areas, they seem to be distributed better than some other titles I've seen. Now this is just one new outfit. Is it possible and I am embarrassed to say this, and I can't believe.
John Goldwater: Stan, you should be embarrassed.
Stan Lee: I can't believe it is possible but is it possible that the publishers really would be happier if no new publishers come into the field.
John Goldwater: Oh nonsense. Now that's a silly statement and you should know better than that after all these years in the business.
Will Eisner: I want to accuse you people here, everybody, except Mr. Goldwater, of ignoring something, and thinking in a very, very reactionary and conservative manner. You are refusing, since this is going to presumably to young cartoonists who are probing for new areas, you are refusing to provide him with the kind of thinking that has been traditionally the kind of thinking that created new fields, like the comic book, and is right at this moment, beyond this table, occurring right around us. The heart of the problem is the reader first. Ask yourself, as a young cartoonist who wants to do visual storytelling and feels he has a talent for it and has something to say and has some new ideas, what is the market for it. Forget, for a moment the distributor. Is there a public out there that will buy and wants to read this kind of thing that you can produce.
Stan Lee: Are you referring to a new idea that the artist comes up with?
Will Eisner: A young man, right now with a great big portfolio, standing on the street corner enamoured with this idea of creating this story continuity thing, thinks he has a better way of doing it or thinks he can make a contribution. He is standing on a street corner first thing he has got to ask himself is, is there a public that wants to read what I have to say. Now fellows like Crumb and people out in San Francisco these young underground fellows, suddenly discovered that there was somebody who had something to say.
Stan Lee: But they didn't go to the comic book business.
Will Eisner: O.K. that's exactly my point Stan. You're…
Stan Lee: What is the point?
Will Eisner: The point is, that by making the enemy the publisher, by saying why doesn't the publisher or what will the publisher, or why won't the publisher or for that matter, why won't the distributor etc., etc.
Stan Lee: I haven't said that.
Will Eisner: You have said that.
John Goldwater: You intimated that the publisher should do something about distribution.
Will Eisner: You create a wall for the young man coming along which does not really, it exists, it makes his problem perhaps difficult, but it is not really his major obstacle. It's only an obstacle. The public
Howie Schneider: What is his major obstacle?
Will Eisner: His major obstacle is getting his merchandise, his idea, his writing to the public and this has been a time-honored problem.
Stan Lee: Will, you have been out of the business too long.
Will Eisner: Well, in that case I have to withdraw.
Denny O’Neil: Well, as a matter of fact, a lot of young artists, particularly, are experimenting with alternates to going to the established company. Bernie Wrightson has just published something called Abbis. The science fiction novel and Chip Delany did a comic book that Wrightson is going to illustrate. That he will publish himself and peddle through science fiction circles as a collector’s item.
There is a kid, I can't think of his name, which has been bugging me for a story for weeks because he wants to try something like Witzend except only try it on a more business-like basis.
Gil Kane: I've had some small experience in this. I've tried to publish and did publish a magazine before I did this. I met with enormous resistance from the publishers. Not that I went to them. But they kept me from publishing. By simply contacting printers and as a result I was virtually blacklisted until I found a printer who did avant-garde material and was willing to publish a perfectly ordinary comic book without any pornography in it at all.
Stan Lee: You mean you were actually blacklisted?
Gil Kane: Yes. Well I mean I was told, I had deals with World Color and a couple of other printers and in instances after weeks of acceptance and prices and, as a matter of fact they would send in signed estimates, we were called and told actually, without any question at all, that pressure had been put on them and they were forced to drop us as clients. I mean it can't be any plainer than that.
John Goldwater: Gil, I'd like to get back to the 18-year-old who just comes out of art school. I don't know why he has to stand on a corner with a portfolio full of creative ideas. Why should he have to be creative. Let this 18-year-old go to a comic publishing house show him whether or not he has talent as an artist or a writer and gain the necessary experience after he gains that experience then he can think about doing things that you've just talked about. But at 18 years old why should we expect every one of these fellows to be a genius. Not everybody is a Seigel & Shuster that can produce Superman at 18 years of age.
Howie Schneider: John, we’re not just talking about 18-year-olds fresh out of school. We're also talking about the 35-year editorial cartoonist who thinks he can write. Might want to get into comic books. I mean it’s not a business that is closed to people. What about the man who's been doing animation? Or the man who's been doing comic strips or the man who's been doing anything at all who decides he wants to try his hand at comics. Not just a young fellow.
John Goldwater: Well fine. If he happens to get connected with a comic publishing house who have interests other than comics. For example, if they go into television, if they go into motion pictures or if they go into any field which, to invade Eisner's field for example, in educational or industrial comics. There are many opportunities, but he first has to gain the experience.
Stan Lee: Do you think that these opportunities exist in the comic publishing field today?
John Goldwater: No question about it.
Howie Schneider: What situation would the business be in if there were no advertising?
John Goldwater: Advertising is the gravy that the publisher depends on. He would be in a very sorry pitiable state without advertising.
Gil Kane: I would like to have some sort of a summing up for the business and what its prospects are for people who are seriously considering it.
Stan, I didn't get to ask you about, in effect, what you think the prospects are for people succeeding. If people were to go to you and look for work and since in effect you represent in a very significant way a very predominant branch of adventure comics, what would your attitude be.
Stan Lee: You know, you get to hate yourself after a while cause you try to answer truthfully and you always offend everybody if you try to be. It's so easy to give a pollyannish remark and I think anybody who wants to just level with the guys who are listening, if somebody comes along who's tremendously good, as good or better than the men who are now working in the business and if he'll work for a lot less money, the chances are a publisher will use him.
If a guy comes along who's talented but he's no better than the fellows who are being used and he wants as much money. What chance does he have unless an artist or writer has died or has quit. It isn't a big growing expanding industry. The publishers are not looking for new talent. It's nothing like that at all. Or I shouldn't say that. If it is like that it's eluded me. I haven't seen it or heard of it.
John Goldwater: Stan, don't you pray for somebody to come into your office with some great idea that you can publish tomorrow?
Stan Lee: Oh, we've got all the ideas in the world.
John Goldwater: No, you don't. No you don't. How can you have every idea in the world. You’re not that much of a genius. I don't know how you characterize yourself
Stan Lee: No, I've never characterized myself. We don't have all the ideas in the world. We have all the ideas we need. We have a full cabinet filled with projections and ideas for new magazines that we cannot publish for one reason or another. We don't have the funds, the time isn't right, we can't get distribution, costs are too high
John Goldwater: Stan if you have a file full of new ideas that you can't publish come over to see me, will ya. I'll be very happy to consider publishing them.
Denny O’Neil: I've nothing to add to what I said before. Based on my experience and the experience of my contemporaries in the field, I could not recommend it unless you have a big need to do it. If you have a big need to do it, you will keep beating down the doors until one falls and then eventually you may be getting a reasonably decent recompense for your skills.
Stan Lee: I hate to do this to you Gil, can I add one more thing which I think may be important. If a fellow wants to write or draw for comic publishers and just goes as an employee, fine, if that's what he wants to do. I would say, if you have an idea for a magazine, you must understand that it will no longer be your idea if you manage to sell it to a publisher. As the industry is constituted today, unless you say to the publisher, look I either want the rights to this or you can't have it in which case you'll probably not sell it. Again, this is a unique thing.
John Goldwater: Let's qualify that a minute, Stan. I don't like you to embrace an entire industry by saying if someone comes along with an idea that's the end of the idea and they'll never own it anymore. Perhaps it's up to the individual publisher.
There are some publishers who will entertain that kind of a thing. Maybe your shop won't but maybe mine will. I don't like you to make a statement that embraces everybody in the business. I think it's unfair, it's untruthful. You keep talking about truth. Let's stick to the truth.
Stan Lee: Alright, let's talk truth, John. How many new ideas have you bought that the artist owns?
John Goldwater: Oddly enough I happen to be a very creative guy myself. So, I've probably created almost everything I have in my shop with the exception of maybe two or three things. And these fellows who have created two or three things I have tried very hard to get their stuff syndicated. I've tried very hard to put them on television. As a matter of fact, today I talked with a guy, I may get one of the boys on television. So that I try very hard to help my people.
Stan Lee: But I don't know if you've answered my question. How many scripts have you bought recently that you don't own. That the artist or writer owns because he came to you with the idea.
John Goldwater: Well, I don't know that anybody has come to me with any new ideas. I pray for new ideas.
Stan Lee: Let me ask you this. I have some new ideas. Now if I were privileged to do so, could I bring you the new idea and if you liked it would I own it?
John Goldwater: No, you wouldn't own it.
Stan Lee: Well, I think that answers my question.
John Goldwater: That doesn't answer your question at all. I think you would be entitled to some part of it, but you can't own it. You can't expect a publisher to put all his money and his reputation just to entertain an idea of yours and have you own it. I mean that's ridiculous. There isn't anybody in the country who would do that.
Stan Lee: John, you have said the nicest thing that I have heard. I'm very serious about this. Because I've never heard this mentioned before. Of course, I use the word ‘owned’ ill advisedly. I didn't mean would I own the entire thing. You mean to say that if somebody came to you today with an idea for a new magazine and if you were prepared to go ahead and publish it and have this person do it and accept his idea that you would be willing to give him a stake in this, some proprietary rights in this strip
John Goldwater: I don't know if I would give him a proprietary. I'm not prepared to answer that for the moment because we do have corporations which have been a business for many many years, so it would be difficult for me to give somebody a proprietary interest in the corporation, which I have owned for many years. I think you'll agree that would be very unfair. But what I would do, to answer your question. If somebody came along with an idea which I thought was great and I was willing to invest in. I would say that maybe we could work out some deal on a royalty basis but not a proprietary interest.
Stan Lee: Please understand again why I am laboring this point. I'm an editor, I'm also a writer and I'm speaking for the cartoonist’s society, and I am of course, allied with the practitioners in the field. This something that is a very important point to all of us. It has not been my experience, John, and again I don't consider publishers enemies, this is just the nature of the business.
It has not been my experience that in the last two decades anybody has had any rights at all in anything that he has created for a publisher. Now that's the nature of the business and I assume that's the way it's always going to be and that's why I would tell any cartoonist who has an idea - think twice before you give it to a publisher. What you say is…
John Goldwater: Depending on the publisher he gives it to. Let's qualify it along those lines.
Stan Lee: I would love to qualify it if somebody will.
Sid Jacobson: I think Harvey's has done it. I think that there have been situations in the past where the creator has owned parts of the work.
Stan Lee: Could I ask which ones?
Sid Jacobson: I think Boy’s Ranch has been one. It goes back many years.
Stan Lee: How many years would you say that goes back.
Sid Jacobson: About 18 or 20 years.
Stan Lee: This is what I said. I said at least two decades.
Sid Jacobson: But every other thing that has come out has pretty much been done by basically myself or…
Stan Lee: Why can't we ever just say it as it is. For 20 years nobody has brought an idea to a publisher and had any rights in it. I hope it will change; I hope John is right.
Sid Jacobson: I think there were things that Joe Simon had done for Harvey's a couple of years ago and I think that he had a piece of it.
Stan Lee: Yes. You're right, you're right.
Sid Jacobson: That goes back around 4 or 5 years ago.
Stan Lee: That's a great precedent.
John Goldwater: This I think has existed since any proprietary rights, but he did have some royalties. I believe that he didn't have…
Denny O’Neil; Yeah, well. I think that we're avoiding addressing our presumed audience which is the cartoonist that wants to get in business. Yeah. Maybe Joe Simon did manage to maintain a piece. I'm pretty sure that was after he was damned well established in the comic book business and had that kind of clout. I can speak from experience. I created three strips for Charlton that are still running; I don't even get complementary copies of the magazine! It's just, well, you sign the check, and you sign, you know, everything.
John Goldwater: How do you know those strips are making money even though they're publishing?
Stan Lee: But he could be on the mailing list!
Denny O’Neil: I don't. I'm simply saying that once I signed the check for the first one, I had no control, they weren't even courteous that’s irrelevant. But as a young guy, I think I'd been in the business two years, I wasn't even consulted, and I was broke, and I needed the money so when they said create three strips I did.
Howie Schneider: Did you write or draw it?
Denny O’Neil: I wrote.
Gil Kane: Just a moment. It's getting late and let's get around the table. Will?
Will Eisner: As far as the so-called educational field is concerned, it’s still in its infancy, it’s still virgin territory, it's still without the structured marketing but it's probably one of the, I believe, great growing areas in the entire publishing industry. For a young man I can only say that he should keep his eye open for it and work toward it, but I don't know of any houses that are practicing it in any large scale or represent a viable market within that frame.
Stan Lee: Are you a market, Will?
Will Eisner: Yes, but we're erratic. For example, if an artist came to me now with an idea, an educational idea, I would have to tailor a distribution for it. A market for it.
Gil Kane: Murph? Murphy Anderson
Murphy Anderson: I have nothing specific to say except that the field has been good to me over the years. I can't really complain, and I would encourage any young fellow that might want to get into the business. It's tough but I think there's a great deal of satisfaction doing your thing if you want to put it that way. I would hope that a new area will open up as your book is evidence of.
Gil Kane: Sid?
Sid Jacobson: Well, I think that as a media comics is growing enormously in new and different ways and I think probably what's going on in comics today is close to what's going on - or what has been going on in pop music with, let's say, the coming of rock, and more creative, astute and educated people in it. I think that the comic magazine as such, I don't think seems to be a real viable force or a thing that is growing into new things, but I do think that it is a great training ground for what is for what you can grow out of.
Gil Kane: We'd just like to say in summation that it seems as though the business does have potential and is growing but is proportionately withering behind, too, because there are parts that absolutely succumb as new directions are pointed out. Also, it seems as though it's an extraordinarily competitive field in which nothing less than comparable skills can possibly be shown in order to break into what is a very tight and solid ring of professionals who do most of the work. It would take the kind of dedication and perseverance that possibly only young people have, but it does seem to be, at the moment, a field for dedicated professionals and hardly anyone else.
Howie Schneider: I'd like to thank everybody for coming down.