I’m certain it’s a result of the vintage of the first life of manuscript, but the ways that this chapter talks about DREAMLAND as the last Breyfogle Batman story (or even the last Grant/Breyfogle Batman story) doesn’t take into account his BATMAN BEYOND work, nor the pair’s BATMAN RETROACTIVE one-shot, both of which were some of the best output of his final professional years.
I know you know, and I don’t mean to be a pedant. I remember despairing in the mid-‘00s that maybe that was all they wrote for Norm, and hoping that his song would come around again. I’m so glad it ultimately did!
Thanks again so much for putting this bio out into the world!!
I'll be covering Batman Beyond and the Retroactive in the last chapter. We wrote this stuff just prior to Batman Beyond and Retroactive happening, so we didn't go over it as much as we should have - we always felt we'd have time. We covered the Archie stuff and stopped there because we both got busy.
At the time we were writing this, Dreamland was pretty much the swansong for Alan and Norm.
Query, Daniel, anyone: Where does the Heroes World debacle/shit show/disaster fit into the Malibu timeline at top of the post?
And FWIW, Tom Brevoort has repeatedly strongly implied that there’s some sort of problem with using the Ultraverse characters. My Spidey sense says that theirs is some sort of creator share thing involved. Now, why that would be a problem, if it is, would be pure speculation on my part, obviously.
Now, part of my sussing is that I cannot believe that there’s *no* interest in, as we say in the 21st century, Marvel exploiting the IP — nose smiting face and all that.
INSTANT UPDATE: My AI chatbot of choice hypothesized (!) or implied that the problem maybe isn’t the creators but the deal with Rosenberg:
The problem with Marvel not using the Malibu characters comes down to one thing and one thing only - they have to pay the creators for every use. The deal that was given to the creators to come on board included future royalties. When Marvel bought Malibu they were mainly after the colouring department, but were reasonably happy to get the characters on board as well.
That was until they realised that any new books featuring those characters would have to include a very modest royalty payment to the original creators and/or their heirs. There's nothing more complicated in it than that - Norm was clear about what his contract included, as have other Malibu creators. Marvel keep babbling on about difficulties with the rights and the like, but that is crap. They just don't want to pay the original creators, and, as the deals were worded, they can't get out of it.
Thus they buried it. And it'll remain buried forever. Luckily Marvel do not own Metaphysique. The owner of that work is very well known to readers of this Substack.
Marvel bought Malibu not at all for the coloring department. It was to keep Malibu out of the hands of DC, which had been negotiating to buy the company since April of that year and was close to sealing the deal. Coloring had nothing to do with it. Marvel offered more money to protect its market share. Had Marvel (or DC or anyone) not bought Malibu, the company would've been bankrupt in less than 6 months. Malibu had been losing just over $200,000 a month for many months.
It's not true about the creator royalties. Marvel can use the Ultraverse characters in any comic book, and even revive the characters in their own titles and not pay any of the originating creators a dime. The creators don't have an ownership stake, either.
What the creators do have is a Character Interest Agreement for the characters they created. If those characters are developed into movies, TV shows, video games, toys, or similar, then Marvel is contractually obligated to pay a slight % of the deal to the creators. However, those terms are very much in line with industry practices and were based on the DC contracts of the time. They're not onerous by any standard.
The real sticking point - and you can see some glancing mention of this in the press release after Rosenberg was pushed out of Marvel - is that prior to the Marvel buyout, Rosenberg cut himself a sweetheart deal giving him a huge % of the gross of media exploitation of the Ultraverse characters.
Thew Character Interest Agreement is the main reason why Marvel are sitting on those characters. Rosenberg is another creature entirely - I've written about him in my forthcoming Image book. What he did to Liefeld was nothing short of bastardry on the highest level. If he could do that to a 'friend', imagine what he'd do to people he wasn't that invested in.
Norm was quite clear to me that he, and other Malibu creators, had made it clear to Marvel that they owned the characters free and clear and could do what they want to do with them. So it's up to Marvel to explain why they've binned the entire line.
I think the reason Marvel doesn't use the Ultraverse characters in their comics is because they don't have to and don't want to. The purchase of Malibu was a corporate decision, not an editorial one, and they never really wanted the UV characters. There's no spreadsheet proof that reviving the comics in any configuration would make money, and there's no champion for the UV characters within Marvel editorial.
Yes, creator royalties or payments is a long known factor.
But that Rosenberg thing suggests that the mandatory payout might be way greater than one would assume just from creator payouts.
I’d also toss out that the characters are by and by lame such that the extra overhead for little known IP makes using them a bad business decision. Why play a long shot with the upfront additional costs? The only character that got much traction was Prime and uhhh… that has its own special issues, specially if the underlying agreement requires placing Jones’ name in every credits box/page.
Then there’s having gotten burnt with the last efforts to resuscitate the CrossGen and Wild Cards properties.
But that all aside, what really perplexes me is why creator payouts — even Rosenberg — should be subject to an NDA. And odds are that what’s hidden behind the NDA wouldn’t result in liability or any significant sanction if breached.
Royalty payments are definitely not owed to any of the founding creators if the characters are used in comics. Royalties only come into play if the characters are exploited in non-comics media like toys/games/movies/TV. And those creator payouts are very small.
I don't believe any creator payouts or royalty matters are the subject of the NDA between Marvel and Scott. I think the NDA relates to Scott's exit deal and his forward-going arrangement with Marvel when he left Marvel. His exit PR said that he has a deal to be producer on an UV movie/TV production. And that feels like costly overhead.
Your other points about overhead in relaunching the comics are definitely valid.
When I saw Rosenberg was connected with Perlman, I sussed that there was a lot more of a mess than owing creators anything.
Related to that, NDAs are often used frivolously — and abused as well. That is, there’s nothing being covered up the exposure of which hurts the parting wanting the NDA. Odds are there’s nothing harmful to Rosenberg blocked by the NDA, and I’d doubt he’d be harmed to any degree other frivolous if someone talked.
Yes, I know, easy for me to say. But oft-times, people are more scared by an NDA than warranted.
I don't think the NDA holds any real secrets or is in any way a real answer to why the UV is in limbo. I think it's just about the deal between Scott and Marvel, and what Scott's role would be in the future regarding the UV properties.
But the existence of the NDA gives everyone a free pass to avoid answering any basic question that may or may not be above their pay grade. Ask any question and someone can always say: "Can't, NDA y'know."
What I'd suss is just that Rosenberg gets an insane cut or payout if the IP was used. If it the IP was used in non-comics media (yes, I hate the language there), it would be hard, but not impossible to hide the deal.
But if there were no ancillary use of the characters, then the deal is NDA-hidden.
But where things get funky is that my beloved AI search bot tells me that at the time Marvel bought Malibu, Marvel was owned by(or maybe "owned" IYKWIM) by............ Perlman. So maybe the NDA's hiding something embarrassing not necessarily for Rosenberg but for Marvel.
Either way, given everything, I can't see anyone being especially harmed were the NDA breached. Or put it this way: This NDA is silly and trivial. Not important enough to sue over. And IIRC (often questionable), Rosenberg's post-sale career may have far more embarrassing things in the public record than anything hidden by the NDA.
I’m certain it’s a result of the vintage of the first life of manuscript, but the ways that this chapter talks about DREAMLAND as the last Breyfogle Batman story (or even the last Grant/Breyfogle Batman story) doesn’t take into account his BATMAN BEYOND work, nor the pair’s BATMAN RETROACTIVE one-shot, both of which were some of the best output of his final professional years.
I know you know, and I don’t mean to be a pedant. I remember despairing in the mid-‘00s that maybe that was all they wrote for Norm, and hoping that his song would come around again. I’m so glad it ultimately did!
Thanks again so much for putting this bio out into the world!!
I'll be covering Batman Beyond and the Retroactive in the last chapter. We wrote this stuff just prior to Batman Beyond and Retroactive happening, so we didn't go over it as much as we should have - we always felt we'd have time. We covered the Archie stuff and stopped there because we both got busy.
At the time we were writing this, Dreamland was pretty much the swansong for Alan and Norm.
Query, Daniel, anyone: Where does the Heroes World debacle/shit show/disaster fit into the Malibu timeline at top of the post?
And FWIW, Tom Brevoort has repeatedly strongly implied that there’s some sort of problem with using the Ultraverse characters. My Spidey sense says that theirs is some sort of creator share thing involved. Now, why that would be a problem, if it is, would be pure speculation on my part, obviously.
Now, part of my sussing is that I cannot believe that there’s *no* interest in, as we say in the 21st century, Marvel exploiting the IP — nose smiting face and all that.
INSTANT UPDATE: My AI chatbot of choice hypothesized (!) or implied that the problem maybe isn’t the creators but the deal with Rosenberg:
https://g.co/gemini/share/3f84ec956c59
The problem with Marvel not using the Malibu characters comes down to one thing and one thing only - they have to pay the creators for every use. The deal that was given to the creators to come on board included future royalties. When Marvel bought Malibu they were mainly after the colouring department, but were reasonably happy to get the characters on board as well.
That was until they realised that any new books featuring those characters would have to include a very modest royalty payment to the original creators and/or their heirs. There's nothing more complicated in it than that - Norm was clear about what his contract included, as have other Malibu creators. Marvel keep babbling on about difficulties with the rights and the like, but that is crap. They just don't want to pay the original creators, and, as the deals were worded, they can't get out of it.
Thus they buried it. And it'll remain buried forever. Luckily Marvel do not own Metaphysique. The owner of that work is very well known to readers of this Substack.
Yes. It's me.
Marvel bought Malibu not at all for the coloring department. It was to keep Malibu out of the hands of DC, which had been negotiating to buy the company since April of that year and was close to sealing the deal. Coloring had nothing to do with it. Marvel offered more money to protect its market share. Had Marvel (or DC or anyone) not bought Malibu, the company would've been bankrupt in less than 6 months. Malibu had been losing just over $200,000 a month for many months.
It's not true about the creator royalties. Marvel can use the Ultraverse characters in any comic book, and even revive the characters in their own titles and not pay any of the originating creators a dime. The creators don't have an ownership stake, either.
What the creators do have is a Character Interest Agreement for the characters they created. If those characters are developed into movies, TV shows, video games, toys, or similar, then Marvel is contractually obligated to pay a slight % of the deal to the creators. However, those terms are very much in line with industry practices and were based on the DC contracts of the time. They're not onerous by any standard.
The real sticking point - and you can see some glancing mention of this in the press release after Rosenberg was pushed out of Marvel - is that prior to the Marvel buyout, Rosenberg cut himself a sweetheart deal giving him a huge % of the gross of media exploitation of the Ultraverse characters.
Thew Character Interest Agreement is the main reason why Marvel are sitting on those characters. Rosenberg is another creature entirely - I've written about him in my forthcoming Image book. What he did to Liefeld was nothing short of bastardry on the highest level. If he could do that to a 'friend', imagine what he'd do to people he wasn't that invested in.
Norm was quite clear to me that he, and other Malibu creators, had made it clear to Marvel that they owned the characters free and clear and could do what they want to do with them. So it's up to Marvel to explain why they've binned the entire line.
I think the reason Marvel doesn't use the Ultraverse characters in their comics is because they don't have to and don't want to. The purchase of Malibu was a corporate decision, not an editorial one, and they never really wanted the UV characters. There's no spreadsheet proof that reviving the comics in any configuration would make money, and there's no champion for the UV characters within Marvel editorial.
Yes, creator royalties or payments is a long known factor.
But that Rosenberg thing suggests that the mandatory payout might be way greater than one would assume just from creator payouts.
I’d also toss out that the characters are by and by lame such that the extra overhead for little known IP makes using them a bad business decision. Why play a long shot with the upfront additional costs? The only character that got much traction was Prime and uhhh… that has its own special issues, specially if the underlying agreement requires placing Jones’ name in every credits box/page.
Then there’s having gotten burnt with the last efforts to resuscitate the CrossGen and Wild Cards properties.
But that all aside, what really perplexes me is why creator payouts — even Rosenberg — should be subject to an NDA. And odds are that what’s hidden behind the NDA wouldn’t result in liability or any significant sanction if breached.
The funnies is still a hell of a crazy business…
Royalty payments are definitely not owed to any of the founding creators if the characters are used in comics. Royalties only come into play if the characters are exploited in non-comics media like toys/games/movies/TV. And those creator payouts are very small.
I don't believe any creator payouts or royalty matters are the subject of the NDA between Marvel and Scott. I think the NDA relates to Scott's exit deal and his forward-going arrangement with Marvel when he left Marvel. His exit PR said that he has a deal to be producer on an UV movie/TV production. And that feels like costly overhead.
Your other points about overhead in relaunching the comics are definitely valid.
Thanks Tom.
When I saw Rosenberg was connected with Perlman, I sussed that there was a lot more of a mess than owing creators anything.
Related to that, NDAs are often used frivolously — and abused as well. That is, there’s nothing being covered up the exposure of which hurts the parting wanting the NDA. Odds are there’s nothing harmful to Rosenberg blocked by the NDA, and I’d doubt he’d be harmed to any degree other frivolous if someone talked.
Yes, I know, easy for me to say. But oft-times, people are more scared by an NDA than warranted.
I don't think the NDA holds any real secrets or is in any way a real answer to why the UV is in limbo. I think it's just about the deal between Scott and Marvel, and what Scott's role would be in the future regarding the UV properties.
But the existence of the NDA gives everyone a free pass to avoid answering any basic question that may or may not be above their pay grade. Ask any question and someone can always say: "Can't, NDA y'know."
What I'd suss is just that Rosenberg gets an insane cut or payout if the IP was used. If it the IP was used in non-comics media (yes, I hate the language there), it would be hard, but not impossible to hide the deal.
But if there were no ancillary use of the characters, then the deal is NDA-hidden.
But where things get funky is that my beloved AI search bot tells me that at the time Marvel bought Malibu, Marvel was owned by(or maybe "owned" IYKWIM) by............ Perlman. So maybe the NDA's hiding something embarrassing not necessarily for Rosenberg but for Marvel.
Either way, given everything, I can't see anyone being especially harmed were the NDA breached. Or put it this way: This NDA is silly and trivial. Not important enough to sue over. And IIRC (often questionable), Rosenberg's post-sale career may have far more embarrassing things in the public record than anything hidden by the NDA.
Thanks again, Tom!