Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Alexander Freed. Luke Ross, Andrea Chella, Chris Scalf, Comics, dark horse, Douglas Wheatley, empire, entertainment, Haden Blackman, Jim Hall, John ostrander, Marco Castiello, marvel, Marvel Comics, Randy Stradley, rick leonardi, royalties, star wars

Marvel Declines To Answer Questions About Star Wars Royalties

Published Mon, 01 Sep 2014 08:00:29 -0500

by Rich Johnston

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Marvel Comics are to republish Dark Horse Star Wars comics in a new format, Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The Empire Vol 1, those comics created to follow on from Episode III, Revenge Of The Sith.

It will contain the Dark Horse titles, Star Wars: Republic #78-80, Star Wars: Purge #1, Star Wars: Purge — Seconds To Die #1, Star Wars: Purge — The Hidden Blade #1, Star Wars: Purge — The Tyrant's Fist #1-2, Star Wars: Darth Vader And The Lost Command #1-5, Star Wars: Dark Times #1-5

The creators of these books are John Ostrander, Randy Stradley, Haden Blackman, Alexander Freed. Luke Ross, Douglas Wheatley, Jim Hall, Chris Scalf, Marco Castiello, Andrea Chella and Rick Leonardi.

But will they be receiving royalties for this new publication, as they would have done with Dark Horse? Or even a comp copy?

We simply don't know. When enquiries were made, Marvel told us "We don't discuss business policies with comic sites."

Which is probably news to the likes of CBR, Newsarama or Comics Alliance for example.

The reason we asked is regarding Don Rosa, who refused to sign Boom reprints of his comics as he wasn't paid any royalties for their publication, licenses from Disney.

But it's an unfortunate fact that there have never been, and I ultimately realized there never will be, any royalties paid to the people who write or draw or otherwise create all the Disney comics you've ever read. We are paid a flat rate per page by one publisher for whom we work directly. After that, no matter how many times that story is used by other Disney publishers around the world, no matter how many times the story is reprinted in other comics, album series, hardback books, special editions, etc., etc., no matter how well it sells, we never receive another cent for having created that work…

Also Roger Langridge has stated that he was not paid any royalties for the Muppets books that Boom! commissioned and Marvel published.

Disney now own Marvel and Lucasfilm. This is the reason that Star Wars is going from Dark Horse to Lucasfilm.

Taking previous Disney comics behaviour into account, and Marvel's non-committal response, is history about to repeat itself?

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