Ta-Nehisi Coates - a prominent journalist and author, as well as the outgoing writer of Marvel's Black Panther #25 (the concluding issue of his second volume with the character.) Coates is also currently working on Marvel's Captain America and on the script for a Superman movie with DC and Warner Bros.
Coates' comments focus on the ongoing controversy of how comic creators are compensated when elements of their work are adapted or translated to movie projects. While this has long been a contentious topic for comics fans, the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made the discussion more intense than ever, as comic writers and artists are seeing elements of their work used not just in single-movie adaptations, but a multi-billion-dollar franchise that dominates pop culture. Coates' comments focus specifically on Ed Brubaker's work - alongside artist Steve Epting - on resurrecting long-dead comic sidekick Bucky Barnes as the Winter Soldier in Captain America vol. 5 #1, preceding his inclusion in the MCU (where Barnes is played by Sebastian Stan.)
In an interview with Brubaker himself having spoken in the past about his mixed feelings in seeing his ideas succeed outside his original comic projects without accompanying acknowledgment. In an interview with Evan Narcisse regarding the conclusion of his Black Panther run, Coates states:
I’m not talking about myself here, because I feel like I’m somebody who is fortunate in the sense that I’ve been able to make a living in all kinds of other ways. But there are people who make their living off of comic books. And I wish that Marvel found better ways to compensate the creators who helped make Black Panther Black Panther. I wish that they found better ways to compensate the folks who made Captain America Captain America.
I’m talking very specifically here, I wish they found ways to compensate the author of the greatest Winter Soldier stories that you’re ever going to read. I don’t love that there’s a Falcon and Winter Soldier show on TV and I’m hearing from Ed [Brubaker] that he can’t even get in with ... I just don’t love that. I don’t love that. Look, I had a great time. I had a tremendous, tremendous time writing for Marvel. I am indebted to Marvel.
I love my editors, Wil, Tom, Alana, Sara, Martin ... Chris. I had great people working with me. The corporate side of this, though ... the corporate side of this is not pretty. It’s not pretty at all. How you treat people who create the basis for this, I don’t love it.
Coates' comments come on the heels of other complaints about Disney's handling of its newly acquired properties, as creators such has Neil Gaiman, Tess Gerritsen, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Chuck Wendig have lent their to the 'Disney Must Pay t Task Force,' formed to address alleged injustices in Disney's payment of royalties for tie-in creative works relating to properties such as Star Wars, Alien, Indiana Jones and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the same time, the mainstream comics industry as a whole has long been notorious for perceived mistreatment of its creators, with even huge characters like Batman acting as battlegrounds for basic creator credit.
Due to their iterative nature, defining creator impact is harder in mainstream superhero comics than in most other media. The Winter Soldier is a striking character with unique design and narrative elements fashioned by the creative team behind 2004's Captain America #1, but he is also Bucky Barnes - a character created in 1941 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. But even that delineation is flawed, as Brubaker and Epting's vision of Bucky alters details about the character's past, recasting the original comics as the sanitized propaganda used to cover up the character's darker role in WWII, and their Captain America is not a simple reimagining of the original, but a version of the character shaped by decades of stories told by different creators.
But just because creative input is complex doesn't mean it's impossible to define. After all, Marvel and Disney aren't just adapting the original runs for these characters, but elements of the more modern comics that continue to be written. Characters, concepts, and even dialogue have moved from the comics to the movies - with Black Panther being no exception - often with creators not just going uncompensated for the wider application of their ideas, but being kept wholly in the dark about projects that take their work as a foundation or component part. The MCU doesn't stick strictly to comics canon, but it does depend on the prior work of an army of work-for-hire writers and artists whose compensation no longer reflects Marvel and Disney's ambition for their art. Hopefully, the comments of Ta-Nehisi Coates and others can be part of challenging that increasingly unjust status quo.
Source: Polygon
