In Defense of Platinum Studios
**Edit** - Looks like Platinum fixed this problem immediately, but as predicted, you’ll still have the snide comments from people who just want to hate on Platinum. The good side to this story??? ALIEN CIRCUS looks like a fantastic piece of cartooning work to me. If i were a publisher I’d get this out to a child’s book market, pronto. Might even be something I’ll get my kids to read. Weber’s cartooning is totally fresh.
Soooo… it’s gonna be one of THOSE days, eh??
Platinum should probably just put me on the payroll as an official cheerleader or unofficial corporate blogger for them, but really, it annoys me to see them overly criticized over small, tiny things. I mean, a place like the Comics Journal can’t even link to a positive article on Publishers Weekly or the NY Times about them without a negative comment. But now Platinum is being accused of not giving creator credit, etc. Which, currently as it stands is technically true, but a very simple common sense look at what’s up would make this a non-news… here’s how the latest bruhaha has gone down, and of course my glowing opinion.
Dave Roman, who is a great creator and nice guy worked and obviously signed contracts with Platinum years ago to develop a great looking book called Alien Circus. He just posted on his LiveJournal about his surprise that pages were running on line at Drunk Duck, and he was a little let down that creator credit isn’t given. Was he outraged? No, he just seemed curious and a bit let down to me. My first thought is, did he call up anyone at Platinum or e-mail and ask what was up? Because it surely seemed odd to me, and nothing Platinum was doing or would do on purpose. Here’s probably the common sense answer that someone at Platinum will give about this— It was pretty clear to me, knowing how Drunk Duck works, that Platinum has been slowly tweeking Drunk Duck and setting up things behind the scenes, including MANY other comics they’ve developed over the years. If you simply check out the USER profile of PSComics on Drunk Duck, you find several other comics in different stages of running there. see here: http://user.drunkduck.com/PSComics - Now in Alien Circus and a few other comic’s cases, they are using the basic user template layout on Drunk Duck that has no bells and whistles. But if you see other comics like Blood Nation, Hero By Night, Cowboys and Aliens, etc etc… you can clearly see that not only is their clear creator credit, but they each have unique site designs and tweeked Drunk Duck templates. It just seemed common sense to me that Platinum is slowly putting other comics in place and uploading some pages and they’ll get around to possible site tweeks on these projects as they go or have time or priority levels. Even in looking at Roman’s post, you see he links to the other name Platinum gave this project, “The Adventures of Tymm” and they had a previous URL for it, where clearly both creators names are given on that site. This alone shows there is no intention of stripping creator credit from the project.
But instead, people of course have sounded the alarms, linked to Dave Roman’s post and taken the headlines that Platinum doesn’t give creator credit and the usual unwarranted criticisms. And links skip around to where you have people writing clever headlines like “Platinum? Maybe fool’s gold?” and then from there idiots like Joey Manley, who has been a long critic of Platinum Studios, of course link it. And then you get actual places I respect like THE BEAT linking it too, all along it’s a snowball effect where people add more to the non-story…. suddenly Dave Roman being let down about this project not seeing the light of day and wondering why name credit wasn’t given, has been turned into something else entirely– and of course, Platinum is given no time to respond, or they probably weren’t even aware of any of this at all.
I take some issue with Heidi’s BEAT post here. At the end she say she took a quick look at other comics on Drunk Duck with no credit.. She must have missed the ones I linked to or the ones under Platinum’s user account there that I linked prior here. Just as I’ve taken Dirk Dippey to task in the past, I would only ask “online journalist” to actually DO some journalism before smearing negative crap around or blowing something up into more than it is.
So what will happen now? Well, hopefully someone at Platinum would explain, they’ll correct the error by putting the creator names on the sites that look like a work in progress, just like they’ve credited everything thing else in print, and the majority of the webcomics there. And of course, Joey Manley will make a great stunning post about how he predicted that they would “rush” to fix the oversight. (damn, I promised I wouldn’t mention that guy this year on this blog! Hey, it’s mid-may, that’s not too shabby, right??) And of course, we’ll open the Journalista’s virtual pages tomorrow to find a scathing link or three to how evil Platinum is. And once again, none of it can be farther from the truth. Maybe I’m so defensive of Platinum, because I’m an independent creator and they’ve treated me so well, and they’ve treated other creators I know very well, and beyond treating us well, they’re really nice and professional people.
In closing… SIGH. Stupid internet.
Oh, and read Hero By Night!
May 16th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Also, I just wanted to add that it took me like 2 minutes to do the “research” of Platinum giving creator credit.
Hey, at least this gives exposure to a great looking project that I’m sure Platinum was planning to do something with here soon.
Sigh… back to the drawing board for me.
May 16th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Platinum gives SOME creators credit.
They should give ALL credit
Period.
May 16th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Did you maybe try emailing Platinum about this? I mean, clearly if it were their intention to NOT credit Roman and Weber, if you followed your own links in your article, you’d end up at the Adventure of Tymm website where they are clearly credited– that’s my damn point. According to Roman, they changed the name again, looks like they need to re-do the cover that has the credits on it for web publishing with the new logo.
But of course, anything for some drama and to claim foul of Platinum.
May 16th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
I really don’t think Platinum is intentionally stiffing its creators. I do believe, however, that the Drunk Duck site is clunky as all hell and really needs an overhaul.
Disclaimer: I work for Platinum, and publish a webcomic for them on DD. So I’m speaking from experience here.
In closing, I’ll simplify things:
Platinum = cool place to work.
Drunk Duck = backend still needs a shit-ton of work.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
“Platinum should probably just put me on the payroll as an official cheerleader or unofficial corporate blogger for them”
Your preaching to the choir man. I think anytime I see someone working this damn hard for a group they should get paid.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Hah, I’d welcome it! Come to think of it, if i were an official Platinum employee I could probably have access to a good health insurance plan! Heh.
They treat me right– I just hate it when idiots drag them through the mud for something so tiny like this. That Heidi McDonald should rethink what she posted about WFH contracts and relating them to what she did… i think it was pretty inflammatory, not just to Platinum, but other big companies that use WFH like Marvel and DC, etc.
May 16th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
I won’t change my position on WFH for original creations.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done WFH, I’ve hired people for WFH, and I know the economics of it and why it is done, and who does it why and where. But anyone who sells their OWN creation these days…well maybe they deserve what they get
I’m not saying Platinum was guilty of any skullduggery. Dave knew what he was getting into, and so did everyone I know who signed one of these contracts. I’m just saying I will never forget Jack Kirby. There has been a long hard battle in comics to get away from WFH, with many tragic stories along the way.
May 17th, 2007 at 12:35 am
WFH contracts…you gotta think about those things on a case-by-case basis, you know?
I mean, I’m in a WFH situation with the KISS Webcomic, but c’mon…it’s their stuff anyway. I really don’t mind.
There are some things of my own that I’d do in a WFH contract with no problem, because they’re disposable to me. However, there are other projects I have on the back burner that I would never sign over copyrights to.
No WFH almost always means less pay. Sometimes it isn’t worth the pay cut; sometimes it is. *shrug* Simple as that.
May 17th, 2007 at 1:07 am
writing KISS is definitely WFH. You didn’t invent KISS! Of course, licensed work is normally WFH. Just remember, generally, WFH = MORE pay not less.
May 17th, 2007 at 1:20 am
Well, not all WFH deals are bad when it comes to creating original content, in fact Platinum’s is quite good. Perhaps it’s on a case by case basis– but I know with Hero By Night, I have two contracts with that, one is WFH, and one is a royalty and rights sort of deal, attaching me to just about anything under the sun that they’d do with it. So, in come cases it can be a big win win for creators. I guess it all depends on your idea or individual project.
It really rubbed me the wrong way to have WFH compared to sharing needles with AIDS patients, that seemed highly inflammatory to me, if not a little bit insulting.
May 17th, 2007 at 2:35 am
I must not have made myself clear.
Work For Hire Contract = more pay, while
No Work For Hire Contract = less pay, but you keep your copyrights.
I’ve been doing comics and illustration for 15-odd years at this point, and I’ve only had a handful of WFH contracts. None of these contracts made me feel terrible afterwards.
Then again, I’ve never worked for Marvel, either.