I Knew It Was Snake Before I Picked It Up.

After pursuing a career working for the big publishers in comics I had managed to get my toe in the door. So I had figured that with the door opened a bit I could force my foot in there and argue my case through that slim crack of opportunity. And that door had not only NOT opened a sliver more, it had been slammed in the old face and a barricade apparently erected on the other side to keep me out.

Alas.

I figured things couldn't possibly get any worse.

Soon, there was injury to be added to insult.

One thing the folk at Marvel had learned long ago was that you could reprint previously published

material in collected formats and sell them all over again. But it wasn't quite like the old days when they did that without paying the original creators. By the 1980s they paid for reprints, albeit at a lower rate. Also, they paid royalties if the sales of a particular book went over a certain number. I had received royalty payments for my HELLRAISER story that had appeared in issue #2 of the book. By the time my later stories appeared, in #5 and #6, the sales figures had apparently fallen below that threshold. I never did receive royalty payments on those.

Well, Marvel/Epic did begin to produce reprint editions of the HELLRAISER stories. My yarn, "Divers Hands" from issue #2 made it into the first volume of collected stories. Featuring my creation, the cenobite called Hunger. And I got a check for that story--at a reduced rate since it was a reprint. But I did get paid.

After banging the old noggin against the reinforced doors at Marvel and DC I continued to hold out hope that I could make some money by writing for the industry. Hardly a week went by when I wasn't working on some kind of pitch or script to try to break in once again. In the meantime I was continuing to make the bulk of my living as a dealer in new and collectible comics, heading off to conventions all over the US to do so. And one day I walked into the dealer's room at a comic convention and one of my colleagues was setting up shop. As I was looking at his offerings of new books I saw a stack of HELLRAISER titles I had never seen. These were hardback, apparently leatherbound limited editions. They were also sealed so that I couldn't see the contents, but I quickly discovered that at least one of the volumes (there were two different ones that day) had at least one story that I had written.

However, I had not received a dime in compensation. And I had not received even one contributor's copy. I was pissed, and I was also puzzled. So, when I got home I made calls to

Marvel until I got in touch with the fellow who was filling the shoes of the editor to whom I had originally sold.

"Hey," says I. "There's a hardcover HELLRAISER book out with my work and I haven't received any notice or any compensation. What's going on?"

"Oh. Those," said the editor. "Those aren't books."

"What? What do you mean 'they're not books'?"

"Those are merchandise. As merchandise, the only ones who receive payment would be Mr. Barker and New Line Cinema."

Silence from me.

"So, I'm busy," says the new editor. "Anything else I can help you with?"

Click.

Well, I reckon this is what I should have expected. As I said, it wasn't as if I wasn't warned. And it wasn't as if I didn't know the history of Marvel and DC. If they can rip off guys like Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, then why would they hesitate for one second to rip off a bunch of minor authors writing Hellraiser stories for a title they knew would run its course in quick order and soon be defunct?

You see, I was blind to all that. Basically, what I wanted to do was write superhero stories based on characters created by men who had largely been raped and robbed by Marvel Comics. What the Hell was I thinking? In fact, though, I hadn't been thinking, at all. The only thing that I wanted was to write for a living, working for the very company that ripped off its creators and celebrated the men who did the thieving. I hadn't paused one goddamned second to think of the victimization of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

Not long after this, brooding on the whole, sorry situation, I walked away from comics. Although I had only very briefly and very peripherally worked in comics as a writer, I had experienced mainly nothing but the negative side of things. In the small presses, (except for Steve Bissette's TABOO), I had encountered publishers who paid late, or failed to pay at all, or lied to keep from paying me for work I had done for them. Among the larger publishers I had encountered the Big Professional Circle Jerk that blocked almost everyone not working in the publisher's offices. When I had happened upon those very few editors who were willing to look at outside work (Dan Chichester, Stuart Moore, etc.), those fellows were removed or chose to go on to other things, leaving me without an objective contact.

In the years since, I have worked from time to time in the small press. The experiences there have not been good, either. One publisher made quite a profit on one book I wrote (and which was penciled and inked by friends of mine), but never paid any of us for the work, claiming that the issue lost money (an obvious lie considering the book's sales). Eventually I even stopped submitting to the independent presses, finding them to be nothing more than smaller versions of the liars and thieves at the big publishing houses.

It was a hard lesson. But in a way I had asked for it. All during this time Jack Kirby was struggling to get his hands on the thousands of pages of original artwork that was in the possession of the company that had stolen so much of his intellectual property. These monsters were holding that art as ransom unless he would further sign away all rights that he had to his creations. This company who did these things to the likes of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko--the men who had created the freaking company in the first place--and I was trying to work for them?! To create for them? To pour my time and sweat and ingenuity into their bank accounts?

I got what I bloody well deserved, I reckon. In the years since the HELLRAISER franchise was cancelled at Marvel, at least some of my work for that title has since been reprinted by an outfit called Checker Books, for which I received no payment at all. In addition, I suspect that I have had my work reprinted by the new publisher of the HELLRAISER business, BOOM! Studios, and apparently they aren't legally obligated to pay me, either.

One thing, though. When I compared notes with others who had created stuff for HELLRAISER--those guys had signed contracts. Somewhere along the line, corporate Marvel must have gotten their wires crossed. I never received any contracts. Not once. They paid me, sure. But I never got a contract.

If that someday came up to bite them like a gnat, I wouldn't be disappointed.

It Wasn't As If I Wasn't Warned.

Around the time that I was selling the stories to Marvel, I was asked to submit a pitch to a gaming company that was doing role-playing games that would be combined with comic books. This actually sounded like a lot of fun to me because I had been involved for a time participating in and studying role-playing games and I figured the two would be a good fit. So I submitted a pitch.

The editor was a well-known comics writer who had landed the gig of editing for this new enterprise. If my memory serves me, that would have been Steven Grant. (Again, so much water has passed under the bridge since that it might have been someone else...but that's the name that is foremost in my mind. I have exchanged email with Grant about this--and he says that he indeed worked with TSR-West, but as a creative director and not editor.)

Portrait of the author as a young man (taken around the time this stuff was happening).

I pitched a Lovecraftian work that I called "Void's Herald". The editor (whomever he was) liked what he saw and asked for a script. So, I got to work on that and wrote a script for the first installment which was approved. Contracts were drawn up and I was waiting for delivery. The pay rate for this one would have been $20,000 for me. That might not sound like a ton of money, but it was 2/3 of what I was making at my regular job at the time (operating comic book shops), so to me it was a lot of money. I figured it would get me closer to my goal of being able to go full-time as a writer.

Then, one day as I was working on the project, the phone rang. It was the editor. He told me that the editing biz was not for him and that he'd turned in his resignation. But that I shouldn't  worry because my contract was on his desk and the new editor would be sending it right out.

One thing that I definitely do recall is that the new guy in charge was Roger Slifer. He never did send that contract. I finally got in touch with him (after some difficulty) and he told me that he was not going to go with the script and pitch and that I was not going to receive the contract. I asked for a kill fee for the time and effort that I'd put into the project, and he told me he'd look into it, but that never happened either. And, of course, this is where I first learned about the world of the professional circle-jerk:

These are the cliques of writers and editors who routinely passed work from one to the other, keeping the game a closed system. This was a particularly severe problem at Marvel. It was hard to make a decent living just being an editor at some of these firms (including Marvel) so the editors (almost all of whom were either writers or hoped to be writers) passed gigs among one another to generate more income. Because of this, it was extremely difficult to break in at places like Marvel--due to the editorial circle-jerk being played there. I had been fortunate in meeting Dan Chichester, who was actively looking outside the New York area for writing talent for HELLRAISER. I was about to get a sick lesson in this situation.

Soon, Slifer had handed off the writing jobs to established professionals with whom he'd worked before. The circle-jerk was on. I was out.

Shortly after this, Dan Chichester called to let me know that he, too, was giving up the editorial gig at Marvel. But he assured me that the pitches I'd made for more HELLRAISER yarns were in the new editor's hands and he was sure things would be okay.

They were not.

The new editor never responded to my pitches. The later jobs seemed to be going in-house, and I stopped paying attention.

In the meantime, I had also made a number of pitches to both Marvel and DC and Harris Publications on several established titles. JONAH HEX, SWAMP THING, VAMPIRELLA. I came close with HEX, but the editor with whom I'd been speaking was cut loose and I found myself talking to a stranger again, who was not interested in talking to a writer who was farther away than the next cubicle.

A good opportunity did arise when I was offered a shot at writing the comic book adaptation of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. I spoke with the editor and expressed interest and enthusiasm (I'd genuinely enjoyed the novel when it first appeared). So I wrote up a pitch which was accepted. I then began the process of breaking the novel down into sections to be scripted and was in the midst of that when I opened a trade journal one day to see an ad for the upcoming title...which was being scripted by someone not named James Robert Smith. I tried to get in touch with the editor to ask what had happened...but the calls were never returned.

As you can see...Things were not going well.

Along the way I was trying to keep my hand in wherever I could, and sold scripts here and there to other small publishers. Scripts were still being produced and I was still making a little money from the form. But it looked as if the dream of working full-time as a writer was just not going to happen.

And, of course, Stephen Bissette had warned me all along about the comic book industry. I had been told about the way things were run, and the way companies treated their creators. Yes, it didn't matter how bitterly men like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko had been treated, there was always new talent ready to leap for the chance to work on the things that had been stolen from those men. I knew this because...Hell! I was one of those guys! There was nothing I wanted more in those days than to write stories based on the creations of Jack Kirby!

And it was about this time that I got a rude lesson in what corporations can do to creators. Even minor ones such as myself.

Continued tomorrow...

The 9th and final issue of TABOO. Edited by Stephen R. Bissette and published by Denis Kitchen. This issue contains my story "The New Ecology of Death" which is the basis for my next novel (appearing soon) of the same title. Steve Bissette is the only person with whom I worked in my time in comics who had any sense of decency at all. Publishing in general is a tough business, but the comics industry is a cesspool of liars and thieves. To have worked with Stephen Bissette was a great pleasure and a genuine stroke of luck. The rest of them were, basically, criminals.