The Meat Grinder
by Joey Manley
A friend of mine, an established comics professional, once said to me, “You know, if you work in a place where they want you to put your arm in a meat grinder, but they don’t really tell you it’s a meat grinder, you might be forgiven for being stupid enough to actually do it — if you hadn’t seen what happened to all the people in line in front of you. Who stuck their arms in the meat grinder. And if those same poor fools in front of you hadn’t screamed a warning, as they were carried away on stretchers, to not do what they just did. You see, there’s stupid, and then there’s willfully stupid. And maybe willfully stupid people deserve what they get. You’re bleeding from the stump sticking out of your shoulder now? Oh. So sad.”
She didn’t use those exact words, but that was the metaphor, and those were the sentiments.
I don’t know if Mike Strang deserved what he got or not. But I do know he’s warning you not to do what he did. Maybe some of those who won’t listen to me, because they think I’ve got some kind of weird personal thing going on with Platinum Studios (I don’t) will listen to him. He’s been there. He’s done that.
Or maybe they won’t listen at all.
Oh. So sad.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:37 am
[...] A cautionary tale: Mike Strang discusses his disillusionment after being kicked off of a project he’d created under a work-for-hire contract for Platinum Studios. Related: Joey Manley offers commentary. [...]
June 19th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Well, he seems to have been soundly torn apart for the usual reasons by the usual people.
And that’s why comics are a gloriously wonderful place with nothing wrong about it…
June 19th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
The saddest part of the story is that it will happen again. There will always be people so desperate to get published they won’t believe the meat grinder will get them – even as they are sticking their whole arm in and watching it disappear. And not just in comics. Things can turn ugly in a hurry when art and business meet in any medium.
When you sell someone your story it is now theirs. Their obligation to care about what you want is over. No matter who the publisher is. This is the part no one seems to believe.
June 19th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Mike Strang here. I’d like to thank you for picking up on my blog. Believe me, it’s caused a stir! The meat grinder analogy was dead on. Weird Adventures In Unemplyment was the first comic I ever wrote and only the second submission I sent out. I was completely ignorant to the business. Never met anybody in it either at that point. I hope my blog has warned at a few people to look before they leap.
June 20th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
The Platinum deal seems a lot like the old CrossGen “creator owned” thingie where, if CrossGen wasn’t satisfied, they could remove a creator from his/her own project. And they got a BIG percentage of the project rights. And what is it nowadays with indy publishers asking for a percentage of ownership of the projects they publish. More and more as Monique and I look for a publisher for the completed GAAK graphic novel we’re hearing from publishers that they want 45-50% ownership of our book on top of publishing. I mean, what the hell?! Dee