Clifford Meth has posted an interview with Marv Wolfman at his blog, Everyone's Wrong and I'm Right, wherein Marv discusses his fallout with Marvel Comics, following his 1997 litigation against the publisher over royalties and intellectual property rights to Blade.

In an early letter to them, I had originally asked only for the same percentages DC routinely gives its creators, and frankly the same one Marvel does for its creators (since 1978 or so) but very late one night I was called by one of their company Presidents (I think from Marvel Studios) and was told that if I wanted to get anything from them I'd have to—in his words—"Sue us." That completely threw me. There had been nothing in any of my correspondence to that time that even hinted of that thought.

Marv went on to file a lawsuit against Marvel but the struggle did not bring about a change in the status of the character, nor did it provide him with any benefits from film and television licensing that Marvel has profited from, through using a character that Marv Wolfman had himself created.

Without mentioning names, I had heard stories that one of the people responsible for many of their characters found it impossible to go into Toys 'R Us because he'd see characters he created that he never saw a penny from, and I was determined, win or lose, I would not let that happen to me.

I didn't want this to be a legal case but that exec made it clear the company wouldn't give the same deal they were already giving others and the situation unfortunately escalated. I wish it never happened, as it certainly hurt professionally and financially, but that exec made it clear suing them was the only thing I could do.

The tone of the interview is conciliatory, even to the degree of Marv proposing that he may not have been ready then, as a comics writer, for the position of Editor In Chief of Marvel in the mid 1970's, which demanded a full time business orientation that he wasn't prepared for.

I loved being EiC at Marvel (and later senior editor at DC and at Disney Adventures magazine) when it was a creative post. We were able to do comics we wanted to read. Comics that tried to preserve what was great about the company while pushing it forward at the same time. We were also attempting to "grow up" our stories as the age of our readers got older as well. Unfortunately, at that time Marvel was sold to a company called Cadence, and I have to say that company wasn't quite the best. My job slowly became far too business and much less creative, and Cadence kept trying to find ways to make things cheaper and worse. I was in my mid-20s at the time and really didn't know how to fight them, wasn't good at politics, and awful at business. I'd like to think I'd be a lot better now.

Notwithstanding the perpetual injustice since the inception of the comics industry regarding creators' rights and the one-sided profit-sharing mechanism of a business model which oppresses those who contribute the raw materials to its financial success, it is an admirable and graceful position that Marv Wolfman takes in this interview. In the absence of a guild or union for comics creators, the present situation leaves writers and artists extremely compromised. Creators are left with little choice of measures to improve their lot with publishers and corporate marketeers, who stride the yellow-brick road to enormous financial gain from creations such as Marv and countless others have given the comics industry and modern pop-culture.

But we continue to hope for better days...

Meanwhile, Marvel excelsior supreme, Stan Lee, stopped by Clifford Meth's blog to comment on the interview.

Interesting interview with Marv W, Cliff. Handled very tastefully.

Stan himself has come under fire in the past on this issue, having been representative of Marvel Comics business policy with its creators. Criticism was especially notable during the struggle which his partner in Marvel property creations, the late great Jack Kirby, waged for the return of his original artwork during the 1980's. It's been said that having been in a position to change the tides on creator issues, Stan Lee might not have pursued such a course with enough rigor, especially considering that he himself remains of the first and more seminal comics creators in the history of the industry.

While this side of the coin might be argued with some measure of scrutiny, exercising a minimal degree of intellectual honesty places a far greater burden for this calamity on the creators' community itself. Several attempts to form a union of comics writers and artists have repeatedly encountered the staunchest opposition from the creators themselves. The effort made for forming a guild in the late 1970's, which I was an active contributor to, faced its greatest criticism, not from DC or Marvel Comics, but rather from comics creators, overly apprehensive about lending their names to it for fear of repercussion from the publishers. during all these attempts, the number of writers and artists willing to sign on was never enough to enable the formation of the first union of comics creators.

As irony would have it, most of the creators who were reluctant to support a guild then, have now been entirely shut out from any work at the major publishers, who consider the wealth of talent and experience they offer the medium, as being of little value to contemporary editorial policy.

But we continue to hope for better days... and again look for ways to turn this hope into a tangible course of constructive action.

In the spirit of grace and goodwill which Stan Lee bestowed on the interview with Marv Wolfman, he also offered a few nice words about the drawing of Marv I'd produced as part of Portraits of the Creators sketchbook, which Clifford used in his blog entry, and also appears at the top of this article.

But I never saw that drawing of Marv before. It's really great.

And so in the same spirit of goodwill and grace, we can now take this opportunity to also mend any damaged bridges between Stan Lee and the comics creators, putting past trepidations aside and welcoming the man of many Marvels into Portraits of the Creators sketchbook.

Thank you, Stan, for the kind words, good spirit, and the fabulous treasures you've given to the Superhero mythology.

Stan Lee.

Portraits of the Creators.