Archie and the Lawyer Guys

Originally published June 9, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1386

The cast of “Friends” must be patting itself on its collective back at the moment. They just inked a deal (to use Variety speak) that will bring them in twenty million a piece for next season. Most impressive.

What are the writers getting, I wonder?

The cast is, after all, actors. They were fortunate enough to catch the lightning in a bottle that is this series, but the driving force remains the writing. The actors didn’t decide unilaterally that Chandler was going to propose to Monica; the writers chart the course, write the jokes, are the source of the show’s quality. The actors do a great job with what they’re given, of course, but if thousands of quality thespians can be found throughout the centuries to perform the Prince of Denmark, I’m sure that there’s any number of actors who could likewise bring life to Phoebe or Joey and do so quite capably (although, I dunno… Ross might be tough to replace.)

But if the writers demanded twenty million a piece, they would be laughed at and—I’d wager—dismissed without a second thought.

Just ask Marv Wolfman, suing for a piece of Blade. Or, more recently and even more abominably, just ask Dan DeCarlo.

Dan DeCarlo, the creator of Josie and the Pussy Cats, the co-creator of Sabrina, has just been fired from Archie comics after 43 years. Archie publisher Mike Silberkleit now gets to have a new claim to fame besides defending the creation of the censorious Comics Code of America—the organization which served to drive Bill Gaines out of the horror comic business. He heads up the publisher that has driven DeCarlo out of the Archie Comics business.

According to an interview with Beau Yarbrough of The Comic Wire, DeCarlo said, “I was going to bring my work in, and I was trying to sneak out,” whereupon Silberkleit handed him a letter that said, in essence, “You are no longer needed here. We’re terminating your services.” No gold watch. No pat on the back, or a thanks of appreciation for developing characters who have (presumably, unless their lawyers were lousy) brought tons of money into the Archie coffers through Saturday animation and Friday night live action.

DeCarlo, you see, wanted a taste of some of that money. The material developed in his brain, after all. His was the springboard, the notion that gave rise to it. Now of course, I’m not privy to his contract with Archie. Perhaps from a work-for-hire point of view, Archie is entirely in the right and DeCarlo hasn’t a leg to stand on. That is to be decided through the lawsuit that was spurred on by the live action Josie film slated for 2001 and starring Rachel Leigh Cook and Parker Posey.

But as the negotiations with the cast of Friends (and other notorious high-profile contract disputes) have made clear is that in the entertainment industry, contracts are not the be-all and end-all of negotiations. Work that brings success and remuneration is rewarded, contracts retooled… provided that the Big Boys feel that those asking for the “taste” of the money are worth making the effort over.

Which writers virtually never are. If corporations feel that one is interchangeable, that the contribution you have to make is something that others can just as easily do, there is no consideration given for whatever you as the writer (or artist) have brought to the package. The publishers, the producers, operate on high from the insulated, impersonal arrogance that the shield of a corporation provides. Marvel Comics and the movie producers don’t have to give Marv Wolfman a share of Blade, and so they don’t. Archie Comics apparently feels it doesn’t have to provide Dan DeCarlo any sort of money because there’s no financial or contractual obligation to do so. Archie Comics apparently feels it doesn’t have to provide Dan DeCarlo any true recognition of his contribution. Why should it? After all, anyone my age can hum the theme of Josie and the Pussycats… most everyone knows who Sabrina is… most people under the age of twenty-five know who Melissa John Hart is. But do a man-in-the-street interview and ask those same people whom Dan DeCarlo is, and you’ll get blank stares or people guessing he used to star on The Munsters.

The worth of the individual in terms of name recognition means something. The corporate money monkeys, if that person might be able to continue to provide something that the Big Boss wants, also recognize the worth of the individual. But the intrinsic worth of the work itself, the worth of the person himself, these do not fall onto the corporate radar. Movie producers, publishers, have lawyers on retainer. Might as well let slip the dogs of war at any given opportunity. Better to go into court, better to try and smash and obliterate whatever middle aged or senior citizens dare to cross swords with the big guns, then to give a few percentage points off the top to those creative individuals who provided the material generating the money to pay those selfsame lawyers.

And to think that Archie Comics had the gall—the unmitigated gall—to complain when Melissa Joan Hart posed in lingerie and gave a candid interview with Maxim. They felt it to be obscene. They demanded that she apologize. They demanded it in every media venue that would listen to them, because their moral outrage had been so piqued by an adult woman posing in skimpy underwear for a magazine that is neither aimed at, nor purchased by, the target audience of Sabrina.

The thing is, in this day and age with corporate insensitivity, one becomes almost used to it. We live in a society accustomed to impersonalization. Even as the world shrinks, the distance between us grows, with everything from voice mail replacing secretaries who answer the phone, to chat rooms or chat boards that encourage barbaric social behavior instead of social niceties. You get used to it because you develop a thick skin. You have to.

But hypocrisy is something I never get used to, never develop a taste for, never stand for. Archie Comics believes that the Hart layout was obscene? Well, you know what? I think that not only refusing to give DeCarlo a share of his indisputable creations, but to fire him after more than four decades of service, is a far greater obscenity.

Publishers, movie studios… they don’t respond to what’s right, or what’s wrong, what’s fair, or what’s just. They respond to two things, and two things only: Convenience… and shame. Yes, shame. Corporations can, on occasion, be shamed into doing the right thing, or at least trying to. Steranko did it with Marvel. Siegel and Schuster and, more on the point, the media, did it with DC in regards to Superman.

It brings to mind the first four bars of the Josie theme. If you remember it and can carry a tune, it strikes me it would work for us to modify that theme to serenade:

Archie and the Lawyer Guys

Have hearts the size of flies,

As sweet as spinach pies.

Guys who made you laugh—

Watch ’em get the Archie shaft.

Hurry, hurry—

 

Come see Dan DeCarlo work for years

Giving it his blood and sweat and tears!

He created Josie

And Sabrina.

Didn’t matter to the boss;

They just gave Dan the toss.

Hurry, hurry—

 

Archie and the Lawyer Guys,

Cheapskates who take the prize.

Let’s cut ’em down to size—

Archie and the Lawyer Guyyyyyyys

 (Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. And considering his track record lately, Archie will have turned around and done right by DeCarlo by this point, and made the above rant completely moot. Which means David gets to look like a schmuck. But he’ll take that risk.)