Be Vigilant!
The Vigilant, the new one-shot collection from Rebellion, has a really great cover and this looks like an impressive revival of stories that were loved by the readers. But I think it’s regrettable if the original creators of these characters, or their estates, were not financially rewarded for their popular stories being rebooted. I doubt that is the case here.
A convenient excuse could be levelled that these stories are very old, so it’s okay for it to be open season on reviving them. But that’s not actually true. Many of these characters were appearing at the same time as John Wagner and myself were writing for Lion and Valiant, shortly before we moved onto Battle, Action and 2000AD.
I certainly would not like to see any of my 2000AD characters re-imagined or revived in the future, primarily because whenever it’s already happened, the replacement writers did not get it right and my stories died. I’m not the only writer who had this negative experience. I deleted my original sentence about how I felt about other writers taking over; there were just too many swear words. ‘Hungry hacks’ was one of my milder phrases. Very few replacement writers get it right. Judging by the readers’ thumbs down responses, the recent Hook Jaw revival is a case in point.
I discuss this in my first column for ComicScene UK (Issue #1 is out on 1 May), including talking about how this also applied to Dan Dare.
I think the fans’ ‘love for stories’, if it’s to have any real meaning, has to start with love for their creators. No amount of elegant spin about ‘homage’ changes this. It is meaningless if there is no financial reward for a creator’s work being revived.
A credit alone is not genuine respect.
In my case, money would help I guess, but I’d still actually prefer my characters to fade with me. This happens generally in the case of popular text novels and should apply to comics, too. That should be our right as creators. But it isn’t and therefore we are still in the Stone Age where comic publishing rights are concerned.
In fact, it would be practical and economically viable to pay the original creators of Vigilant. It would not kill the project stone dead to remunerate them or their estates. So I really hope this will be considered if Vigilant or similar ‘homage’ comics become ongoing.
Also, when people search for my book Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave! 2000AD and Judge Dredd: The Secret History on Amazon, it’s likely ‘Vigilant’ will appear in the search results. Of course it may work the other way, too. But which one came first? The best-selling book and an established and very popular phrase by myself, the creator. This may seem like a quibble, but keywords are actually crucial in the world of digital publishing. Was it coincidence they chose ‘Vigilant’? You decide.
In any event, we, as creators, should be ever vigilant in guarding our stories and their legacies and speaking out when lines are crossed.
The words of Torquemada should apply to writers, artists and editors as they forage through the back catalogue of a comic golden age.
Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!
I was wondering who exactly the comic is aimed at?
According to the narritive of modern British comics most of these characters were considered old fashioned by the time 2000ad,Action and Battle came along?
The only one I read as a child was Deathwish in Eagle when it absorbed Tiger in the Eighties.
I realise that Rebellion of course has to make profit off of it’s investment in the material it now owns, but still trying to sell nostalgia to people who never read the material originally beacuse thay were too young when it was created and then at the same time trying to also interest a new generation of readers (raised if anything on more visceral material) in characters that were considered out of vogue 40+ years ago seems to me a little ill considered.
I couldn’t agree more Pat!
The woeful excuses that are trotted out time and again regarding creators rights are now very tiresome and frankly outright insulting. I would hope that this would one day be reconciled given the partial improvement in creators pay at 2000ad since your book very much “put the cat amongst the pigeons” however I have as much faith in the corporate suits doing the right thing as I have in the national media representing the views of both sides of the political spectrum!
Keep on fighting Pat, and one day; hopefully in both our lifetimes enough people will be converted to the point where blog posts like this are a thing of the past.
The guy who took over from you , on Charley’s War – Scott Goodall proves your point –
I instantly knew it was a different writer , even if there was no credits at the bottom of the page –
it was just awful , and he also re-used some scenes from the First World War pages from Charley’s War
l also point out that the guys who took over from Rogue Trooper – never had the same calibre of writing
that Gerry Finlay-Day achieved – its clearly visible when you read the strips …
with the sole exception of Gordon Rennie , who has wrote a Comic Strip ‘ Jaegir ‘ from a different angle
( from the viewpoint of the Norts ) and a brand new Female Character –
I for one , don’t want another writer taking over a character that they didn’t create – it just doesn’t work