Friday Archive Dive: No Spec for You!

In light of the recent announcement by DC that it was shutting down Zuda, I've received permission to unlock this user-submitted piece about Spec Work from August 2009 that touched off a fascinating debate about Zuda Comics.

This post was kindly submitted by graphic designer Christopher Williams, who is currently working on The Variants.

Greetings webcartoonists! I come to you from the neighboring land of Web design. We've been neighbors for a long time. We've probably seen each other on occasion. I look at what you're up to with your little drawings and your game references, and you use my code and designs for your site. Just like neighbors!

And as a good neighbor, I want to warn you about some folks who've been approaching you about work. It might be work-for-hire, or for a new comic book, but whatever these folks are asking for is speculative work.

Let me explain. In Web design, we have clients. We also have agencies that seek clients on our behalf, but ultimately it's the clients we work with. Clients and artists usually work together to on a project and hopefully, if all goes well, a relationship is formed. Relationships are good. They lead to more work, and referrals.

Clients who ask for speculative work don't operate in this manner. Clients who ask for designs first are asking for speculative work. Contests are an example of speculative work. They may have all the right intentions, and are in some cases totally legit, but it isn't ethical.

Read the original piece and comment there.

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July To-Do List

It's July. Comic Con International is in three weeks. If you're going, it's time to triple check your prep, start getting ready to travel and brace yourself for the upcoming hurricane of comicky goodness.

Here's a To-Do List to keep you on track.

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Work for Hire

In the course of your work as a cartoonist, the chances are overwhelming that, sooner or later, you're going to hear "Work For Hire." It's a very good idea to understand it.

A work made for hire is an exception to the general rule that the creator of the work has legal rights as the author of that work. Under a Work for Hire contract, the employer -- not the creator -- owns all of the rights to the work. In other words, a Work for Hire contract establishes the employer as the rightful creator of the work.

So, obviously, any time you see a work-for-hire contract, you should run screaming into the woods, right?

Well...

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Creative Commons vs. Standard Copyright

Creative Commons is a licensing classification that allows creators to share some of their rights with others. Created by the Creative Commons nonprofit organization, it's billed as "a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to ...creative work. The Creative Commons licenses enable people to easily change their copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.”

So is this any better than a standard copyright?

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The Hot Seat - NPC & Stix and Bones

The Hot Seat is the first of a series of articles where I will be offering a critique of some of the comic strips created by webcomics.com members. The strips I'm reviewing were all offered up willingly by their creators with the full understanding that I would be pulling no punches and tearing these strips to shreds.

So let's begin...

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