But at least Starlin could afford a ticket. Artist Joe Shuster couldn't afford to see the Superman musical, even though he invented the guy. Warner Bros. only started giving Shuster and his friend/co-creator/fellow poor person Jerry Siegel money when the first Superman movie came out, after they tried to raise a stink about it. That was back in the '70s, but things haven't changed that much. Gerry Conway wrote the famous girlfriend-killing issues of Spider-Man that were adapted into 2014's Amazing Spider-Man 2, but he had to campaign on Twitter to get invited to the premiere (every possible joke about how they were doing him a favor by not inviting him has already been made, sorry).
Then there's the sad tale of Bill Mantlo, the writer responsible for the fact that the MCU has a talking space raccoon in it, thus accounting for 83% of its coolness. Unfortunately, Mantlo was left with brain damage after a hit-and-run accident and his brother had to wreck his finances to keep him alive. Marvel Studios began helping them out when the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie came out, but by 2019, the Mantlos had been forced to turn to GoFundMe to survive. Again, Marvel stepped up, but let's not kid ourselves -- like with Starlin and the rest, none of this would have happened if someone hadn't gone to the media and made the big corporate giant look like a giant cheapskate.
It sure looks like the studios are only willing to share some of the obscene amounts of money that these movies make with comic creators if they are shamed into doing so. But it can't be that simple, right? What do the contracts say about this stuff? Less than you might think, it turns out ...
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