Merchandise art

[stealthwise]

Hey Mike, I had a question that I'm not sure you can answer (for legal reasons, personal, whatnot).

I saw a Fantastic Four rubber ball in Toys R Us the other day and it featured a picture of the team that was obviously your artwork. I was wondering if you get a cut of that merchandise, given that it's your artwork being used on it, or does Marvel just outright own those images that you provided for them under contract? Just curious. If you don't feel comfortable answering or can't for any reason, no big deal. I enjoy your work a lot.

[Mike Wieringo]

It has always been Marvel's policy not to pay royalties on the profits from merchandising created from their freelancers artwork. It's been their policy for as long as I can remember. I can't be 100% sure, but I don' think they've ever paid royalties on merchandising using freelancer created artwork. They used to provide several comps of whatever item (like t-shirts) was made from the artwork, but they ended that some time ago. Marvel also doesn't pay royalties for foreign reprints of material created for the Amercian market.

DC, on the other hand, pays foreign reprint royalties-- and as far as I know, still pays royalties on anything they use freelancer artwork for. I still get a small check from time to time for past work they've used on something or other. It's the one major difference in the two companies that DC is more generous (a relative term, to be sure) with sharing profits from re-used art.

[stealthwise]

Well, that's certainly unfortunate that you guys don't get paid more for the reproduction of your work. I mean, you didn't create the FF, no more than Bagley created Spider-Man, but I see so many of the popular images of the characters used to sell t-shirts, toys and the like.

Thanks for the answer!