Donny Cates And Ryan Stegman Throw Shade At Marvel Comics Over Reveal Of Venom: The Last Dance Using Knull And Not Paying Them
Marvel Comics doesn't pay creators much if anything for use of characters like Knull in Venom: The Last Dance, and Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman call them out.
Marvel Comics has a history of not paying creators for their creations, squeezing out as much as they possibly can for characters and designs stemming back to Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, with them and their heirs getting little to nothing for their efforts even as movies began to take off in the early 2000s. Now, Marvel’s announced Venom: The Last Dance and are using the character Knull created by Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman, but the creative team appears not to be getting paid much if anything.
The comic book industry is brutal. More than any other industry, it relies on contracts doing “work for hire,” which squeezes creators out of any potential royalties for new creations. This is a large part of why top creators often don’t make new characters or put much effort into them, which is why modern characters often feel half-baked or phoned in when it comes to working for Marvel or DC Comics.
Jack Kirby famously had to fight for his right to have his original art pages back. Marvel Comics was so bad in the 1980s. While he and Steve Ditko got some of their pages back, Ditko later complained that he only received about 1/3 of his work on Amazing Spider-Man. The company made an excuse that many were “lost” in the legal battle they faced over returning these pages.
Earlier this year, the Steve Ditko estate also sued Marvel for the artist’s creations, arguing that he had a right to ownership in characters like Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. Disney Marvel settled for an undisclosed amount.
Bad business practices haven’t changed much in the comic industry, however. Marvel Comics still owns all the characters for its content mill for the MCU and doesn’t give creators much in return.
This week, Sony dropped the trailer for Venom: The Last Dance, the newest Marvel movie in the franchise, revealing that the character Knull from Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman’s run would be featured as the villain. Both creators were not only shocked to find out their creation would be in a movie, having not been informed about it before the trailer dropped to the public, but they were also mocking Marvel’s theft of their work in angry posts on X implying through sarcasm that Marvel wouldn’t be paying them much if anything for their work.
Ryan Stegman posted to X, “Yes, I did co-create knull. No, I didn’t know until today that he was gonna be in Venom: The Last Dance. Yes, I do expect to finally be able to afford that lazy river moat around my house”
Donny Cates also posted a meme in a Venom logo font that said, “Money.”
It’s clear that neither creator is happy with how they’re treated regarding Marvel Comics' business practices with the movies. Other professionals at Marvel chimed in with similar sarcasm to Stegman’s post.
“Send me a picture when you install the giant blinking neon ‘FART ZONE’ sign atop stately Stegman manor,” Jed Mackay, current writer of X-Men, said.
“Marvel pays creators percentages for their creations across all media types now?! Woo! Get two moats!” Ryan Ottley, former artist of Amazing Spider-Man, replied.
It’s rumored that Marvel pays a paltry flat fee of $5,000 for using characters like Knull in movie form, a token payment that doesn’t do much to change the creators' lives for getting their work up on the big screen.
Regardless, it’s clear working for Marvel Comics does not pay. Disney and its subsidiaries will squeeze all the creative life out of characters and not give the creators their due.
What do you think of Ryan Stegman and Donny Cates’ comments on Venom: The Last Dance and not getting paid for Knull? Give a comment and let us know.
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I think the US comics industry is the only industry next to Hollyweird where people with talents are always signing up for projects with questionable pay, bizarre working terms, or worse they let themselves be strung along and then not raising a single roof to keep the roof over their heads with their talents. Meanwhile in France you had talents like Moebius always making sure he got paid for his work, which is why for a while after the 80's you barely saw most of his comics being published here because too many American comic companies where being massive stiffs on paying the talent. But when Frank Miller still keeps getting royalties, it's because he just went and asked for them. Whereas older silent generational artists/writers had a bizarre view of just working to death but not thinking about what their true worth is before signing the contract.
But it's the 21st century and one should always know what their true worth is before handing over rights or making IP for any corporation.