Spider-Man 2099 Co-Creator And Legendary HULK And X-FACTOR Writer Peter David Has Died, Aged 68

@vectorsigma - You can't really have a union for something like that because they're not actually owed any money from Marvel Studios or DC Studios. They're only owed the money for the work they do for the comics and are paid in full for that.

@ObserverIO - I think if you created a character during a run that is adapted to film you damn well deserve a piece of the profits. That’s your character. Yeah it was created for a company and such and I’m not saying they deserve full profit but a decent percentage? Come on. You’re telling me you don’t think Jim Starlin deserves adequate compensation for Thanos, who is on par with Darth Vader. In terms of sheer recognizability?

@fanboy03191 - Deserves? Sure, but as a matter of honor not as a mater of law.

Starlin created the Thanos character for a story he was writing in Iron Man and expanded that character in Silver Surfer leading to the classic Infinity Gauntlet storyline that was adapted into Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
But when he wrote these stories he did not secure his rights as a creator of either the stories or the characters. Because he failed to do that he's not owed a single penny.

Essentially he created IP for Marvel. Marvel paid him for it and they profit from it.

Does Disney also owe Avi Arad and Ike Perlmutter for every Marvel thing they sell? No, because they bought the rights to Marvel and paid them.

Everyone has been paid for the IP somewhere down the line. It's just that Marvel Comics automatically retains the rights for any IP created while working for them. So if you work for Marvel you are complicit in this process.

You might think 'Well then why does anybody ever work for Marvel if it's so shitty in terms of creator's rights'? Well because it's Marvel. You get to play in the sandbox. Wouldn't you?
If there's an IP you want to retain the rights for, DON'T give it to Marvel for the price of a regular living paycheck.
Of course some things would probably need Marvel in order to exist in the first place I suppose.

I mean a classic example would be Todd McFarlane.
He doesn't own Venom but he does own Spawn.
Spawn was done for Image and he retained full creator's rights, as did all the Image founders for their own IP and all Image creators still do to this day (I'm sure there's outliers, Gaiman comes to mind for example).
But Venom was dine as part of a story in Spider-Man involving the alien costume. Todd didn't want to draw Spider-Man in the black costume he wanted to draw him in the classic red and blues. But they had him in this black costume from an alien planet so Todd wrote a story out of neccesity to get rid of the costume and Venom was born.
Now Todd didn't create Spider-Man, he didn't write Secret Wars or any of the stories in which the alien costume first appeared. He did create Eddie Brock and designed what Eddie looked like wearing the costume and called him Venom.

So basically a lot of these characters, Thanos included to some degree wouldn't exist unless they were done for Marvel using pre-existing characters, concepts and stories.

It just Marvel's practices and policies that suck. They need changing.

And yes I do think that a union of some sort is a good idea anyway @Pictilli, definitely and maybe putting pressure on Marvel Comics to change their archaic work-for-hire policies is something that a union could do. Maybe they already have a union, I don't know.

However until they change it, creators know what they're getting themselves into. They're adults, they're awake and conscious of what they're doing. And that's basically giving Marvel not only stories and art but also IP for a one-time payment.

@ObserverIO - there was an attempt to set up a 'creator's bill of rights' in the 1980s, but it never fully got off the ground.

@ObserverIO - indeed.

@ObserverIO - Yesss that's what I remember him for, mostly. Huge RIP.