The reason why Rick Veitch's stories aren't being collected by IDW
 

In the IDW Q&A thread Bobby Curnow mentioned that a deal could not be reached with Rick Veitch to reprint his Mirage Vol. 1 stories. I reached out to Rick to find out why and here's what he sent me back.

I guess that's where we come in. Bobby has repeatedly said that he's not in charge of the reprints, and that emailing [email protected] is our best chance to get things changed. I think though, that this is more a Viacom issue. I may be in the minority here, but I am really going to miss not having a complete reprinting of the Mirage books. I know the TMNT community has some power, would this be something we could affect?

Seems odd to me. He doesn't own the Turtles and with the exception of Bloodsucker why does he want to hold into the rights?

Well, in the event that Viacom uses the stories he wrote to make money, if he hands over all of the rights to those stories he gets none of the money Viacom makes on them.

Let's say Viacom decides to turn "The River" into a movie (unlikely, I know) and it makes $200 million. Rick would get nothing if he sold his writes for this collection.

Maybe they could work out a deal similar to the one they have with Dave Sim regarding the issue featuring Cerebus, whereby Veitch could still own Bloodsucker and other characters he created, so he would still get royalties off of reprints and they couldn't adapt the story without his permission?

This is a real bummer.

The fact that it's a Viacom roadblock basically means there's nothing anyone can do. I'm pretty sure Viacom doesn't open dialogues with fans as intimately as the guys at IDW. There's really no one we can talk to about it but a brick wall.

A shame that there's a wealth of great material that's in demand, but corporate greed is keeping it from ever seeing the light of day again. Veitch and IDW are perfectly willing to come to a reasonable agreement regarding reprint royalties, but Viacom is taking a firm "if we can't have it, no one can" attitude.

Not that Laird and Mirage were any better, as they basically gave Veitch the same runaround with their mandatory retroactive work-for-hire contracts and were willing to keep Veitch's work out of print for 20 years.

Just an all-around frustrating situation; that a creator has to just sit on his own work because he won't sign it over to a corporation.

Viacom has deep enough pockets that they could print the material and settle out later.

Going back to the original agreement though makes me wonder if there's some sort of "eminent domain" type loophole Viacom could enforce should they decide to go that route.

Probably. But they'd likely not want to risk the small chance of a thing costing them millions in court vs. the quantifiable but otherwise meek gains of actually just forging ahead and letting IDW publish the thing and it selling 10,000 copies.

Yeah, you've got to realize that it's only in-demand for those of us that have already read or read about it. I love Veitch's books but I bet you anything there's almost nobody outside of TMNT boards that even know who Bloodsucker is, let alone the rest of the characters he introduced.

This also, as mentioned, kept his stuff from being reprinted with Mirage, and is also why his characters weren't being included in Tristan's unreleased sourcebook.

true. but...the River story would make for an awesome movie or series of movies depending how its made. if done right, that alone could make them millions.

Actually, "The River" is one of the few Turtle stories the broader comic audience recalls and enjoyed. The owner at my LCS even asked me when that specific story would be reprinted, and otherwise he's as clueless as most other general comic fans in regards to the Turtles.

More or less. You have to consider that those comics he did for Mirage contain characters he doesn't own. It's not really "his own work", it never was.

Sure, he didn't create the main protagonists, but The River contains some pretty important character moments that are most certainly part of the Vol 1 Mythology.

He should be compensated for those contributions.

Seems more like Veitch is just being petty. He knew he was writing for an established comic book franchise rather than his own series.

Its been what...over 20 years since his issues were originally published? Guy needs to let go and get over it.

That's really neither here nor there. "The River" as a trade is going to sell probably about the same number of copies as the trade before it, and the trade after it.

"The River" would be a neat second movie to a rebooted TMNT movie franchise not overly mired in toys or awkward Fred Wolf nostalgia (though they'd probably have to amp up the threat of Bloodsucker... I'm not sure just Bloodsucker and Old Man River alone make for enough "action on the screen" for a feature film, though perhaps if Bloodsucker had progeny wreaking havoc on the townsfolk too). In other words, it wouldn't be happening in our lifetimes.

I'm not sure those issues are SO important. However, he obviously didn't write and draw those stories for free, he got paid for that back then. He has ALREADY been compensated.

Maybe he's a Veitch fan? He built up quite the fanbase when he worked on Swamp Thing and a few other things. IDK. All I know is nobody I know outside of the most involved Turtle fans know of the story (or even most of Mirage).

This just makes me glad I own the single issues. They shouldn't be impossible to track down for anyone interested, and are most definitely worth it, in my humble opinion. I'll definitely pick up a collected version if it ends up being released down the line. Re-colored with a hardcover, would be an unlikely dream come true.

I'll never forget the uneasy feeling "The River" gave me as a child, which later grew into an intense love. There is something about this story that feels so serene, yet horrifying at the same time.

Veitch agreed to a 50/50 split of future revenue, which means there's no past-tense for his level of compensation.

I say good for him to sticking to his guns. Comics, as an industry, has a long ugly tradition of dicking around creators and artists when it comes to rights and compensation.

Mirage was very supportive of creator rights, and yes, when writing for an established comic book franchise, it gets a little sticky. However, in this instance, he is not just talking about getting paid for the reprinting of these issues, but the rights to anything that may come about it. For many, it may just be about principle. If something were to be taken from his contributions, however unlikely, such as the villain or story he created, and saw it used in something else like the comics, movies, or whatnot, and he wouldn't get a dime or even the recognition for it. It's a bit narrow-minded to call someone petty for this if you know what it's like to create something and later on get nothing for it while others profit.

Here's a silly question: Could this explain Wyrm, who is in essence a cheap knock off of Bloodsucker?

I half-heartedly joked about that the other day on TMNT Entity.

In all likelihood it's probably just happenstance. Veitch made a mutant leech character in August of 89, then Ryan Brown/Steve Lavigne/Steve Murphy come up with their own mutant leech character in May of 90 (the Playmates toy came out in 91). I guess there are only so many ways you can do a leech mutant. The only trait the two characters share that I found a little too coincidental was the power to be chopped up/blown apart and still be able to reform themselves.

The River trade paperback collection was published by Mirage in July 1991, a year after Wyrm had been created, and obviously before the retroactive work-for-hire contract was issued to Veitch. So looking at the dates, it wouldn't seem that Wyrm was created as a retaliatory "knock off" to cheat Veitch out of royalties for Bloodsucker.

Just two coincidentally similar leech mutants. Still, if anyone ever wanted to USE Bloodsucker in a contemporary piece of TMNT media, they could easily just use Wyrm and make him Bloodsucker in all but the name, as Wyrm's mostly a blank slate in terms of characterization.

^It wasn't until 1992 that Mirage made TMNT comic creators sign retroactive work-for-hire deals, and Wyrm first appeared two prior, in TMNT Adventures #10 in 1990, so I doubt it.

They were creating a lot of "bug" type mutants at the time, like Scumbug, Antrax, etc....Wyrm being a mutant leech was probably just a coincidence.

I've wondered that myself. I tend to think so, yeah.

I thankfully bought the original Vol. 1 so whatever happens - I'm good.

But I would love for a new generation to get into 'The River' as it's a pretty good story.

Also, nothing Rick did hasn't been rehashed before, so if he's worried about not being part of a movie deal, they could do the whole River story without him.

Mikey (instead of Raph) demutated in Year of the Turtle (and all of them except Mikey were suppose to demutate in the sequel to the 2007 movie) and Bloodsucker is exactly like Wyrm from the Archie Comics.
In fact, I'm pretty sure Wyrm is THE Archie counterpart of Bloodsucker.

I understand Veitch 100%, but I do hope that he gives in to the evil corporation simply so the fans can win while he loses.

Also the color scheme. They have similar black dots on them and (I don't remember where I'm getting this information) were both yellow(?)
Maybe that's just a common leech in North America...

Sorru, is the river when raph gets unmutated by bloodsucker?

Well, Wyrm was yellow in the Archie comic but his Playmates toy and Mighty Mutanimals animation model (and toy commercial animation model) were blue.

I don't think we know for sure what color Bloodsucker was. The River was never colorized and he doesn't appear on any of the covers to give an indication.

I must have dreamt the story in color back in the day or saw a fan colored version... or something.

But I always felt it was the same character (or an Archie version of the character). Maybe it's all just a coincidence though.

I kind of always assumed he was leech colored.

He should be a brownish yellow.

i hope Veitch sticks to his guns on this. more power to him. plastroncafe's got it right, anything less is bullsh*t. i'm sick of seeing fans (and even fellow creators) taking the sides of corporations over the people who actually do the work.

regarding Wyrm, i always thought he was a planarian flatworm, not a leech...

Yeah, he's a flatworm.

http://www.aecos.com/CPIE/flatworm.jpg

So he would be those colors.

Looks to be the same critter Bloocksucker was based off of, albeit Bloodsucker was described as a "leech" specifically in the comic, not a flatworm.

Granted, it was probably just an eroneous misidentification (though Don should have known better!)


...God damn, this is a ****** tangent we're all on.

definitely a terrible tangent considering the real-deal issue at hand. XD. that said, i think Bloodsucker was supposed to be a straight-up leech, because while i believe some flatworms do suck blood, planarian worms, like in the photo Andrew posted, don't.

8)

Perhaps he evolved leech-like qualities after sapping some trace amounts of mutagen through Raphael's pores. Or the Turtles, not up on their flatworm know-how, mistakenly just called it a leech. I'd have probably done the same thing.

I could be mistaken, though, but I thought there was a few narrative blurbs that identified it as a flatworm in-story... hm... I'll have to re-read it again.

"Bloocksucker".

Really, Spengler? Really?

We should email Veitch and ask him about Bloodsucker's species.

He who sucks bloock.

I can't believe there are actually people outside of corporate offices who don't care about the artist getting his due. This is ridiculous. Veitch wrote and drew those stories, they're his creative property. If he doesn't want to sign over all rights, good for him; hopefully Viacom will strike a proper deal, otherwise just buy the old trade or issues.

IDW's trades suck anyway.