mistergoodman wrote:
Remember though, Marvel always paid for the assignment, because the assignment was the book, not the pages. The Kirby lawyers tried to muddy this up, but Kirby wasn't sitting at home drawing 20 pages on spec, hoping that Marvel would purchase them and use them in one of their books. Kirby was working on, say, Fantastic Four #35, which he had been assigned to do. Now, as art director Stan might have Jack redo a couple of panels, or even the occasional page. He had the right to demand the completed work was up to snuff. But there was no question that Kirby was going to get paid for the assignment, or that it was an assignment in the first place. Kirby's risk was pretty limited.
No.  Marvel didn't pay for stories.  They paid for pages.  Jack Kirby was paid a page rate not a story rate.  But, when he presented a page to Marvel, Marvel wasn't obligated to pay for it.  This begs the question: Who bore the risk for the work?  Marvel or Jack? 

It was not unheard of for Marvel to reject some, sometimes all, of the pages for a story with no payment to the artist.  Think of it this way:  If Jack was being paid $50 a page, and was assigned an 8 page story, he'd get paid $400.  But, if he presented an 8 page story to Stan, and Stan didn't like two pages, resulting in Jack having to draw two more pages, he still got paid only $400 even though he'd done $500 worth of work (10 pages).  So Jack would be out $100 worth of effort.  Put simply: Jack bore the risk that the pages he submitted would not be accepted.  That will be the crux of an appeal.  Jack bore the risk of the story not meeting Marvel's approval, not Marvel.  In theory, Marvel bore no risk in giving an assignment to Jack.  If they didn't like the story he turned in, they didn't pay for it. 

    

Last Edited By: sfcityduck Jul 29 11 1:57 PM. Edited 2 times.