Sharing a Universe
A lot of comic books are work-for-hire. Just like a lot of everything else.
When you write a comic for DC or Marvel, they own it. There are imprints like Icon that allow for creator-owned work to be produced at those two companies, but those are the exception and not the rule. Since DC and Marvel eat up the vast majority of direct market sales (if nothing else), this creates the perception that comics are dominated by work-for-hire material while creator-owned books are mostly marginalized.
Even if that wasn’t a gross exaggeration, would it really be such a bad thing? Very little entertainment is creator owned. Television shows are made for networks. Films are made for studios. Video games are made for development companies. Even so called “indy” movies and games are rarely owned by a single person. Comics seem to have more creator-owned products than any of these other media. So why are they held to a higher standard? Perhaps it’s because you need to have multiple people to create a professional-looking TV show, movie, or game, but a comic can be created by a minimum of one individual.
The irony is that, for a long time, comics have taken advantage of their work-for-hire nature in a way that other media didn’t. They embraced the concept of the shared universe. The idea that every character owned by a single company can all coexist together in the same fictional world is one that has thrived more in comics than it has anywhere else. As classic superheroes have begun to take root outside of comics, they’ve brought this principle with them.
Take television for example. It’s dabbled in some limited crossovers before. Every once in a while Yogi Bear would invite some other funny animals to a Christmas party and what not. But DC took it to the next level with their animated programs. Pretty much every DC Comics cartoon between Superfriends and Teen Titans took place in one interconnected continuum, and crossovers were rampant. Even the animated Marvel shows of the 90’s featured some crossovers, and at least tried to keep the voice actors consistent to from one series to another. Unfortunately, this didn’t catch on, and television crossovers are still uncommon, even in superhero cartoons.
When Marvel began to pit their stable of characters against the martial artists from Street Fighter, Capcom quickly realized how unfair it was to pit just one franchise against a universe of superhumans. Marvel Versus Capcom was such a success that it inspired other video game companies such as SNK and Nintendo to create their own “mascot fighters”. Over time, this has grown out of the fighting genre and into other types of games (though more so in Japan than anywhere else). DC, late to the party on this one, finally got their own crossover fighter in Mortal Kombat Versus DC Universe.
Finally, inevitably, comics are dragging the last hold out, live action cinema, kicking and screaming into the shared universe party. Again, we have Marvel to thank. This time they worked backwards, creating several movies about their individual heroes for the primary purpose of crossing them over in the Avengers film next year. Let’s hope that DC isn’t as slow to get on board with this as they were with video games!
In this way, the work-for-hire nature of superhero comics has proved to be one of their greatest strengths, and other media are only just now starting catch up.