Spike (IDW)

Fox Not Paying Artists Or Writers For Using Their Work In Buffy Motion Comic

The writer’s strike in Hollywood a couple of years back was primarily driven by the studios and networks denial of royalty payments to writers when their work was refranchised through new media – so, for example, NBC could stream My Name Is Earl on their website and not shell out a penny to its creators*.

Similarly, it seems that motion comics might offer a new frontier through which publishers can exploit the artists and writers who created the original, still comics and not have to pay them. What cost the TV and movie industries so dearly could now happen to comics – well, if motion comics don’t just go away.

A source close to the situation with Fox’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 motion comics tells me:

Fox won’t pay any of the creators any royalties. Artists or writers. So, it’s a bit of bullshit that they are using and selling the content without any recompense to the talent that made it.

Indeed it is.

Word is that the motion comic is significantly less enjoyable than the still version anyway, with no ambition to exploit the medium creatively, and badly cast voice actors recruited at non-union rates, bless them. My tip, personally, is to avoid the series altogether.

*A made up example, though I’m sure it would apply there as much as anywhere else.