Another (Audio) Blast from the Past...

Oh, dear.

At the movie theaters, it's the '70s all over again -- I mean, in the past couple of weeks, I've malingered in local theaters will various remakes and retreads prompting flashbacks: The Invasion (an honorably and mostly effective addition to the Jack Finney-novel-spawned Invasion of the Body Snatchers pantheon; has any single sf novel -- outside of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein -- become such a touchstone to each generation's reinterpretation?), Halloween (Rob Zombie remaking Texas Chains -- oh, I mean, John Carpenter's gem -- and Tobe Hooper/Kim Henkel's classic, a misbegotten fusion of '70s genre landmarks), Death Sentence (based on Brian Garfield's followup novel to Death Wish, and very much of a piece with that '70s vigilante blockbuster hit)... you get the idea. Incredibly, Jodi Foster is soon gracing screens in a pseudo-remake of Abel Ferrera's Ms. 45 which lifts its title from a forgotten-by-most 1950s boy-and-his-bull sleeper, The Brave One. At least that'll put us in the '80s.

And online, it's 1990 all over again.

The one and only Blake Bell is 'rebroadcasting' my interview with Scott McCloud and Gary Groth here,

while the download "Creators' Rights 20 Yrs Later? Classic mp3s of Groth, McCloud, Bissette" awaits you here. Same thing, either stop.

Where ever you choose to listen or download, it all brings back other memories -- good and bad -- for this old geezer and vividly reminds me how while some things have changed for the better, others are worse in terms of Creator Rights. The dirty little secret is that work-for-hire in the internet era is as prevalent and destructive as ever.

More on that another day, another post, when time permits a proper overview, update and rant... in the meantime, plug into the interview from 17 years ago, when the ire and passions were fresh and raging. Special thanks to

Blake Bell, Steve Ditko expert extraordinaire (with whom I share an introduction venue in the new Marvel hardcover collection of Amazing Adventures/Amazing Adult Fantasy; more on that later)

and Al Nickerson,

whose ongoing venue for further discussion and exploration of Creator Rights is as vital as ever. Why aren't more of you (especially you young creators) using this venue?

It's the complacency of many of my peers and the generations since 1990 that has led us down this 21st Century path, where work-for-hire and Vertigo contracts are still a sorry status quo.

Have a great Friday; the new semester at the Center for Cartoon Studies begins today! I'll be busy...