For any comic book artist or writer, working at Marvel is a dream come true. The House of Ideas is where dreams become a reality, or at least that’s what they have been trying to sell us for decades. However, the reality of working with Marvel is quite different, and that’s what Robert Kirkman, the creator of Invincible and The Walking Dead, has wanted to clarify.
In the CBR podcast “Dynamic Duos,” where he had a conversation with renowned artist Todd McFarlane, Kirkman has shared his experience working for Marvel Comics. The author has spared no detail and made it very clear that it has been a nightmare for him, one that he has no intention of repeating.
A setback that marked Kirkman’s trajectory
As Kirkman tells it, working for Marvel was a dream come true. Kirkman had been self-publishing as a relatively unknown author for years, but at that time, the publisher launched Epic, a line focused on lesser-known creators to give them the opportunity of a lifetime. Marvel offered Kirkman $5,000 for a project, Sleepwalker, under the condition that he would handle everything himself.
Kirkman explains that he poured his heart and soul into the project, using the (actually quite low) budget to hire artists, letterers, and all the other team members necessary to produce a comic of the quality it deserved. However, as soon as Kirkman completed the first issue of Sleepwalker, Marvel’s executives contacted him and said, “Hey, we’re shutting it all down. You’re fired. I know you worked hard on issues 2 and 3, but we won’t be paying you for them because we’re never releasing them.”
In reality, the publisher’s executives had the power to do that without any issues. The contract included a clause that allowed them to terminate the agreement at any time, without even giving a reason. But this deeply hurt Kirkman, causing him to lose trust in Marvel and realize that they had shattered his dreams. “Because of this situation with Epic, I thought, ‘I can’t trust these guys.’ They’re really not trustworthy, and I can’t even see it as a stable job,” Kirkman said.
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