Chip Zdarsky Is Not Exclusive With Marvel, Available For Weddings

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Chip Zdarsky is not exclusive with Marvel Comics, and is available for weddings, bar mitzvahs and limited series

Yesterday, I looked at Chip Zdarsky speaking with David Harper, the first of a new monthly chat on his Sketchd YouTube channel as part of a year-long series of interviews. Including telling us that he had signed a new two-year contract with Marvel, extending his commitment as his previous contract had finished early. I thought that meant “exclusive”, but it seems not. And it may have marked a bit of a sea change in how DC Comics and Marvel Comics have done business in recent years. It used to be the case that a creator would sign an exclusive with either Marvel or DC (or, back in the day, CrossGen) and, for a fixed period of time, they could do creator-owned work elsewhere, or carve out a specific part of that contract for a very specific project, but it meant you couldn’t work for the opposition. In return, you got guaranteed work, a better pay rate and access to cheaper, negotiated health insurance, that sort of thing.

But in more recent years, that seems to have changed. You still do get exclusive contracts such as Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s recent signing to Marvel, but in general, the contract covers an agreed amopunt of work to be delivered in an agreed amount of time, and if you want to work for the other guys and can fit it all in, well that’s all fine and dandy, and is how Joshua Williamson is doing Iron Man right now. And how Chip Zdarsky has signed with Marvel, is doing the Armageddon event, is going to the Marvel writers summit, and is also editing the upcoming DC Does MAD anthology.

For those of us who have spent time in the trenches of the Exclusive Wars of the nineties, noughties and teenies, it seems a strange way of doing things. But then a lot of things feel strange right now. And an example might be such that Chip mentioned to David, “a lot of those contracts work like you have to deliver like 36 issues within two years, and that’s when it ends. But because there was a lot going on for this year, um, I just really, I really hit the ground running and wrote a lot.”

So Chip and others are available for a lot more things right now. As Chip confirms, “I will work bar mitzvahs and weddings and limited series”. And a certain Sex Criminals announcement is keeping him nice and busy while completely ruining his SEO.

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