Creators Bill Of Rights 25th Anniversary: Scott McCloud

The Northampton Summit Participants
Left to Right: Ken Mitchroney, Mark Martin, Michael Dooney, Steve Lavigne, Peter Laird (sitting)
Kevin Eastman, Ryan Brown, Michael Zulli, Richard Pini, Scott McCloud, Larry Marder
Dave Sim, Rick Veitch, and Steve Bissette. (Not pictured: Eric Talbot and Gerhard).
Art by Scott McCloud

SCOTT McCLOUD:

(taken from Scott McCloud.com)
The Creators Bill Of Rights was written in November 1988 for a two day "Summit" of comic book artists held in Northampton, Massachusetts. The meeting had been suggested by Cerebus creator Dave Sim and hosted by local heroes Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Summit was a follow-up to a July meeting in Toronto which produced a "Creative Manifesto." Some of us found the Manifesto a bit scattered, so I wrote a rough draft of a proposed replacement. That replacement, "A Bill of Rights for Comics Creators" was accepted quickly at Sim's suggestion. The rest of that day was a non-stop argument about the document's wording.

The Bill never generated much noise in the industry and I wouldn't want to exaggerate its influence, but it provides an interesting snapshot of our attitudes at the time, and of the climate that was fueling self-publishers, progressive business people, and artists trying to reinvent the comics industry. A few years later, several top-selling Marvel artists would break from the pack and form a new company called Image, shifting the debate from rights and principles to clout and competition, but both developments would share a common premise, still relevant today: that comics creators already have the right to control their art if they want it; all they have to do is not sign it away.

I was invited in large part because I knew Laird and others through an APA I'd created called The Frying Pan. At my suggestion, Beanworld creator and "Nexus of all Comic Book Realities" Larry Marder was invited too. Larry flew out from Chicago to our place in Arlington, Massachusetts shortly before the meeting. I had the rough draft of the Bill ready but not typed yet. I vividly remember hammering it out on my old manual typewriter as Larry read my notes back to me, right before we rushed out the door to catch a succession of buses and trains to Northampton. While waiting for the bus in Springfield, we found a copy shop and photocopied my hastily typed hand-out. It was also on that trip that I showed Larry my notes for a comic book about comics that I had been working on for a few years.

After the first day of debates, everyone stumbled out of the Hotel Northampton into the cold New England air to walk the five or so blocks to dinner. I remember Larry and I lagged behind a little. I had argued with Dave Sim about every imaginable issue that day as if my life depended on it, but walking to dinner, it all seemed pretty distant already. Larry and I talked more about my notes for the comic book about comics. I asked him if he thought those ideas would mean a lot more in the long run than anything I could accomplish in Northampton. He said yeah, they probably would.

When those notes became Understanding Comics it was Kevin Eastman's money that paid me to finish it - money he and Peter had earned because they refused to give away their creation the way so many artists had before them.

Scott McCloud is a cartoonist and comics theorist best known for his comic series ZOT! and his non-fiction books about comics theory: Understanding Comics (1993), Reinventing Comics (2000) and Making Comics (2006).