Writing About Comics and Copyright

CREATe Working Paper 2013/9 (December 2013) Writing About Comics and Copyright Authors Ronan Deazley Jason Mathis University of Glasgow www.jasonmathis.ca [email protected] [email protected] Initially released as a pre-publication edition privately printed for the authors, limited to a print run of 200 copies. CREATe Working Paper Series DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8379. This release was supported by the RCUK funded Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy (CREATe), AHRC Grant Number AH/K000179/1. 1 WRITING ABOUT COMICS AND COPYRIGHT Ronan Deazley and Jason Mathis Copyright © 2013 Ronan Deazley and Jason Mathis [ii] For Moira and Ruby [iii] [iv] TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Comics scholarship and clearing rights 3 What is a ‘work’? 6 Insubstantial copying 12 Criticism and review 16 Current proposals for reform 20 Conclusion 23 30 Afterword / Manifesto 28 Notes [v] [1] [2] COMICS SCHOLARSHIP AND CLEARING RIGHTS Academics who research and write about the visual world often complain about the way in which copyright law can hinder their scholarly endeavours, and with good reason. Writing about visual work without reproducing that work is an impoverished exercise, for both writer and reader. But, reproducing visual material can trigger concerns on the part of the conscientious author or – more often – demands on the part of the publisher about the need to secure copyright permission. In this respect, comics scholarship is - ing rights for publication can be frustrating and time-consuming, andno different academic from publishers any other often field manage of visual the or cultural business studies. of copyright Clear clearance by mak- ing their authors responsible for se- curing permissions. European Comic Art provides a good example. When an article is accepted for publication, authors - mit copyright agree- mentsare ‘required and all to subnec- essary permission letters for reprinting or modifying copy- righted materials, both textual and - taininggraphic’, alland permis are- sions‘responsible and clearingfor ob any associated fees.’ [3] Not all publishers, however, adhere to such a black and white posi- tion. The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics is published by Tay- publisher acknowledges that reproducing short extracts of text lor & Francis. In the ‘Authors Services’ section of their website, the when permissionand other types is needed, of material the publisher ‘for the directspurposes its ofauthors criticism to the may Pub be- possible without formalPermissions permission’. Guidelines To better. understand lishers Association’s To better understand what rights need to be cleared, authors are - - presslydirected relate to the to publisher’s the reproduction own FAQs of visualabout material,using third-party and of those ma onlyterial twoin an concede academic the article. possibility Thirteen of reproducingof the publisher’s work FAQswithout ex permission (they relate to, respectively, the use of ‘screenshots or - grabs of film or video’ and the use of ‘very old paintings’). lisher is purporting to accurately represent the law in this area. What is not clear from the FAQs document is whether the pub If so – as we shall see – the FAQs[4] document is clearly deficient. If, however, Taylor & Francis is simply using the FAQs document to set out the parameters of its own editorial policy on the reproduction of copyright-protected third-party material, then so be it: the publisher is perfectly entitled to adopt such editorial guidelines - rial policy that fails to take full advantage of the scope which the copyrightas it sees fit.regime I would allows suggest, for the though, lawful that reproduction in cleaving of to copyright- an edito protected material without need for permission, the publisher is missing an opportunity to enable and encourage its contributors to augment and enrich comics scholarship as a discipline. It is in this respect that The Comics Grid is more ambitious and forward-thinking: it actively promotes the lawful use of copyright- protected content for the purposes of academic scholarship. The - journal’s copyright policy sets out that third-party imagesFair are Usere Checklistproduced for on further the basis information. of ‘educational This isfair a checklistuse’, with that readers has been and developedcontributors to directedhelp academics to Columbia and other University scholars Libraries’ make a reason- able and balanced determination about whether their use of copy- Copy- right Act right-protected work is permissible under s.107 of the US Obviously, locates its copyright advice within the 1976:The Comicsthe fair Grid use provision. with an interest in both the history and the current state of the UK copyrightcontext of regime, US copyright my particular law. But, focus as a within Glasgow-based this comic academic, concerns the extent to which academics – or indeed anyone interested in writing about comics – can rely upon UK copyright law to repro- duce extracts and excerpts from published comics and graphic novels without having to ask the copyright owner for permission. To address that issue we must consider three key questions. What constitutes ‘a work’ protected by copyright within the context of- comics publishing? What does it mean to speak of ‘insubstantial copying’ from a copyright-protected comic? And what can be cop ied lawfully from a comic for the purpose of criticism and review? [5] WHAT IS ‘A WORK’? The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (the CDPA) provides a appreciatedetailed and what exhaustive latitude list there of eightexists types within of thework copyright that qualify regime for forcopyright the reproduction protection of within copyright-protected the UK. So, before work one without can properly permis- - omatic: one can only sensibly and reasonably interrogate notions ofsion, substantial one must copying understand and fair what dealing constitutes – about ‘a which work’. more This belowis axi To be sure, for most copyright-protected content what constitutes – in relation to an identified ‘work’. is: the novel, the poem, the playtext, the score, the painting, the photograph,‘a work’ will andnot sopresent on. Like many the conceptual proverbial challenges.elephant, we The tend work to know the work when we see it. With comics, however, things are not always so straightforward. One characteristic of comics is that individual storylines are often presented to the reader, played out across a number of issues: sim- ilar to the serialisation of literary works – often published with ac- companying illustrations – by Victorian novelists such as Dickens regard, say, Great Expectations or Collins. If Dickens’s work was still in copyright today would we as ‘a work’, even though it was first published in serial form? Almost certainly yes; few would seek to argue otherwise. ShouldCerebus we the readAardvark (certain). Published comics over in a a similarperiod vein: that is, works first published in serial form? Consider Dave Sim’s of nearly 30 years (1977-2004),Church & this State groundbreaking comic is best understood as a series of ten ‘novels’ collected into 16 ‘books’. The andthird published of these ‘novels’,as a novel in two volumes, was (Church first published & State Volume across I and59 issues Church between & State 1983-88 Volume (IssuesII 52-111) before being collected in 1987 and 1988 respectively).Gospel of Mat So:- for copyright purposes, what is the ‘work’? Or what about Chester Brown’s adaptation of the [6] thew Yummy Fur Issue 15 (March Yummy Fur (Issues ? Brown began his adaptation in Underwater (11 issues, 1989). It continued in the remaining issues of appeared16-32), and in Underwaterthen in Brown’s Issue next 11 inproject: October 1997 and, at the time of1994-97). writing, TheBrown most has recent yet to instalment complete his(‘Chapter work on 20, the verses remaining 1-29’) eight chapters. But again: what, here, is the ‘work’?, and does our Brown,understanding in this respect,of ‘the work’provides shift an depending intriguing caseon what study. we In knowYum- about the author’s own creative process? [7] my Fur Issue 20 he offers his readers an insight into the way he constructs his comics (at least, circa 1990). - whereasBrown typically most comic works artists with sketchpage layouts or draft of abetween page of fivecomic and art sev as aen single panels page, (which Brown panels draws are each rarely panel uniform individually, in size or on shape). a separate But, - sheet of paper (often ‘cheap typewriting paper’), and then assem bles each ‘page’ of the comic by arranging these individual panels on a larger sheet. Given this, should we regard each of Brown’s panels as a ‘work’? [8] Building Stories - ouslyOne final produced example: by Christhe publisher. Ware’s wonderful Its unconventional format (2012), chal- lengesan exquisite preconceptions artefact, beautifully that anyone rendered – whether by thea long-standing artist, and luxuri comics fan or not – might have about the form and format of the comic. It consists of 14 different types of printed work (individual books, presentnewspapers the andreader broadsheets, with a flip books, a poster, accordion-style complex,fold-outs, multi-layered and so on) which story centred around an unnamed female protagonist, but one that eschews narrative lin- earity. Produced over a peri- are collectively presented to theod of reader ten years, in an these illustrated ‘works’ box: a format inspired by Box in a Valise Marcel Duchamp’s (1935-41). vignettesSo: what isas ‘the separate work’ worksthat is in the themselves, subject of rathercopyright than protection? parts of a The box and its contents? Should we understand each of the 14 richer, more ambitious and intriguing narrative project? Is the box aboutitself ‘a comics work’? who are grappling with copyright clearance issues, My point here is not to make things more difficult for those writing natureor to further of comics obfuscate problematise an already what problematic are otherwise legal often landscape; simple, quite the reverse.

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