09-JUNE-2011 Yesterday I featured an emotional story about a new artist to the comics scene who feels that her work was unjustly manipulated by BLUEWATER PRODUCTIONS. When LAURA GUZZO was hired by Bluewater, she was off-the-charts excited to land a deal to create the cover for the POLITICAL POWER: HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON one-shot biographical comic. The shine slowly tarnished over the eight-month period between when Guzzo was hired and when the comic hit shelves. Bluewater representative JEROME MAIDA was informed that I had questions and we began emailing in the middle of the night to get those questions answered.
The conflict between newcomer artist and the relatively new publisher (founded in 2007) involves art integrity, deadlines, and reputation of all parties; but somehow, the conversations keep coming back to compensation.
Maida and other Bluewater employees have commented on yesterday’s AmberUnmasked story on my facebook or via email, and they have been primarily concerned with any misconceptions about payment to their artists. Guzzo herself clearly commented on popular news sites, her blog and in my interview with her that she was paid UPFRONT for her cover work. Since the company’s reputation was so sour regarding payment, contracts and backend deals, it’s not a surprise that’s where their responses focus. But despite the “new and improved” contracts that Bluewater is slowly working into their business practices, not all artists are feeling the impact. One current artist whose name is being withheld, confided that he has done multiple books for them and individual pinup illustrations but has never seen a single payment from Bluewater. In regards to payment, it appears that Guzzo was actually lucky.
When it comes to the issue of Guzzo’s art being manipulated when she was never told that there was anything wrong, the responses are sparse. Once again, take a look at the original work Guzzo submitted compared to what was actually published featuring the cover by Joe Phillips.
Maida has expressed repeatedly to me that he is deeply remorseful that the situation turned into such a disaster. I’m unaware if he shared these regrets with Guzzo:
“This whole mess is extremely disappointing to me because I am the one who recruited Laura. It was almost exactly one year ago, last year, at Wizard Philly, that her work caught my eye. I was looking for new artists and definitely wanted to give her a shot. I was very happy when I convinced Darren [Davis] to giver her the HILLARY project. He did always have reservations about her ‘water color paper’ style, but that to me is what made her unique.”
“Also, I want to point out that it has always been my intention to find a way to compensate our artists and writers more to a greater degree. So for Laura, Mark Sparacio and another artist I had hoped [to] land. So I decided to convince Darren [Davis] to have the cover artists be compensated with money up front, plus a percentage if the book sells over 10,000 copies. I felt this would prevent cover artists from pulling their hair out if they received the one-time fee upfront and saw the book sell one hundred thousand copies. They should be rooting for the book to do well.”
Maida went on to express his feelings about Guzzo’s statements when she said she felt like the upfront money was actually supposed to entice her to go on news sites and say positive things about Bluewater:
“She was being paid because I was making sure our policies were different from what they were before. I find it insulting and naive of her to claim that we would pay her simply to say nice things about us.
“So, no, her experience was not the norm for many of those who were bitching about Bluewater and the past. It had become the norm thanks to me, as Mark and the other artist received similar deals to Laura’s.
“This is what is so distressing. It seems Laura was excited to work for us until people starting whispering their complaints about Bluewater in her ear. That is why she originally stated she was not going to do the interior of the book. She actually told me on the phone it looked like we were paying her to say something nice about us. Really? She was a then-unknown artist. How much clout did she think what she said was going to have one way or the other. I just wanted to let people know through her that we were changing at least slightly some of our practices. Then I go on Newsarama and she deleted her comment even though what she said, ‘I got paid just fine,’ was 100% true.”
The interior page sequential art was another part of this controversy. Guzzo said she would have done the interiors but once the script was not received in a timely manner, she turned down the offer. In my communications with Maida, he said that the deadline would have been extended. I’m not sure how possible that is once a book is solicited; again, the solicitation appeared in Previews and the script was not even finished, but books are late all the time, especially by certain creators.
“But what really enraged Darren was when she decided she no longer wanted to do interiors on the HILLARY book after the solicitation in Diamond had her name on it. I let her know that she would have time to do the interiors and that, well, she was already listed as the artist on the book. She kept repeating she wanted to concentrate on covers.
Maida did take full responsibility for part of this dispute:
“In all fairness, the script being late was my fault. But we would have given her time to finish the book. She didn’t care at that point. Despite being paid upfront for three covers, she had gone from excited to work for us to leery. All because she listened to other people.
“If she had simply done the interiors, she would be getting more covers to do and we all would be a lot happier today.”
Maida specifically addressed Guzzo’s remark about other covers when she said, “After that, I did two more cover jobs for them, but started holding my artwork hostage until the money was safely stowed away in my paypal account.” While he attempts to rebut this, he only refers to the HILLARY cover not the other two covers Guzzo brings up.
“Again, ‘held hostage?’ She got paid for her HILLARY cover immediately. This is just really disappointing. I do want the books to have a different look. That’s why I recruited Laura in the first place. But she [l]ost Darren when she bailed on the interiors and as for the new cover, that was all Darren. I knew nothing about it. Right or wrong, that was his call. But this all could have been avoided of Laura could have been a bit less suspicious and done the interiors. You can’t pick which part of an agreement you want to accept. The world doesn’t work that way.”
“All I want to say in closing is Laura is obviously very talented and I wish her the best.”
There still don’t seem to be a lot of answers about why Guzzo’s cover was swiped by Phillips. You can comment here if it’s about the coverage of the controversy or go to the appropriate site to express your feelings to either party directly.
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model. 6 Comments on @BluewaterProd responds to accusations
Comments are closed.
I just commented in the other post, but how was it swiped if BW paid her for the image? Also, again, it appears they didn’t like the cover and had another artist redo it.
Sure, its similar, but I imagine that’s what BW was going for. No?
I still don’t see what the artist’s problem is.
A swipe is when one artist works over another artist (like Rob Granito) where the work is clearly a copy and the original artist is not credited. That’s the problem. I understand you think it shouldn’t matter because she was paid but you’re missing her point about the ethics about her work being copied and manipulated in photoshopped. She would have settled for a “cover designed by” credit but inside the book, she was not credited at all.
Amber-
Rob Granito regularly steals the copyrighted materials of other companies and individuals and passes them off as his own. That is not what happened here. What happened was a business arrangement that exceeded the contract terms on the side of the creator.
Creators often work uncredited. Just as editors often correct the mistakes of creators without any creative credit. Laura was given everything she was promised in excess of what she was contractually promised.
It is unfortunate that this ended so poorly. I’m sure both parties will be more careful in the future when picking partners.
Jerome Maida did in fact call me on the day the book came out to apologize, which I greatly appreciate.
Unfortunately it wasn’t just negative rumors about Bluewater’s previous business dealings that turned me off the to company. I also looked into the number of books Bluewater has sold in the last few years and what I found was extremely different from the number of books I had been told they were selling.
If those numbers are accurate, it would mean that not only would I never see a cent of the royalties, but that they never intended me to. And since interior art is paid on a royalties-only basis, if I had stuck around to do the interiors for Hillary Clinton, I’m fairly certain that I would have been working for free. That’s pencils, inking, AND color, by the way. All for free. That was not a chance I was willing to take.
Regardless, I find it frustrating that all of this is supposed to somehow justify Bluewater’s actions. If they had wanted to take me off the front cover because they were bitter about the interiors, that would’ve been fine. But that’s not what they did.
What they did was publish a sub-par copy of my work without giving me any credit for it. I simply find it hard to swallow the idea that those two covers are, as Darren Davis puts it, as different as “night and day.” They are not.
Laura,
Again, I can’t say anything about the new cover, since that was not my call. However, as far as you feeling that you were not “supposed to” see royalties based on numbers you were seeing – well, if that was a valid concern of yours – and i don’t doubt that it was – then why didn’t you hash it out with me?
Secondly, the reason i wanted you for the “Hillary” book is because the first one did easily surpass 5 figures. Furthermore, when the trade comes out and we sell it through bookstores, libraries, etc. you would have definitely received a decent paycheck.
Heck, the amount of the “Hillary”comic ordered by Barnes and Noble alone is more than the print runs on my “Bill O’Reilly’, “Al Franken”, “Glenn Beck”, “Richard Nixon” and “Mark Zuckerberg” comics COMBINED! So you would have made decent money.
i understand you don’t know me that well, but I wish we could have talked a bit more and then maybe I could have put your fears to rest and all of this could have been avoided.
I just love how I kindly asked: “You can comment here if it’s about the coverage of the controversy or go to the appropriate site to express your feelings to either party directly.” And it goes completely ignored. If you care to bicker, argue, or threaten me or each other, do so OFF MY SITE. Thank you.