Mark Millar To Publish Public Domain Superman Comics - Did DC Say No? (2024)

Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, DC Comics, Superman | Tagged: Mark Millar, public domain

Mark Millar plans to publish public domain Superman comics by himself in 2033 - did DC Comics say no to his plans?

In 2022, to publicise his newcomic book series,The Ambassadors, Mark Millar, tweeted "It might take me a year or two to get ahead on my schedule, but I'm 100% going to do another Superman story at some point. I've had a notebook I've been noodling in for quite a while now…" following it up saying "The nice people who run DC contacted me last night about this tweet and we're definitely going to do this once everybody's schedule aligns a year or two down the line. Gonna be big." Comic Book fell for it hook, line…

Then earlier this year to publicise his Big Game series and his podcast, Millar Time, he told Geoff Johns regarding Netflix "I'm under contract, so I have to do a certain amount of stuff but I'm definitely going to get a little carve out at the end of next year, and I've talked with the DC guys. I'm going to do like a six issue thing" and wanted to "get somebody great to draw it, like Olivier Coipel or Pepe Larraz."

Then late last year, he appeared to be negotiating with DC in public, saying "My suggestion is that if ONE of these companies swaps that 2% royalty for a FIFTY-FIFTY split with the creative team on all sales over, say, 60,000 copies they will send a bolt of electricity through the industry and bring in the most commercial freelancers in the biz again."

Well, those negotiations may have hit the skids. Mark Millar has just tweeted "I'd been thinking about writing a Superman story late summer, but Superman goes public domain in 9 years so I can write my stories in 5 years time & pay the best artists in the industry to draw them so it's all banked and ready for me to publish myself in 2033."

This is a topic Bleeding Cool touched on recently (and maybe Mark even read) which was followed up on a week or two later by Variety, Gizmodo and more. In a decade, DC Comics will lose the copyright on those first issues of Action Comics which established so much about the character. So yes, Mark Millar could absolutely publish Superman comics, though it would have to be under a different name, as DC/Warner Bros still owns the trademark.

But two things worth noting. Everyone will be allowed to do Superman comics, games, TV shows and movies then, so Millar won't just be competing with DC but with Marvel, Valiant, Todd McFarlane, Robert Kirkman, Viz Media, Webtoon, everyone doing Superman suddenly. What is the betting that Scholastic will have a Dog Man Vs Superman comic from Dav Pilkey?

And secondly… is this Mark negotiating with DC/Warners in public? Did they say no? Has he hit an empasse and hoping that media reaction to this tweet will embarass DC to agree with what he wants, financially? Is pointing out that you are happy to wait for public domain enough to make DC decide they might as well get some cash out of this than none? Will it work? Maybe…

It is also probably worth noting that previous PR stunts from Mark Millar have included a faked Kick Ass street video, a faked Obama-reading-Superior photos, as well as the fiction that Eminemwas to star in a movie version ofWanted, the tame journalists he used to get that story momentum,his seemingly non-existent trip to Detroit forMPH, his fakedTime Square photos forNemesis, his fakedStarlight Tattooed Granny videosor the way he got ReedPOP tobuy a hundred thousand copies of the launch issue ofThe Magic Order at a heavy discount, before later destroying them, so that he could claim it was the biggest selling creator-owned launch in decades. So public domain Superman? Sure… with Batman the year afterwards. But what is he really after? To be fair, I did love his Superman Adventures comic books back in the day…