The Proposition.

[Yeahduff]

A big soda company happens upon your comic. They love it. You soon receive an email that turns out to be legit, and they give you the following offer.

$1,000,000 to have your characters in their commercials raving about their new Vanilla Death flavored soda.
$500,000 to have your characters appear in a commercial for the new pop.
$100,000 to have new characters in your style drawn specifically for the commercial.

Which do you choose? Why?

(Arbitrary numbers have been used. If you know industry standards, substitute those numbers if it makes you feel better about it.)

[Komiyan]

Though it wouldn't possibly occur, I'd take the million of course! Got bills to pay.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

Depends on if I like the soda. I'd probably take the million anyway. It has to really suck for me not to like something for that amount of money. Like Fresca. God, that stuff blows.

[Cope]

Man, this is so far outside the realm of possibility that I feel embarrassed even considering it as a thought exercise.

I'd have to go with the third option. The other two would just feel too weird. I think about my characters promoting soft drink, and my brain just breaks. Maybe if they weren't murderous moral vacuums...

[LibertyCabbage]

The 1 mil. for sure. Even besides the awesomeness of getting that much money (as financial independence has always been the greatest artistic license), a commercial is the best publicity you'd ever get aside from a TV series or a Hollywood movie.

[KWill]

Though it wouldn't possibly occur, I'd take the million of course! Got bills to pay.

You've amassed more than $100,000 in bills already? =o
And exactly how much is Green Glass Co paying you for the product placement?

I'm teetering between option 3 and 1. My qualms with 2 are the same as with 1; the exact means by which my characters would be used isn't all that relevant. I don't feel entirely comfortable making my characters make a political or commercial statement that doesn't somehow fit their personalities. But if it were for Schweppes, and John Cleese voiced Grandpa Scabfield, I'd do it =D

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

Fuck integrity. You can't eat that. You can't even drive it.

[Rkolter]

I'd take the million dollars in a heartbeat and not look back. The whole concept of being a corporate sell-out is silly.

Now, make the picture more realistic -

You have 10 years of effort into your comic, storyline, and characters, and while you have never made a lot of money on it, you've been published a couple times, and have a fanbase.

A corporation offers you one million dollars to use your characters, but as part of the deal, they get right of refusal - you own the characters, but they have the right to nix any publication of the characters they find unattractive to their bottom line, so long as they decide to continue to use your characters. It is a 10 year contract.

... do you sign?

[Tim]

Right. It's one thing if you're offered a million dollars just for your characters to be used in a marketing campaign. For a million dollars, you'd be reading Alternate Delusions - sponsored by Vanilla Death™. But to completely sign away your intellectual property, that's something I'd have to negotiate over.

[Mon Ami]

Hello Sellout!

Rkolter, I don't know if I could decide! Then again I don't think I'd have a story going on that long; hell even Antics has an ending n__n

[Terotrous]

I'll dare to be different with my reply.




...wait, everyone else already took the million?

Forget it, then.

[KWill]

Now, make the picture more realistic -

You have 10 years of effort into your comic, storyline, and characters, and while you have never made a lot of money on it, you've been published a couple times, and have a fanbase.

A corporation offers you one million dollars to use your characters, but as part of the deal, they get right of refusal - you own the characters, but they have the right to nix any publication of the characters they find unattractive to their bottom line, so long as they decide to continue to use your characters. It is a 10 year contract.

... do you sign?

No.

[Yeahduff]

Hm. Kinda surprised by the results so far.

Shoulda been a poll.

[Xwhy]

Though it wouldn't possibly occur, I'd take the million of course! Got bills to pay.

You've amassed more than $100,000 in bills already? =o

I have a house and that's more than the mortgage ... and I have two kids that will be going to college. $100,000 isn't going to cut it unless they both go to CUNY schools (City University of New York). Granted, it would help a lot.

[Fabio Ciccone]

That's a tough one... I'd probably get the 1 mil and start a new comic or something. Thius money would help me to do even more comics.

[Keffria]

I'd take the money for sure, even with that right-of-refusal condition. Such a sellout.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

Since my comic is somewhat autobiographical, I wouldn't do it. If it were some other thing I wasn't attached to, I'd probably go for it.

[KWill]

I have a house and that's more than the mortgage ... and I have two kids that will be going to college. $100,000 isn't going to cut it unless they both go to CUNY schools (City University of New York). Granted, it would help a lot.

Yeah, but Komi is roughly my age, and I didn't see her bring a toddler or two to the Webcomix Thing =P

[Yeahduff]

I'd take the million dollars in a heartbeat and not look back. The whole concept of being a corporate sell-out is silly.

Not really.

I'm honestly not sure what I'd do. I mean, I'd rather not associate my work that I've put so much into, that means so much to me and to those who read it every week, with some high-calorie beverage, the kind of association that is so far-reaching and ubiquitous that your charcters and your work in the past, present, and future completely irrelevvent and effectively nonexistent. At the same time, that's a lot of goddamn money. How do you turn that down? That's life-changing. I can't even cmprehend that kind of money. I dunno. I'd probably go with option C, if only because a million would probably screw up my life.

[K-Dawg]

Big money big money no whammy no whammy STOP!

If you didn't it out yeah I'd take the million. Take a look at my characters, they are only meant to make money off their marketable looks.