Gerry Conway Publicly Apologizes To Top DC Comics Staff
Reading time: 2 minutes
Late last month, legendary comic writer Gerry Conway made waves across the industry when he called out DC Comics for what he described as "obnoxious and despicable" equity policies. This stemmed from the fact that, through the complicated logic of derivatives, he was not receiving creator credit or payment for the character of Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost as she appears on The CW's The Flash - a character that Conway and Al Milgrom had created back in 1978 (the original Killer Frost, Crystal Frost).
Unsurprisingly, Conway's Tumblr post was noticed by DC, who in turn issued a statement saying that their policies had not changed in the way that Conway had suggested, but that they were "looking to build off of and improve on current practices by finding ways to increase the frequency of such payments and to proactively compensate equity stakeholders above and beyond the usual standards when their characters are the driving principals of new productions". DC staff didn't leave it at that either, with multiple members of staff reaching out to Conway directly, including Co-Publisher Dan DiDio and Chief Creative Office Geoff Johns. With DC clearly going out of their way to contact Conway, things have calmed down with Conway expressing his appreciation for their conversations; he even offered DC some advice on how they could alter the policies to better suit the creators.
Two weeks after his initial post, Conway has issued a public apology to DiDio, Johns, Co-Publisher Jim Lee, and Vice-President of Talent Relations Larry Ganem, though he did open by saying that he stands by his basic argument against DC's policy regarding "derivative" characters.
Let’s just say I ascribed motives to people that were 180 degrees opposite to their actual intentions. Geoff, Dan, Jim, and Larry sincerely want to do the right thing by creators. I didn’t give them the proper credit for that; I interpreted a disagreement about process as evidence of malign intent. In so doing, I hurt people who didn’t deserve it, and offended people who were trying to help me.
I’m truly, truly sorry.
Gerry Conway
One funny moment that Conway describes is the moment where he realised that his grudge from when he left DC Comics 30 years ago is now pointless.
As Geoff Johns very kindly pointed out to me when I tried to explain my reason for carrying a grudge over the last dealings I had with the company, “Gerry, you’re talking about things that happened when I was twelve years old.”
It was a horrible, humiliating lightbulb moment.
If you want to check out the whole apology, it's available here on Conway's Tumblr. Got to respect a guy that can admit he was wrong and admit it to the world.
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