The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Thumbnail image of item number 1 in: 'The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'.
Thumbnail image of item number 2 in: 'The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'.
Thumbnail image of item number 3 in: 'The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'.
Thumbnail image of item number 4 in: 'The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'.
Showing 1-4 of 158 pages in this thesis.

PDF Version Also Available for Download.

Description

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) is a massive ongoing franchise that began as a 1984 self-published comic book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Its history is intertwined with the creators' rights movement and the Creator's Bill of Rights (CBR), which rejected work-for-hire contracts, wherein creative laborers—creative authors—cede authorial control of their labor. Because the production of comic books and their franchises is highly collaborative, intellectual property (IP) rights are often consolidated in a single rights holder—a corporate author—via work-for-hire contracts. Eastman and Laird, as both creative and corporate authors, initially maintained strict control of TMNT licensees, but allowed … continued below

Creation Information

Cardenas, Jen May 2022.

Context

This thesis is part of the collection entitled: UNT Theses and Dissertations and was provided by the UNT Libraries to the UNT Digital Library, a digital repository hosted by the UNT Libraries. It has been viewed 151 times. More information about this thesis can be viewed below.

Who

People and organizations associated with either the creation of this thesis or its content.

Author

Chair

Committee Members

Publisher

Rights Holder

For guidance see Citations, Rights, Re-Use.

  • Cardenas, Jen

Provided By

UNT Libraries

The UNT Libraries serve the university and community by providing access to physical and online collections, fostering information literacy, supporting academic research, and much, much more.

About | Browse this Partner

Contact Us

Corrections Questions

What

Descriptive information to help identify this thesis. Follow the links below to find similar items on the Digital Library.

Degree Information

Description

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) is a massive ongoing franchise that began as a 1984 self-published comic book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Its history is intertwined with the creators' rights movement and the Creator's Bill of Rights (CBR), which rejected work-for-hire contracts, wherein creative laborers—creative authors—cede authorial control of their labor. Because the production of comic books and their franchises is highly collaborative, intellectual property (IP) rights are often consolidated in a single rights holder—a corporate author—via work-for-hire contracts. Eastman and Laird, as both creative and corporate authors, initially maintained strict control of TMNT licensees, but allowed their employees to retain IP rights over creative contributions to TMNT. However, in 1992, Eastman and Laird sent retroactive work-for-hire contracts to all current and former employees. This TMNT case study illustrates how the CBR represented the conflicting interests of publishers and creative laborers and ultimately reinforced the individualistic view of authorship that undergirds work-for-hire doctrine. Additionally, because IP legal infrastructure uses individualistic discourse to consolidate control of media franchises in one entity that allows authorized individuals access to a shared database of creative expressions that workers can borrow from or add to, media franchises resemble folklore and are made via a database mode of production. The romantic vision of authorship (and authorial control) upon which the CBR was founded ultimately went on to serve publishers rather than creators working for media properties, repeating a pattern that has existed since the inception of copyright and authorship.

Language

Item Type

Identifier

Unique identifying numbers for this thesis in the Digital Library or other systems.

Collections

This thesis is part of the following collection of related materials.

UNT Theses and Dissertations

Theses and dissertations represent a wealth of scholarly and artistic content created by masters and doctoral students in the degree-seeking process. Some ETDs in this collection are restricted to use by the UNT community.

About | Browse this Collection

What responsibilities do I have when using this thesis?

Digital Files

When

Dates and time periods associated with this thesis.

Creation Date

  • May 2022

Added to The UNT Digital Library

  • June 16, 2022, 10:47 a.m.

Usage Statistics

When was this thesis last used?

Yesterday: 0
Past 30 days: 1
Total Uses: 151
More Statistics

Interact With This Thesis

Here are some suggestions for what to do next.

Start Reading

Thumbnail image of item number 1 in: 'The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'.
Thumbnail image of item number 2 in: 'The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'.
Thumbnail image of item number 3 in: 'The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'.
Thumbnail image of item number 4 in: 'The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'.

PDF Version Also Available for Download.

Citations, Rights, Re-Use

International Image Interoperability Framework

IIF Logo

We support the IIIF Presentation API

Links for Robots

Helpful links in machine-readable formats.

Archival Resource Key (ARK)

International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)

Metadata Formats

Images

URLs

Stats

Cardenas, Jen. The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, thesis, May 2022; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1944328/: accessed September 15, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .

Back to Top of Screen