Things Overheard In The Hall Of Justice

SUPERMAN: …maybe I’m not explaining this properly.
WONDER WOMAN: No, you’re explaining it quite well. I just don’t agree with the concept.
SUPERMAN: How can you believe that writers don’t deserve compensation for creating intellectual property?
WONDER WOMAN: Because they don’t create it. Artistic inspiration flows from Apollo.
FLASH: The guy over on Earth-50 who’s in the Authority?
WONDER WOMAN: Very funny, Wally. The god Apollo. Music, poetry and literature are his province.
BATMAN: I’m Batman.
SUPERMAN: Uh huh – look, Diana, even if I conceded that all artists owe a debt to Apollo for being able to create art – and I don’t, I’d like to stress that – then the residual fee for screenwriters is akin to royalties for novelists or playwrights, and an expression of consideration for allowing the work to be created.
WONDER WOMAN: But Apollo -
SUPERMAN: All right, for allowing humans access to the work that sprung from Apollo’s noble brow, okay?
WONDER WOMAN: Regardless of quality, it seems.
SUPERMAN: What’s that supposed to mean?
BLACK CANARY: I think she’s talking about the way Barry always used to bitch about that television show.
WONDER WOMAN: Precisely.
FLASH: You know, he really hated that they got Mark Hamill to play Trickster instead of him.
SUPERMAN: Regardless of the other qualities of that television show, you have to admit that it did poorly in the ratings and was cancelled, which means that, if you think the writers wrote a bad show, that they were thus compensated appropriately.
BATMAN: I am the night.
WONDER WOMAN: Sure – but why not simply allow these writers to negotiate individually? I see no need for a union in this instance. We are not speaking of workers toiling for a single corporate entity. There exists a market.
SUPERMAN: An extremely limited one. There are only six production studios in America, and they control just about all the production and all of the distribution of entertainment media in the country and the majority of it internationally.
WONDER WOMAN: But nothing stops these writers from attempting to leverage one studio against another for their own gain.
SUPERMAN: The self-interest of the studios keeps that from happening. Say I’m a writer. Why would Sony seek to give me a larger share of the profits than Fox?
WONDER WOMAN: To attract the best talent.
SUPERMAN: Writers will come work for me anyway, because people with an innately creative bent, as much as they want fair compensation, want to create more. If I discourage one in five writers from ever working for me, that still leaves eighty percent of them willing to work for me at the rates that I set.
WONDER WOMAN: But then quality will out, and the public -
SUPERMAN: Remember how much you complained about 300?
FLASH: Oh, god, don’t get her started again.
WONDER WOMAN: It was not historically accurate! Leonidas was not an honourable man, and the Spartans were resolute pederasts, and -
SUPERMAN: My point is that the public’s tastes are both fickle and often ignore excellent work.
BLACK CANARY: Somebody’s still not over their novel selling poorly.
SUPERMAN: I’m not saying The Janus Contract was a masterpiece, Dinah. I’m just saying it was better than The Da Vinci Code. I mean, we’ve gone back in time. I’ve met Da Vinci, for Pete’s sake…
BATMAN: The city calls to me.
FLASH: That reminds me, when is J’onn going to get back so we can swap Batman’s mind out of that chimp and into his own body?

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