For those that don’t remember, I’ve been interviewing lawyers and getting my legal papers in sync. Finally, I’ve found a lawyer I’ll tolerate. I don’t trust him, but I’ll tolerate him. $1000 for incorporation and all that nonsense, and then the other crew will do the copyright agreement.

While I’ve interviewed a six (seven?) lawyers now, all of them have had the same problem: “why not work for hire and retain all copyrights?” Now, I’m not ignorant to the fact that MAYBE, very little chance, my stories can be made into movies. And MAYBE, very little chance, the license of such a thing could be used to ween me off of the corporate teat I suck, and MAYBE, very little chance, I could be happy just writing comics.

Lawyers’ jobs are to look out after the client, however, in this case, I’m trying to create an Ellis Band book, which is to say, a book that has three artists and one writer, and everyone gets paid the same exact money. But to do this, I’m having to draw up the legal papers and it’s nearly breaking the bank before I’m getting the work done. I’ve always equated work-for-hire as fuck your contractor, now I understand WHY I need to use work-for-hire, but in the case of a creative endeavor… it’s just not worth it. Share your copyrights, my friends.

The moral of the story? I’m tired of being bounced around: I’m happy I didn’t go with the first few lawyers, but fuck it, I’m putting the money down. We incorporate on Wednesday. Now I got to decide on the name of my company, which I’m thinking is going to be Heresy Research Labs, llc. All in all, I’m looking at about $3000+ which I know is necessary, but I’m in tears thinking of all the art that would buy (almost an entire 20 page book).

Fuck, it’s shouldn’t be so expensive to be creative.