DC introduced royalties before Marvel, structuring them so that they wouldn’t actually have to pay on many of their books with lower sales. At the time, people said there was no way Marvel would follow suit, as most of their books would command at least some royalties.

(This scrambled timeline has shown up before. I have told of one guy at MidOhioCon who was most upset that I had “become a millionaire” because of my royalties from UNCANNY X-MEN. He was in no way interested” in the fact that Marvel did not pay royalties—what they called “incentives in order to avoid even a whisper of implied ownership—and even if they had X-MEN sales were so low there would have been little recompense forthcoming.)

This planted an almost subliminal need in my young brain—that stories/characters/series should have their own visual identity. This of course crossed over into the brain inks.