It's always a sticky situation when creators come up with a new character for a major publisher. It's pretty much known going in that any new characters will immediately belong to the publisher. Creators could save their creations for their own personal projects but then they won't be able to interact with a huge established universe. Having your creation go on to become popular could be enough of a reward but let's be honest. If you created a hero that ends up being so popular they start appearing on cartoons or movies, you'd want a little more than just that warm feeling inside.
Bleeding Cool mentioned that Marvel has contacted "almost all their comic book creators over the last decade or so" to inform them about a new "Special Character Policy." Apparently in the e-mail that went out, the policy states "for certain uses of a character, provides some additional compensation, above and beyond what you've already received." The creator simply has to tell Marvel what character they created and their first appearance along with anyone else that worked on creating the character and a Special Character Committee will determine if the creator is eligible. If the character appears in a movie, game, etc, the creator could get some extra money.
The creator will then have to sign another Special Character Agreement contract. The details of this are not clear and it might give full ownership to Marvel. Now that Marvel is owned by Disney, it seems they want to make sure they avoid any lawsuits in the future. DC has been dealing with paying creators for some of the recent Batman movies.
This almost seems like a no-brainer. I would be curious to see what specifically the "new" policy requires them to do or relinquish. I'm also wondering what would happen if a creator doesn't agree to these terms. Would that circumstance have to go to the courts? How much ownership should a creator have? Should they give up some rights just to have their creations part of an established universe?
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