and Diane Noomin. Like Rip Off Press, it was founded as an alternative to the existing underground publishers, which were perceived as not being honest with their accounting practices. The short-lived genre publisher Atlas/Seaboard Comics, which operated from 1974–1975, offered some of the highest rates in the industry, plus return of artwork to artists and author rights to original character creations. Up to the mid-1970s, most comic book publishers kept all original pages, in some cases destroying them in lieu of storing them safely. By 1974, James Warren's Warren Publishing began changing the industry's work-for-hire dynamic by offering higher page-rates than DC Comics or Marvel Comics, and allowing the artists to retain their original artwork, giving creators the option to gain extra income by selling the pages to collectors. Nonetheless, Warren Publishing retained all creator's rights. As James Warren once told artist Bernie Wrightson: By 1975 or 1976, both DC and Marvel also began returning artists' original pages to them. During the 1970s, artist Neal Adams was politically active in the industry, and attempted to unionize its creative community. Adams attempted to form the Comics Creators Guild, with a contentious meeting in May 1978 attended by Cary Bates, Howard Chaykin, Chris Claremont, Steve Ditko, Michael Golden, Archie Goodwin, Paul Levitz, Bob McLeod, Frank Miller, Carl Potts, Marshall Rogers, Jim Shooter, Walt Simonson, Jim Starlin, Len Wein, and Marv Wolfman. The effort failed to get off the ground. In addition, Adams, along with the Joker creator Jerry Robinson, notably and vocally helped lead the lobbying efforts that resulted in Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster receiving decades-overdue credit and some financial remuneration from Superman publisher DC Comics. Marvel Comics had a mixed history of responding to the issue of creator's rights. In 1978, Marvel and Howard the Duck writer Steve Gerber clashed over issues of creative control, and Gerber was abruptly removed from the series. This was the first highly publicized creator's rights case in American comics, and attracted support from major industry figures. Gerber subsequently launched a lengthy legal battle for control of Howard the Duck, culminating in a 1981 lawsuit. 1980s In 1980 Marvel created the mature readers anthology Epic Illustrated, offering its writers and artists ownership rights and royalties in place of the industry-standard work for hire contracts. The success of Epic Illustrated led to the 1982 formation of the long-running imprint Epic Comics, which specialized in