I’m still “on the Continent” as they say…I have the rest of my Angoulême pictures, and a big news wrap-up in the works, but I’ll probably just write on it on the flight home.

§ Zainab Akhtar has the 20 most anticipated graphic novels for 2014, in case you had any doubt that 2014 will rock it.

§ This link about how $100 a page is not too much money to pay an artist for a page of art has been going around, and it’s originally from Tumblr’s Faux Boy, aka Ryan Sygh, but you may have seen THIS version which includes supportive comments from Jamal Igle and Ross Campbell, among others. Tumblr does not make authorship very apparent, does it.

§ On the other hand, there’s this:


in which Bryan Hitch responds to Sean G. Murphy on the going rates and gives an EXCEEDINGLY rare look at page rates.

BTW, I’d agree with Murphy here, since the rates I often hear bandied about are around the same as when I was editing comcis more than a DECADE ago.The cost of everything has gone up since then except creative work.

§ Samantha Meier continues her extremely fascinating look at the origins of Wimmin’s Comix, this time examining early comics by women in terms of contemporary feminist ideals.

Through papers like It Ain’t Me Babe, women’s separatism emerged as a strong political stance for radical feminists, although it was not advocated by all, as feminist scholar Alice Echols notes. Separatism was generally seen as a “strategy for achieving social change, rather than as an end in itself.” When women’s voices were seen to be suppressed or silenced in the counterculture, radical feminists posited that one way to be heard as women was to create women’s-only spaces for free expression, until feminist ideologies became more pervasive.

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§ Oh yeah, then there is this OTHER link making the rounds, from a fellow named Brad Walker. Walker constructed the Iron Man statue covered with soda can tabs you see above, and when he wrote to Stan Lee’s Comikaze offering to exhibit it there and received a letter bac, accepting his offer and stating that Stan Lee would sign the statue, something of an adventure ensued, one written in the manner of a Vanity Fair article:

When I shared reservations about leaving my statue to go eat breakfast, Sam and the security guard assured me that the sculpture would be safe and remain where it was placed. With my artwork in trusted hands, Bryan, Peter, and I walked across the street to find some muffins.

If you think something bad is going to happen after the departure to find muffins, you are right, and Stan Lee is involved. On the one hand, I can see how Walker probably came off to security and staff as an annoyance. On the other, the owner of the show probably shouldn’t have tossed of some unkeepable promises that Walker then took to heart. It’s a sad story over all.

§ I found this link from months and months ago mysteriously in my bookmarks Kevin Huizenga on Mindfulness Meditation

10 COMMENTS

  1. From what I hear from cartoonist friends, page rates have actually gone down from what I was paying as an editor five years ago, never mind not keeping up with inflation. I think it’s an extinction-level crisis for the art form and there’s not much short of a total work stoppage that could change it.

  2. When I ghost full scripts for newspaper comic strips, I get about twice what I got when I last wrote for DC or Marvel sometimes like two decades ago. I haven’t done a lot of comic-book writing in the interim, but the rates I’m offered are less than those Big Two rates. My acceptance of comic-book gigs – which I’m starting to do – is based on whether I think the work will be fun or challenging enough to be fun, whether I will be allowed to do what I do without stressful editorial micro-managing and who I’ll be working with. Those have all become more important to me than page rates or Big Two recognition. I still want to get paid and paid on time, but I’m flexible on those rates.

  3. Sorry to say this, but page rates stay low because someone will still do the work at that rate. It’s a buyer’s market. Not saying that’s right, but there are so many people who want to create, that they will compete to do it for less and less money.

  4. “The cost of everything has gone up since then except creative work.”

    It’s probably not accurate to position comics artists and other creative workers as uniquely losing ground to inflation. Almost all workers’ pay has failed to keep up with inflation. Workers have adjusted by switching from single- to double-income households, by relying increasingly on credit, by adjusting their expectations, etc.

  5. When artists compete with everyone on the planet with a scanner and net, the pay will just go down. Also, editors mostly deal with writers and writers have more time to write several books and blog and make a name for themselves. Writers are pushing themselves to be the main voice on comic books, with the artists being treated little mere cogs (outside of about 10 artists). Want proof of how out of whack this is getting? Marvel has slashed artists rates, while keeping writers’ rates high–because writers will bitch if they lose money, while no one will fight for the artists. This system can’t be sustained with this imbalance of power.

  6. Why is it no comics journalism outlet wants to take the lead on Marvel and DC keeping Ameican rates low by hiring out to Spain, Italy, and Latin American on the cheap? Surely there’s a more significant story there than random tumblr outrages.

  7. @Chris – And CEOs are “allowed” to pay people very little, doesn’t make it nice, right, or good for the country en mass.

  8. I have no idea why comics artists don’t have their own union by this point, especially given the history. Why do you think actors unionized? The top tier gets paid millions, and everyone else would get a half a buck if it wasn’t a union town. And comics art is way more skilled work than acting. Crowded creative fields will always get screwed if they don’t have collective bargaining.

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