Working for a Living

As was widely noted yesterday, writer Chris Roberson tweeted the end of his working relationship with DC Comics:

Once again, Dean Haspiel blogs about the difficulties faced by freelancers in the current event/editorially-driven superhero world in a piece plaintively called Make Mine Me:

The first post was so popular, here's a sequel! More of Alan Gardner's reports from the Success in Comics seminar.

Despite all the gloom and doom talk in the biz of late, there is still room for Success in Comics, Alan Gardner writes. In fact they held a whole seminar devoted to the topic!

After my long post yesterday, there were a few loose ends and misstatements and yet more viewpoints that deserved some linkage.

Wow! All hell has broken loose in comic book-land! Last week's surfeit of Aquarian-born comics creators created a busy circuit of birthday parties, and if I had a dime for every time the name "Gary Friedrich" came up, his legal fees would be paid. IP Wars are breaking out everywhere.Why here, why now? As always, follow the money. The most visible and lucrative segment of comics industry has, since the great distribution collapse of the '90s, been primarily in the IP business. Entire comics companies have sprung up just to create movie storyboards masquerading as comics. Big media corporations outfit swanky offices just for the purpose of developing existing IP. It's become a cottage industry. No wonder then, that controlling and profiting from IP has become THE major preoccupation of the comics industry from the CEO selling movies to the colorist selling prints.

As we end this week which has been obsessed with copyright, IP and the intersection of licensing and art—you should have heard the talk at FMB's b-day bash on Wednesday: wall to wall Gary Friedrich—we'll be the 2,649th persson to link to Bryan Lee O'Malley's Valentine's Day treat, a pinup of Ramona Flowers, Kim PIne, Lisa Miller and Wallace Wells, which, while quite notable on its own, is also a reminder of many things. For instance, as much as SCOTT PILGRIM has become a cult unto itself, and as joyful as it is to see new art with these characters, and it would be the easiest thing in the world for O'Malley to exploit the desire for more Pilgrim, instead he's been concentrating on his NEW project, Seconds.

You can be sympathetic to Gary Friedrich's current situation—older, broke and in bad health—while still being alarmed over all the issues his court case has raised. My own email and IMs are full of variant views on it. So let's trace the evolution of this a bit.

Even as the economy shows fitful signs of flickering back to life, the comics economy, which was "too small to fail" to really take much of a hit during the Great Recession, is still puddling along, under capitalized, under-recognized and with even the greatest cartoonists prone to spells of belt tightening. Comics have been traditionally immune to the effects of a recession—"cheap entertainment does well in bad times!" we've heard time and again—but the corollary is also true: Economic boom times rarely touch comics. During the late '90s and the first dot.com boom, one of the greatest eras of general prosperity in American history, comics were going through their WORST slump since the end of newsstand distribution, with sales numbers so low executives were crying over them. And then, paradoxically, comics began to do better even during the mini-recession following 9/11 and the end of the dot.com bubble.

Artist Sean G. Murphy (Joe the Barbarian) has posted a piece on his DA page called 5 Year Plan -- it's about planning for the future -- something very few young cartoonists seems to have the courage to do. I recently told a talented young cartoonist "Keep doing what you love until someone pays you for it" -- which is pretty basic "follow your bliss" advice. Murphy's is a little more practical:

Via Evan Dorkin's end of year post, which in happier notes, reveals his 2012 projects -- New BEASTS OF BURDEN, woot.

Comics are a business that is relatively insulated from the ups and downs of the economy: things are ALWAYS marginal. While there's no doubt but that the global recession has impacted the comics industry — especially with customers dealing with price increases — quite frankly, there wasn't a lot to cut back. There's a good living to be made in comics, and many people do, but no one is buying a yacht — or not very many anyway. And maybe comics are a survival industry because it seems like everyone is just one or two issues away from square one.