Working for a Living

Coinciding brilliantly with our post yesterday on the nagging uncertainty of making a career in future media, world-renowned best selling author Neil Gaiman said pretty much exactly the same thing in a keynote address at the London Book Fair which urged everyone to just try new shit (we're paraphrasing) to find what works:

In the Brian Hibbs column I quoted in my previous post, he also wrote this: We also live in an industry where a significant number of comics being published today are probably not making a...

“As more people are able to make a living doing it, I think we’re moving into an atmosphere were creators are able to define their careers more than creators in the past have been...

Making a living at Random House, saving a statue, listening to Al Jaffee

With Toykopop hovering somewhere between somethingness and nothingness, one thing is certain: owner Stu Levy will never give the creators back their books as long as he might be able to leverage them in...

The case of Jerry Ordway -- a talented veteran artist who is not getting as much work as he should— continues to resonate. It isn't really about Jerry Ordway. it's about comics, and about the manny many aspirants and passers by and the few who are called. Mark Evanier addresses the odds:

...and then take a long, long time to finish them. Just kidding. This new buddy pictures in the making will tour four cities as part of the UcreateComics Big Break Tour, starting in NYC...

Since we've been talking about career paths and what not for the last few days, here's another one: after turning down three TV development deals, including Comedy Central, the webcomic Cyanide & Happiness has decided to go DIY.

Following yesterday's much quoted post on wanting to be hired, artist Jerry Ordway responded to the outpouring of support with more on the perils of exclusives and the freelancers life:

It's a Monday early in the month, you just paid the rent and you're now wondering how you are going to live on celery for the next 27 days—that must be why so many posts on how to make a living at this here thing are coming out today. We've already seen Jerry Ordway plead to be taken seriously as a creator. But it's not just the old paper and ink crowd that's fretting this day. The webcomickers are at it too.

The gravy train usually has a very short ride.

Yesterday's kerfuffle concerned a convention that wouldn't name a colorist as a guest. Although a smallish type kerfuffle, it did lead to a day of praising hard working colorists on twitter, so good came of it.