The News Blog of Comics Culture
The Penny Arcade Report is a video game news and commentary site run by….well, we’ll let you figure it out. Yesterday editor Ben Kuchera ran down the economics of running a website in dollars and cents. Although he’s talking about video games, it all applies equally to comics journalism:
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:
Tweet 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 living wage for anyone involved — comics that sell just five thousand copies into a national market are probably [...]
Tweet “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 able to,” he observes. “Relying on Marvel and DC is no longer becoming a viable option, because the contracts aren’t [...]
Making a living at Random House, saving a statue, listening to Al Jaffee
Tweet 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 Hollywood. Fair enough; he paid the money and the creators signed those bad contracts. In case you came in late, [...]
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:
Tweet …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 on May 4th, 2013. (That’s also Free Comic Book Day.) And who is UcreateComics, you ask? According to the PR [...]
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.
People are doing it…EVERYWHERE> Let’s dive right in.
Tweet In a follow-up to his hit post on the economics of print comics, Jim Zub is back with a look at digital comics metrics, including the percentages taken by each step in the pipeline complete with PIE…charts. A lot of people have talked about the need for cheaper digital comic prices to drive impulse [...]
TweetAmong other similar triumphs, letterer Joe Caramagna has recently become the most prominent letterer in Amazing Spider-Man history, having now worked on over 100 issues of Marvel’s flagship title. Not just content with Spider-Man, however, Caramagna also works on Marvel titles as diverse as Avengers Academy, Daredevil, Captain Marvel, Uncanny X-Men and New Avengers. Simply [...]
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