No, I don't buy that, tons of talented artists out there begging to get these jobs (and plenty of perfectly serviceable art on comics), and the pay is not bad even at the rates for non-names for work you can do, at home, at night or whenever if you have a day job (or working from home like everyone in the business is doing anyway). I see plenty of good art from small indies, how much can they be paying? Nop, someone at marvel thought this was ok, or looked abstract artistic, or expressionistic, or whatever. that's fine for my psycho clown paintings, not for published works. even at the low end of $100 a page it seems the pay is not so low as to expect that poor quality.