How much $$$ does a comic book writer/ artist make ??

[Senormac]

Anybody here have a general ball park figure for a yearly income for a writer or an artist who does one book a month ? I guess companies like Image pay you by your books sales and not a flat rate, but I mean, if Mark Schultz couldn't make a living at it.... it must be a tough road

 

Kirkman must be making good coin after going all AMC tv show on us.... but what about John Layman on CHEW .... ?

 

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

$3.50

[Senormac]

Are you speaking from experience ?

[RockMyAmadeus]

Are you speaking from experience ?

 

 

I was once paid $51 for a 30 hour stretch of work...with an hour of sleep in between....for helping Greg Buls sort through an entire comic store's inventory...

 

True story.

[Aces]

$3.50

Isn't that what the lochness monster wanted?

[Aces]

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

"I told you, woman, don' be givin that damn monster no tree fiddy!"

[That Ron Dude]

It varies so much that it is hard to say.

 

Charles Schultz was pulling in 50 million a year. Todd McFarlane was written up in Forbes years ago, as being worth a quarter of a billion. That was the same year that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman split and their combined fortune was also estimated at a quarter billion.

 

A comic artist can get money from the initial work-for-hire page, then he (or she) can sell the page, then he can get more money for high sales, then get even more for a reprint.

 

Years ago, when Michael Fleisher sued Jim Shooter, his earnings were disclosed as about $80,000 for the year. That was probably 25 years ago so count in inflation. Chris Clarement, if I remember it, earned about a quarter million. Other writers were named who earned amounts between the two.

 

I remember one artist on a big Marvel book who was earning about $75,000 a year but not paying tax on it. He got caught, which is why I now know what he was earning at the time.

 

I remember Al Williamson at a two day convention doing an awful lot of sketches at $40 a pop. I wonder if he paid taxes?

 

Another writer who worked for Jim Shooter at Defiant was getting $35 per page and said that there was no other place that a writer (of his ability, I suppose) could earn that kind of money. The writer had won a national award.

 

The most money I ever earned in a day (up to that point) was about $500 for lettering a comic that was copy light. I talked to a professional letterer about a year ago who had steady work but lived in a basement in a depressed town. He felt that the lifestyle came with the job.

 

I also wonder what ever happened to....almost everybody? Some of them landed on their feet after leaving comics, others did not. The career of a comic book guy seems to be short. The skills are not always transferable. It is common to talk to people who say that they thought by age 50 the work would be coming to them yet at that age they are still chasing the work. One friend told me that he had not worked in years and that he was keeping body and soul together by selling he bought on ebay when the money was coming in. Another associate bought printing machines to start up a company that would print the work of the naive people who believed that they could become graphic novelists. In fact, he was more naive then they. He printed little of their work.

 

There is also a certain type of comic book artist who gets occasional work that pays almost nothing while living in his mother's basement (or, in another version, in the girlfriend's attic). Do we average his income in with the other artists?

 

There is no pension. There is no dental plan. There are no sick days in your contract because you probably have no contract. You don't even get fired. You just don't get hired for the next job.

 

Anyway, does this sound reasonable? If you are a penciller on an established title at Marvel or DC you will probably make somewhere between school teacher money and dentist money while you have the book. You will not want to discuss your income because money is the last obscenity in our society. Whatever your income is you will do your best to avoid paying taxes on it. Like many self employed people, comic dealers for example, you will keep two sets of books. Your career will last about as long as a hockey player's. And like a hockey player, you might be sitting beside (at the convention or in the dressing room) a guy doing the same job as you that earns 20 times as much or only 1/20 of what you earn.

 

To finally some up... if the money is important, and it should be, and you are offered entry into medical school, take it. Warren artist Bill Stillwell did just that. If you can't get into medical school, weigh your opportunities. A friend of mine said, "Only become an artist if it is the only thing you CAN do [for spiritual fulfillment]. It is a hard way to make a living.

[shadroch]

In Joe Simons autobiography, he says the money he would have to make over $10,000 a week in todays money to equal what he and Kirby were making in the late 1940s, early 1950s.

I did a little detective work based on that book and tracked down his houses on Long Island. In the early 1950s, they lived in my hometown of Mineola, across the street from each other. A few years later, Simon moved to the next town, although it was only five houses away from his old one. After that he moved to Old Westbury, a very rich community- one that was featured in the tv show- Growing Up Gotti. His house is not there any longer, the property was subdivided and the old house torn down. From there he moved to an estate on the North Shore, a five acre enclave on the Long island Sound , which again is no longer intact.

His wife is said to have had an eye for real estate bargins so they may have lived a bit above their paygrade, housewise.

Strangely, Jack Kirby moved in the late 50s to a smaller house than he had had earlier, and lived there thru the early 70s when he moved to California fulltime. He'd bought a ranch house out there in the late 60s, but didn't live there fulltime until several years later.

 

As far as modern artists go, Joe Lisner took the money he made from self publishing Dawn and bought himself a very nice little estate in the Pocono mountains.

[Ares]

It its Bendis... to much

If its Busiek... Not Enough

[synch]

Its a fun question .. I'd really like to know for some of the guys who charge fees to have there book signed as a cgc ss

 

 

[Dale Roberts]

I would suspect alot of what determines how much someone makes is very similar to the rest of us. It depends upon how much we want to work at it.

 

[Prince Namor]

There's this really cool thing called Google and I typed in: comic book artist starting page rates

 

This was the first hit: Minimum Comics Page Rates 2010

But that's for Australia or something....

 

The second hit was: Beginning Pay for a Comic Book Artist

 

To make it easier, so that you don't have to click on anything, here's what it says:

 

Beginning Pay

Beginning comic book artists usually get paid by the page. Commonly, publishers contract illustrators to create art for monthly books, which means meeting strict deadlines. Interviewed by "The Independent" in 2008, comic book artist Jim McCarthy, author and illustrator of "Sex Pistols: The Graphic Novel," stated that a beginning comic book artist would likely to earn about $200 to $250 per black and white page. That rate increases to about $350 to $400 for full-color pages.

 

Supplemental Income

Many comic book artists also create stories and characters. In this case, artists can receive royalties on book sales, merchandise and spin-offs. The exact of amount is negotiated on a case-by-case basis. At the beginning level, "The Independent" reports that artists who also write their books earn an additional $50 to $65 per page, as of 2008 rates. Artists can also sell their original panel artwork. Beginners might only earn $100 per page, but veterans can make tens of thousands for artwork that has achieved iconic status.

 

Variable Factors

Comic book artists often work as independent contractors, so pay varies by the number of projects. Publishers determine their own pay rates, so even at the entry level, artists are likely to earn more at prominent publishers than at independent presses. Some artists even work for free to get a foot in the door. Pay rates and salaries vary greatly according to experience, reputation, workload, project and publisher.

 

Advanced Pay

In 2008, top pay for the most prominent comic book artists was about $1,000 per page. Books usually run about 22 pages and are published monthly, so one book can equal a monthly paycheck of more than $20,000 for advanced illustrators. Comic book artist John Cassaday, illustrator of such prominent Marvel titles as "Captain America" and "X-Men," reported a salary of $250,000 when interviewed by "Portfolio" in 2008.

 

[Kevin76]

Only unique superstar artists make the huge money,but you have to remember, this isn't the early 90's anymore. Plus you have to slave over an art board for 18 hours a day, No "my shift is over at 5pm".

[DiceX]

Starting out penciller makes about $60-100 per page. Working for Marvel or DC, they make around $80-120 per page.

 

Starting out inker makes $50-80 per page. With Marvel or DC, around $60-100.

 

Colorists make diddly-squat. Flatters get $10-15 per page. Colorists get $20-30 per, unless they are some abnormal talent, then they get $50-60 per, and this if friggin rare. Insanely rare.

 

No idea how much letterists make. I'd guess somewhere around the colorist numbers.

 

The prices jump for more popular artists. Few of them make great money. The ones that do are often hustling themselves at multiple books per month.

And while on the topic of hustling, that's what an artist has to constantly do. They have to sell themselves on a daily basis and try to spin a web of work a few months at a time. Given the insane time investment it takes to keep themselves in work, it's a wonder they get any done.

It helps to have a husband/wife team, where one does the art and the other acts as their agent and pimps them out to the highest bidder.

 

The job is anything but glamorous unless you get in a position like Jim Lee or Adam Hughes. It's easier for guys like this to get work, but they have to keep churning out work to stay on top. If they squander it, they're back to fighting to get work again.

 

 

[Prince Namor]

What's a flatter?

[DiceX]

The flatter takes the b/w scan of the page and fills in the basic areas that are different colors. They don't have to be accurate colors, it's just something that speeds up what the colorist does by making it easy for them to select the areas to color.

 

It will basically look like this when they are finished with it...

 

 

[shadroch]

Im not sure if it is still the same but back in the 80s, a typical breakdown for a 24 page monthly would see the penciler getting about 50-60% of the OA, the inker and writer splitting about 30% and the letterer and colorists getting a page or two each. Be the colorist or letter on a book with a hot artist and you can sell the page you got for more than you were paid for the job.

[DiceX]

Im not sure if it is still the same but back in the 80s, a typical breakdown for a 24 page monthly would see the penciler getting about 50-60% of the OA, the inker and writer splitting about 30% and the letterer and colorists getting a page or two each. Be the colorist or letter on a book with a hot artist and you can sell the page you got for more than you were paid for the job.

 

This is still true in most cases. Though most colors are done by sweat shop color houses and they don't get a cut of the artwork. It's just hack and slash colors. Just nice enough to sell and get by with paying the actual artists next to nothing.

 

 

[Prince Namor]

Man, if you could be the House Flatter for Marvel or DC and do, 20 books a month, you do ok for yourself.

I've done basic coloring like that of my art in Photoshop and it seemed pretty easy.

 

Back before computers, didn't they use some kind of number system for the colorist to go from (using, obviously a much smaller range of colors)?