alexdecampi:What do comics artists get paid? A while back at Special Edition NYC I did a panel calle
alexdecampi:What do comics artists get paid? A while back at Special Edition NYC I did a panel called “Let’s Talk About Checks” and for it, I polled several friends who were Big 2 editors, indie editors, veteran colourists, line artists and writers about what were average work for hire rates for B/C list creators. (As in, yeah, Scott Snyder gets paid more than $100 a script for Batman.) This was the resulting slide. “work for hire” = things you don’t own, like Wonder Woman, the X-Men or Doctor Who. ”creator-owned” = you own it, like Zander Cannon owns Kaijumax or I and Carla own No Mercy or Kate Beaton owns every damn thing she ever did.The “Indie” column also functions as a good indicator of creator-owned advances for A/B list creators. (Yes, Virginia, they DO exist – don’t believe the publishers that try to fob you off with zilch and call it the “Image Deal”.)Stay awake. Nobody’s going to get on your case for taking a bad deal (hey, we all have rent to pay). In fact it’s almost guaranteed your first two deals in the industry will be bad deals. Just KNOW it’s a bad deal, is all I ask. Oh, and ALWAYS GET ROYALTIES for work for hire. EDITED TO ADD: Please see also this Storify of the discussion growing out of this post, which has some corrections to numbers (colour numbers are lower IRL, sorry, colourists) and a lot of firsthand commentary from other professionals: https://storify.com/alexdecampi/rates-of-pay-in-comics -- source link