The Four Color Media Monitor

A short time ago, left-leaning Polygon wrote about the continuing campaign for comics creators to obtain better wages and health insurance, which has a hashtag on X spelled as #ComicsBrokeMe, from publishing companies:

In a landscape where movies based on comic books rake in billions of dollars, there’s an assumption that anyone in the comic book business is making tons of money. The reality is an entirely different matter: Since its earliest days, the American comics industry has been built on the exploitation of workers.

And surely the biggest irony is that quite a few of the same press sources covering it now never cared before, and likely won't tomorrow, if we're to talk about conservative-leaning creators who've been short-changed and cheated out of fortunes. Also consider how these same news sources don't give a damn if Bill Finger and Martin Nodell's original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, was/still is exploited for LGBT propaganda, very heavily forced down everyone's throats.

Some of those stories have become well known. DC Comics bought the rights to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman for $130 in 1938, leading to decades of legal battles. Legends like Jack Kirby and Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko struggled until their deaths for credit and appropriate payment for their creations, which built Marvel’s multimedia empire.

In 2023, those fights continue, and not just in superhero comics. The entire industry is undergoing a reckoning, from mainstream publishing to creator-owned spaces. This spring, a conversation that had previously existed only in whisper networks leaped out into the open, after the tragic death of comics creator Ian McGinty at the age of 38. In an obituary soon afterward, McGinty’s family said he died “of natural causes,” but his passing had already sparked a discussion of overwork. Cartoonist Shivana Sookdeo created the #ComicsBrokeMe tag, and thousands of people used it to share their heartbreaking experiences within the industry, such as poor treatment and poverty wages.

As a member of the comics and publishing community, Sookdeo told Polygon that the volume of responses didn’t surprise her. “I knew it was kind of just under the water like an iceberg. I don’t think anyone can be prepared for something to go that far, but I suspected.”

Struggling creators, however, are very aware that they can’t rely on the industry to fix itself. “At the end of the day, we’re dealing with corporations who only care about maximizing profits,” cartoonist Sloane Leong told Polygon over email. “Human dignity isn’t a factor for them.”

What if it turns out these same modern creators couldn't care less if the Big Two abuse their stable of creations, and worse, what if they were willing participants? In that case, why must we feel sorry for them? Better still, why must they even continue to work for Marvel/DC in their current incarnations, as the following confirms:

Polygon’s research bears that out, in some informal polling of fans standing in comic book signing lines at San Diego Comic-Con 2023. Most fans we spoke to assumed that comics creators were on salaries with full benefits. When asked how much they thought those creators might make in a year, the average answer was between $75,000 and $100,000. And those fans even thought that “wasn’t very much” for Big Two creators who write and draw characters like Batman and Superman.

The disparity between industry success and creator pay is usually chalked up to notoriously bad contracts; many creators signed away their intellectual property rights for minimal fees years before a Marvel- or DC-based film ever smashed the box office. But Hollywood corporations — Marvel has been a part of Disney since 2009, and DC has been affiliated with Warner Bros. since 1969 — have made it possible to expand on the advantages of those contracts by orders of magnitude greater than what was possible for Marvel or DC alone.

Well if that's too little, then again, why do modern creators continue to work for Marvel/DC in their current incarnations? There's so much they could surely accomplish at an indie publisher, yet they continue to provide satisfaction for DC/Marvel by providing them with any kind of employment opportunities at all. For now, it could be said that any artists and writers like Tom Taylor who work on major superhero fare without any respect for the core values makes it hard to feel sorry if they didn't get paid enough, and what if it turned out that, despite any claims to the contrary, they were actually delighted to work on humiliating Superman as a franchise no matter how low the wages? Bad contracting is correct though, but even if it were seemingly flawless, there are examples like Bill Willingham's Fables flap to consider.

Unionizing comics as a way to get fair pay and treatment has long been a conversation in the industry, but has been hard to bring to fruition for one key reason, as artist Joan Zahra Dark explains. “When comic writers and artists are considered independent contractors, they’re also considered ineligible to join unions, at least according to the National Labor Relations Act here in the US,” they say. “And those challenges to organizing, in no small part, lead to further issues of pay disparity, racial and gender inequality, and lack of benefits that are crucial to a better industry for everyone in it.”

There have still been attempts to bring comics workers together. In recent years, full-time production workers — such as editors, office workers, and graphic designers — at both Image Comics and Seven Seas Entertainment have organized to form unions within their companies. But, as Dark points out, “they’re opposed at every step.”

And here's where they venture into ambiguous propaganda, all without acknowledging the real goal of Image's union was to censor creative freedom. Is that something they get behind? Tsk tsk. This is very grave. If I were in charge of Image, I'd be fine so long as it was all about the payment, and creative issues were left for another time and place. Also, coming from a potential leftist, how do we know the talk of racial/gender inequality isn't based on wokeness? And then, they offer further clues everything's that could be just the case:

To McLauchlin, though, the Hero Initiative isn’t just representative of problems in the comics industry, but instead is a symptom of the wider issues that our society creates. “People need people. People need to help people,” McLauchlin tells Polygon. “Life can be nasty. In short, capitalism is a sharp, edgy instrument and it doesn’t come with many guard rails. So I guess the Hero Initiative is needed because this is society. This is humanity. This is what we do. This is what we should do.”

That people-first mentality is also behind a move away from traditional publishers and toward a model that pays creators fairly and respects time and craft. Jamila Rowser founded the award-winning Black Josei Press in 2018 to create a space centered on celebrating comics by and for people of color from marginalized genders and sexualities. In just five years, the company has become a beacon for what publishing comics could be, with inclusive titles, fair pay, and reasonable deadlines that have reframed the way people are making comics.

Once again, we're given a stealth lecture about wokeness that's not really about merit, citing a company that's been mentioned before that's been pandering to LGBT ideology. Did it ever occur to them that without merit, and too much heavy-handed politics, they can't expect much sales-wise, making it more difficult to achieve the residuals they demand? I just don't get their logic.

So how can creators protect themselves from the myriad of exploitative practices old and new? “I believe the only way to change this is by collectively pressuring publishers by withholding our labor to raise their rates on both the creative and editorial side and force them to be transparent in their business practices,” Leong says.

In the face of almost a century of mistreatment and exploitation, comics creators are still fighting to make art that they love in a way that’s sustainable and maybe even one day equitable. Whether reimagining publishing, creating a safety net from nothing, or building a community that will serve artists both new and old, there’s hope for the industry. But it doesn’t come from the work-for-hire system, intellectual property rights, or the corporations that uphold them; it comes from the creators themselves.

Well maybe now we're reading somebody talking sense, in the context of that it may be time to stop working for Marvel/DC. But sustainability and even equitability will only come about if they stop hammering us with all the wokeness that's become a sad staple in the past decade. If they don't comprehend that, they can't be surprised if nobody wants to buy any comics they produce, independent or otherwise.

Labels: censorship issues, dc comics, golden calf of LGBT, history, indie publishers, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, sales