Jacobtldr Categories Comics
7 days
30 days
All time
Recent
Popular
The closest comics has to games industry-style "crunch," IMO, is SUPER low work-for-hire pay on licensed titles that can damn well afford to do better. But I rarely see that kind of work breaking people the way game production does.
Comics is just incredibly poor, is the issue.
Despite huge growth the last 10 years, doubling & re-doubling in size, we're still 1/10th the size of prose publishing. And despite the occasional announcement of multi-book, 6-figure deals, that's still beyond rare in the scene. A LOT of people wash out of comics due to poverty.
I'm 41 now, and I've see the process in friends/acquaintances. Cartoonists look up and around at age 35 or so, and realize what they make won't buy them a house, or let them afford a car or the children they want. So, they become storyboarders, or illustrators, or something else.
And frankly, maybe that's the smartest choice, depending on who you are. Comics is kind of weirdly labor-intensive with a lower monetary return on time investment that nearly any other storytelling medium.
To quote a Skinnee J, you does this cuz you loves this.
(But that doesn't stop some folks from being convinced, against all evidence, that comics will make them rich, somehow.
I dunno, maybe it will? MAYBE? But probably not.)
Comics is just incredibly poor, is the issue.
Do you think that happens because it's a dream many people have and relatively easy to start pursuing so you must sift through the masses to find the "real ones" or is it like the gaming industry that is constantly grinding their new hires in a way that drives them away?
— Nascimento (@Guiguimn) October 12, 2020
Despite huge growth the last 10 years, doubling & re-doubling in size, we're still 1/10th the size of prose publishing. And despite the occasional announcement of multi-book, 6-figure deals, that's still beyond rare in the scene. A LOT of people wash out of comics due to poverty.
I'm 41 now, and I've see the process in friends/acquaintances. Cartoonists look up and around at age 35 or so, and realize what they make won't buy them a house, or let them afford a car or the children they want. So, they become storyboarders, or illustrators, or something else.
And frankly, maybe that's the smartest choice, depending on who you are. Comics is kind of weirdly labor-intensive with a lower monetary return on time investment that nearly any other storytelling medium.
To quote a Skinnee J, you does this cuz you loves this.
(But that doesn't stop some folks from being convinced, against all evidence, that comics will make them rich, somehow.
I dunno, maybe it will? MAYBE? But probably not.)