Jennifer DeGuzman writes about the financial realities of being a comic book creator:

Your too-high expectations will probably be dashed, leading you to question the meaning of your life and perhaps life in general.

This is especially true if you have an artistic temperament. And let’s face it: You’re an artist. What other kind of temperament are you supposed to have? Your work is important to you. You work hard on your comic, and then after a few issues its sales have dipped below 2,000 copies (and this is when it’s still doing all right), then below 1,500, and then below 1,000, whereupon it is canceled.

I will be frank: We have had to do this at SLG recently. As we tell the creators, this is not an accurate reflection of the quality of work. ICV2 has proclaimed 2006 “A Very Good Year (For Comics)”, but that was not true for us. When “event” comics from the big guys are driving an increase in pamphlet sales, it seems the little guys suffer for it. Good comics get canceled and their creators, good artists and storytellers, have to struggle with self-doubts and disappointment.

You, if you are an independent comic creator, might find yourself in this position. Then again, you might not get that far. When there are bills to be paid, food to be bought, a family to support, you might decide you need to spend your time working on something else that will actually make you enough money to live on.

Much, much more in the link, and highly recommended reading.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 8:55 am and is filed under Creators, Independent, Industry, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.