Uh, I have never denied the existence of royalties. If you'd like, pull your head out of your ass and check. My point is that they don't produce nearly as much revenue for creators as you seem to think, particularly when we're talking about a graphic novel that sells sells several thousand copies at best and with sales dramatically falling from that level in a very short period of time.

Do you have any numbers or facts to back up your apparent belief that creators are just rolling in dough from royalties?

Mike

No, I'm literally saying that your idea that there is some actual standard of art is complete hogwash. Pull your head out of your ass.

You may as well have.



My point is they're more than zero, which is more than everyone else gets paid for work they did last year.



When we're talking about the segregation of comics into specialty shops, and that disorganized shitpile mess at Barnes & Noble, sure.

Now, would you care to pull your head out of your ass and think about solutions, or would you rather keep it inserted and observe your own bellyache?

I've earned far, far more in royalties on SWAMP THING than I earned while penciling or writing SWAMP THING; that is due, in part, to the share in Constantine I earn as co-creator of the character.

That said, SWAMP THING and Constantine et al continue to earn for DC/Vertigo annually, and its a pretty substantial sum it continues to earn annually.

Discussion of royalties as somehow being "more than everyone else gets paid for work they did last year" implies begrudging this earning; remember, please, that a sizeable portion of "everyone else" getting "paid for work they did last year" earned those paychecks every week, many (still) with benefits, neither of which is true for about 99.6% of freelancers working in any creative media of any kind.

See, this is what I mean. Recognizing that some people are better writers and some people are better drawers is not trying to enforce "some actual standard of art". You're having some sort of argument in your head where you're making up both sides so you always look good. Out here with the rest of us, I'm saying that most creators don't write as well as they draw or draw as well as they write, which is why comics are, in general, a collaborative medium. You're denying that creators can be better at writing than drawing or vice versa.

As I said, it's an effective approach to argument...if you don't care about actually convincing anyone of anything.

Mike

1. I never denied the existence of royalities or anything like that. Stop making up both sides of the discussion and respond to what I am saying.

2. You brought up the subject of royalities in the context of Adam Warren and EMPOWERED, clearly implying that royalties from his past work would compensate for the fact that he's cut the production of the book in half.

Well, I doubt EMPOWERED is selling great guns outside the Direct Market but I don't know and neither do you. What we have are Direct Market numbers and they show the 6th volume of EMPOWERED came out in September 2010 and sold 4,276 copies to retailers. No other volume of EMPOWERED made the Top 300 list for graphic novels in September. No volume of EMPOWERED made the Top 300 list for graphic novels in October. No volume of EMPOWERED made the Top 300 list for graphic novels in November.

Now, selling 42 hundred copies of a graphic novel, even after splitting it with everyone else along the production, publishing, distribution and retail chain, is going to get a creator a decent chunk of change. But the evidence shows that Adam Warren is AT BEST making pocket change off of reprinting of EMPOWERED volumes. I don't know what else Mr. Warren has done, but doubt he's making more off of it than he is his original work.

Some creators, like Mr. Bissette, are able to produce work of such outstanding quality that it continues to sell years and even decades after it originally came out. In those cases, they'll end up earning more off of royalties than they did for the original work. That somewhat speaks to the fact that comic creators don't get paid much in the first place. But even in those cases, I would bet those royalties are additional income that supplements the work the creators are doing, in and out of comics, to make a living. Mr. Bissette making more in royalities for SWAMP THING than he did the original work seems impressive, but less so when you realize that money was paid out in smaller chunks over a much longer period of time.

And, of course, the vast majority of creators don't ever do anything that sells as well for as long as SWAMP THING.

To sum up - royalties exist and creators certainly like getting them, but they really aren't the financial bonanza you imply they are.

Mike

PS: I earn nothing off all the work I did from 1976-99 except SWAMP THING and Constantine, my 24 HOUR COMIC story (Nat Gertler always sends statement/royalty!), and my two books for a regional publisher, THE VERMONT GHOST GUIDE and THE VERMONT MONSTER GUIDE.

Royalties aren't anything to be counted on.

It's manna from heaven, when and if it ever manifests.

Just want to say I think a creator should have the right to completely sign away the rights to his or her work. We get it, that's a bad idea and a decision which has led to untold misery in the comic book field (among other places), but it's also a legitimate free will choice that must not be taken away. No legal system is going to function if property rights can't be 100% acertained, and "party A gives party B money in exchange for property X" is the way the legal system is going to work. If Gerhard wants to sever all ties with Dave, Aardvark-Vanaheim and/or "Cerebus", he should have that right, just as much as Dave should. Or Deni for that matter.

This is the sort of thing that benefits everybody in the pond, not just the biggest fish. For the big companies, it's more noticeable because they have to relentlessly protect their property. They have to keep paying the lawyers to stay on top of every legal angle in every area of exploitation, even ones they aren't going to use, and they have to bring in enough money to pay for the vast overhead this creates. If something as simple as "we own 100%" is so difficult, could they really accomodate more nuances? But the smaller players who can see nuance - in one of the Myrant comments, Nat Gertler brought up some of the nuances he was dealing with re: Salimba - benefit as well from being able to write 'the end' on relationships whether they are personal, professional or creative.

No. Alan Moore is popularly regarded as being a better writer than "drawer." However, his Maxwell the Magic Cat strips are absolutely charming. Would they have been better if Steve Bissette had drawn them? Hell, no. Just because you deem someone better at doing one process than some other process does not invalidate the work if that someone decides to do it all themselves.



And you're veering dangerously close to the philosophies of Karl Marx ("from each according to their ability").

No, I didn't. I brought up Empowered as an example of original graphic novels, complete stories that were not originally serialized in floppy format.

What was that again about making up both sides of the argument?