There's a lot of contract deals with writers and artists but many of the non-House guys are obviously freelancers. I mean they might get exclusivity deals with times and dates on them, but I don't know that a huge corporate lay-off comes with severance or any kind of radical fundamental shift. You uphold your contract, pay it out, hopefully get to finish the work, but this year in particular, hoo boy, hard to say they'll be able to make it work for everybody.
But in-house, house artists, the funner, stronger editorial voices, so on, so forth ... even the marketing crew who do their best to raise the profile, I feel pretty bad for.
Comics are a radical medium that will never die. But decompressed expensive monthly comics that often have lackluster return-on-investment for readers, and have to pay creatives actual living wages to do the work on a deadline, that aren't even carried at your local corner store on a spinning rack that kids can get hooked on? Yeah ... how they can run without a skeleton crew is beyond me. I feel like their margins frankly can't be "that good". Like, I understand razor-thin margins, so anything that's not "one bad week spells doom for my restaurant, can we do this with half the labor?" sounds like heaven to me these days.
So I definitely understand the business end of it. Still there's a lot of stuff that sounds relatively terrifying as a consumer here, from a "uh, what the heck are they doing and when and how does this shake out and how does it affect books I like?" point of view, and as an artist and writer who would like other artists and writers with steady gigs in fields they love who lucked out not to get screwed by corporate reshuffles or planetary pandemics.
Retro315 no more. Anonymity is so 2005.
retrowarbird.blogspot.com
Are there really a bunch of people blaming the comics for this? I've seen a post or two here along those lines, but....I mean come on, this is *obviously* about the pandemic and crippling loss of revenue 2020 has thrown at all of us, and not about a twenty page funny book not appealing to someone.
*Most* people know that, right?
"We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another, as if we were one single tribe."
~ Black Panther.
The indie crowd that has emerged in the last couple of years was very much right about a lot of this stuff. Strong Businesses have thrived and even prevailed during this crisis and the weak ones are currently going out of business or restructuring. This is very much on them.
DC comics is going to shrink considerably and Marvel will follow soon after. I really hope these companies are smart enough to continue to weed out all of the toxic individuals who turned the comic industry into what it is today.
Idea's Open Discussion And Growth. Silencing Idea's Confirms Them To Be True In The Minds Of Those Who Hold Them. The Attempt Of Eliminating Idea's Proves You To Be A Fool.
Its the usual suspects as you rightly pointed out.
The guys saying this don't deserve to be listened to and frankly I don't feel they need a platform here or anyone else for that matter. Besides the obvious bigotry, I dont really care for the opinion of 40+ year old man babies that haven't even read comics in years and are jealous of others success.
I think most know this.
I also think we know the following characters are safe: Bruce Wayne, Richard Grayson, Barbara Gordon, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Diana - princess of the Amazons and etcetera.
I think most of us are worried that this streamlining of business will streamline some of our favorite characters into comic book limbo...or maybe worse.
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/dc-c...ses-to-follow/
Looks like we'll get official word soon
You actually read comics. Lots of these "guys" haven't picked up comics in years and don't know their Al Ewings from Eve Ewings.
Funny thing is some of these 40+ year old jokers actually want comics to go to back to the "extremmmmmmmmeee!!!!" era of comics.
Yeah...that joyless, soulless era of comics.