Comic Book Page Rates & A Living Wage - KEN PENDERS.COM

Rich Johnston recently revealed how much a penciler starting out at Marvel and/or DC Comics would make , figuring an artist penciling a full monthly book could make over $38K a year, plus sales from selling original art as well as commissions from fans. What he doesn’t state or talk about is the fact Marvel and DC represent the pinnacle of page rates for creators, ignoring the fact most creators make less – far less in most cases – working for other publishers. I speak from experience with a 40-year perspective of having worked in the business that pay for producing script and art in the comic book industry really hasn’t changed much during that time. If anything, it’s gotten worse. When I received my 1st professional comic book assignment, it was as a penciler for the DC Comics mini-series WHO’S WHO IN STAR TREK issue 1. It was for 6 pages of penciled illustrations and I was paid $75 a page. By the time I illustrated the pencil art for CAPTAIN ATOM issue 41, my page rate for pencils was $150. By the mid-1990s, I was earning $200 per page penciling an issue for Malibu Comics’ STAR TREK DEEP SPACE NINE series. I produced 3 issues worth of material. When I was being considered for the gig of full-time penciler on a series DC Comics was considering licensing from LucasArts, I was paid $250 a page for 3 pages of penciled & inked character sketches along with $150 per page for 3 pages of sample storytelling displaying the characters. I was told if the series was a go, I would be offered a contract committing me to 24 issues – the length of the license – along with the cover assignment for the book starting with issue 13. Had the assignment moved forward, I most certainly would not have had time to even submit sample pitches to Archie Comics for their SONIC THE HEDGEHOG series. But due to various factors beyond my or even DC Comics’ control, the project collapsed. During this time, I landed my 1st writing assignment for DC Comics. I don’t remember what it paid, but I know it was more than $50 for a page of script. When I submitted my 1st sample story pitches to Archie Comics for the SONIC series, it was all on spec with no guarantee of acceptance or payment. My partner Mike Kanterovich and I won approval to develop 2 of the 3 pitches submitted into scripts, which we were then told we had to submit in page-panel format. That meant submitting a rough layout of each page showing the placement of the characters and word balloons. As Mike didn’t draw, I created the final look of our scripts. We were paid $40 per page of script which we split down the middle, but I was never paid for my layouts, which whatever penciler was assigned would use as their template when drawing the pages. It was within a year or two after submitting our first scripts that Archie increased the page rate for scripts to $45. When I penciled a story I wrote, I received $85 per page. For inks, it was $75 a page. Lettering was $25 a page with coloring $20 a page back then. The difference between then and now with regards to coloring and lettering is that both are now generally done on a computer whereas both back then were done by hand. Coloring was generally applying markers or colored dyes to xerox copies then assigning an alpha-numeric code to specify which color was being depicted. I lasted so long on the SONIC series despite being pulled off the book at least twice for irritating the publishers with my stand of supporting Dan DeCarlo publicly while he sued Archie over JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS as well as SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH, was due to my track record regarding sales of the SONIC book as well as Archie’s practice of sticking with talent who adhered to their mandates, especially when it came to meeting deadlines. Slackers were not tolerated. What Rich also didn’t mention is that a creator’s longevity on any given book can never be taken for granted, as an editor who’s taken off a book and replaced with another editor generally means the writer and artists on