Research questions on Golden Age comic book artists

[John C]

I considered a "but I'm not bitter" aside, actually.

For years, though, people didn't understand what I meant by "if I was teaching for the money, I'd be in deep trouble."  But the change in overseers doubled the rate a few years back, so it's vaguely plausible.  Or would be, if they weren't closing the campus.

(Yes.  While the rest of the world is trying to pressure kids to go into science and engineering, we're actively reducing capacity.  Genius!)

I do like donuts, though...

[David Lawrence]

My first published comic book scripting in 1986 I got $25 a page.  Recently did two entire series for $30 and right now I'm doing a pair of stories for $35 so I'm not exactly keeping up with inflation.  (Of course, I'm not exactly working at DC or Marvel.)

It's certainly possible that Beck was making pretty damn close to his Fawcett rates of 20 years earlier.  And when you take away the perks of his position at Fawcett...and add his dislike for DC's take on the character...

Honestly, having read some letters by CC...I think he would have done Cap practically for free if he was happy with the stories.

[NobbyNobbs]

I have looked up the intreview I was talking about, it is "Shop Talk" in Kitchen Sink's Will Eisner's Spirit Magazine no. 41, not Will Eisner Quarterly.
Acording to Beck, he got $50 per page from when he started on his own in 1940, and at DC he got $65 per page in 72/73 that included pencils, inks, and lettering.
The issue is from 1983, and according to Beck he had been contacted the week before, about getting back into comics, and he had demanded $500 per page, and full control of the scripts, and that scared them away.

[David Lawrence]

$50 a page in 1940?  Wow...that sounds really high for 1940 comics rates, especially since Captain Marvel wouldn't have really caught fire yet.  Of course CC would know better what he was paid than I would.  The $65 in 1973 sounds about right.

Of course, rates didn't climb steadily over the years.  For much of the 1950s rates were lower than they had been several years earlier.  I don't think rates at Marvel reached rough parity with DC till the 1970s, and if I'm not mistaken DC rates are still a bit better than Marvel.

[apollinero]

This article was just linked to in the CGC Forum; I have not read it yet but supposedly it is a correspondence between creators and their boss and payments are discussed

http://thecomicsdetective.blogspot.ca/2013/01/sincerely-yours-busy.html

[lucycandy]

Not that I doubt the Eisner article but I suspect that both factors were at work.

[chaard]

Let's go beyond what a creator was paid. What were the economics of Golden Age comics? What was a typical total cost of producing a comic? And, how many issues would a publisher need to sell to avoid going broke? "Total cost" includes office and staff costs, staff or freelance creators, printing, distribution, returns, the whole enchilada. Revenues include subscriptions, sales, ads, etc. Break-even would obviously differ amongst publishers, but some patterns should emerge. Does anyone here know of any studies of comics economics?

[Roygbiv666]

Although geared towards modern comics, there might be something buried in this page:

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/08/26/minimum-wage-price-of-comics/

I vaguely recall recently reading a DC comic talking about their then price change to 30 cents (!), and I think they said they get about a third of the cover price.

There's also this:
http://www.comichron.com/

Let's go beyond what a creator was paid. What were the economics of Golden Age comics? What was a typical total cost of producing a comic? And, how many issues would a publisher need to sell to avoid going broke? "Total cost" includes office and staff costs, staff or freelance creators, printing, distribution, returns, the whole enchilada. Revenues include subscriptions, sales, ads, etc. Break-even would obviously differ amongst publishers, but some patterns should emerge. Does anyone here know of any studies of comics economics?

[chaard]

@Roy: Thanks! That ComicsAlliance article is MOST fascinating, and yes, I could probably dig out some of the economic info I asked about. The Comichron site looks a bit harder to deal with, and doesn't seem to relate to Golden Age at all, but maybe I just haven't looking deeply enough.

Anyway, the ComicsAlliance article makes a telling argument: comics sales are 'way down because prices are 'way high, compared to minimum wage. Maybe prices are high due to production costs of boutique products. But producers can't grow markets with high prices. Nor with gimmicks like the new JLA #1 having 50 DIFFERENT COVERS! Me mind boggles.

[SuperScrounge]

I was flipping through my copy of Superhero Comics of the Golden Age: The Illustrated History by Mike Benton and came across some info related to this thread.

Fox Publishing
"Kirby was paid a "fifteen-dollar-a-week salary".

Editor-in-chief Joe Simon got "eighty-five dollars per week".

Binder Studio
Paid artists between "75 cents and $1.25 per page". However this was an assembly line process with different artists handling different aspects of the production process: "roughs, pencils (background, secondary figures, and main figures), inking (background, secondary figures, and main figures), and lettering." for "a cost of eight dollars a page."

Writer Otto Binder got "two dollars a page in 1939. By 1941, he was up to three dollars a page".

Fawcett
Before they started publishing comics CC Beck land an illustrator job "He was paid a salary of fifty-five dollars every two weeks to do the jobs of two artists he replaced".

Funnies, Incorporated
Writer Mickey Spillane was paid "almost as much money as the artists". (I couldn't see a rate for the artists, though.)

General
Writer Otto Binder recalled page rates shooting up through the war to a standard "ten dollars a page." ("The Golden Rut".  )

Writer William Woolfolk was the highest paid writer in the 1940s "I made $15,000 a year when people were making $1,000." Of course he liked to work for four different publishers at any given time.

Woolfolk also recalled that right before the war ended comics "were selling 102 percent; that is, they were selling beyond the spoilage rate."

Newsweek estimated that in 1943 comic sales "added up close to $30,000,000."

[Yoc]

Thanks for the info SS!

[SuperScrounge]

Found some more information, same book.

Pre-Superman, Major Nicholson-wheeler paid Siegel and Shuster "$5 a page".

Siegel recalls Famous Funnies was paying "something like $5 a page".

Before Batman, Bob Kane "was making between thirty and fifty dollars a week".

Writer Frank Gruber "wrote western comic scripts for Chesler at $1.50 per page".

Lou Fine "joined the Eisner-Iger comic shop at a starting salary of ten dollars per week" and later Busy Arnold hired Fine for "three times his current salary."
(Whether that was still $10 a week, or more, wasn't specified.)

The Eisner-Iger shop "were selling pages at five and seven dollars each (with a net profit of $1.50)".
Which leaves the expenses for each page at $3.50 to $5.50 a page (hmm, paper, pencils, pens, writers, artists, letterers... yikes!)

[narfstar]

Really interesting thread