JB, I don't mean to pry, & I understand if you don't care to answer this. I have a friend (who is a fan of your work) who gripes about the price of comics today. He always finds a way to bring his arguments around to slamming you for getting $300,000 for the Superman reboot. Is that figure even close? I don't care one way or the other, I just want to shut him up about this, because I hear it a LOT.
Frankly, I think the marketplace should always set the salaries that artists, writers, actors, & athletes get paid. If Jim Carrey can get $20 million a picture, good for him. If A-Rod gets his $25 million a year, fine.
I really get sick of hearing people bitch about all of this.
I got nothing but my page rate for the Superman reboot. Back then, that was about $65 per for pencils, I think $50 for inks and something like $35 for script. Might have been a bit higher, but even with 3 monthly books it would not have totaled $300,000, I don't think. Even if it did, that would have been based on my page rate, not any kind of special bonus. Wolfman finagled some kind of bonus for "creating" Lex Luthor, which I did not know about at the time, but I had no such deal.*
There was a "completion bonus" that was paid every 12 issues, but everyone under contract got that.
*Some of you may have heard the story of my having gone to do Superman fully expecting to make less money that I was making at Marvel, for which John Buscema called me a "schmuck".
Just for my own curiosity, I just whipped out my calculator and tapped in some figures. My current page rate is quite a bit higher than what I was getting 20 years ago for my work on Superman, but if we pretend my rate then was the same as my rate now, and calculate how much work (how many jobs) I did on each of the 3 Superman titles, it would come out to just about $300,000. Which means there's no way I made that much from just my page rate back then.
To repeat an old story, this reminds me of the guy at MidOhioCon about 15 years ago who insisted -- loudly -- that I had made a million dollars doing UNCANNY X-MEN. I tried to explain, as patiently and quietly as possible, that there were no royalties back then, and even if there had been the book barely sold enough to pay royalties, and that would have been based on a 35¢ cover price. On the flight home I did the math, and calculated that, with the very best royalty deal, calculated as if every issue sold as well as the best selling issue of the run, my 3 years on UNCANNY would have netted me about $5900, or roughly $160 per issue.
To put that in perspective, when my stuff started running in CLASSIC X-MEN the royalty/reprint payments were about $1100 per issue!
By now I expect I have made a fair piece of change off the Dark Phoenix Saga, what with it being reprinted twice a month n'all -- but the thing to keep in mind is that Chris and I were paid nothing more than our page rates -- for me, that was about $35 -- at the time. And, indeed, expected no more. Royalties and even reprint rates did not exist.
For those particular issues of UNCANNY, which were 17 pages, I probably made about $3500.
(I can still remember how it felt, taking my cheques to the Toronto Dominion Bank in my apartment building. In those days the difference between the Canadian and US dollar was not nearly so great, but I still used to say it was sort of like going to McDonald's -- I got change back with my dollar.*)
*And for those who are too young to remember, McDonald's advertising used to say you could get a burger, fries, a Coke -- and change back from your dollar. The first time I went to McDonald's, around 1972, my change was 35¢!!
The $300,000 story that I heard was that McFarlane got it for the first twelve issues of (adjective-less) SPIDER-MAN. $100,000 bonus for the first issue, $200,000 for the 12 issue contract. Any truth to this rumor? Anyone?
I'm not sure if it would make much of difference on the totals, but how about when you sold your pages from the Superman run? The rough estimate I have is an average of $100/page times three books and guessing that you got 14 pages back. That still only around $4,200 a month... Unless I'm off on the selling price or number of pages you had to sell.
IIRC, I think that the $300,000 figure and JB were conected by an interview that Jim Shooter gave. I don't remember the medium, but I remember my Father mentioning it all to me before JB's Superman run. My Father is not a comic book fan, he just recognized JB's name because I was such a big fan and that the figures above came from Marvel's EIC.
Frankly, I think the marketplace should always set the salaries that artists, writers, actors, & athletes get paid. If Jim Carrey can get $20 million a picture, good for him. If A-Rod gets his $25 million a year, fine.
I agree in theory, but it seems that some industries are adjusting their business models due to ever-increasing salary demands. Does anyone else feel like professional sports are starting to price themselves out of the reach of blue-collar sports fans? Should Van Halen tickets really cost $100 each when I paid $15.00 to see them in 1984? I skipped the Rolling Stones concert a couple years ago, even though I am an enormous fan of the Stones, because of sticker shock. I was able to re-buy their whole '60s catalog on SACD and the multi-disc DVD set documenting the tour for less than the price of ONE ticket to the show. Is it me, or is that insane?
I remember reading a few years ago that an overwhelming number of sports and concert tickets are now being sold to corporations, who give them away to high performers and clients, and then are written off as a business expense. It was suggested that this is the reason why ticket prices are so high. That depresses me.
The cost of seeing a movie, on the other hand, has not exploded at the same rate as moviestar salaries. I paid $5.00 to see a movie in 1984, and now it's $9.00, even though movies cost WAY more to make and market than they did back then. Why? I think it's because I pay the same $9.00 to see an indie film as I do a $125 million blockbuster. A movie star is a "product" that can be sold to 100,000 people or 10,000,000 people for the same initial investment in that "product." If the movie star can get 10 million people to buy their "product," they deserve it. Same goes for a musician who sells 10 million CDs.
Meanwhile, a stadium has a limited number of seats. The market seems willing to fill those seats, but what does this do to the little guy?
I dunno. These are half-formed thoughts from a guy who didn't get much sleep last night. Take them for what they're worth.
The $300,000 story that I heard was that McFarlane got it for the first twelve issues of (adjective-less) SPIDER-MAN. $100,000 bonus for the first issue, $200,000 for the 12 issue contract. Any truth to this rumor? Anyone?
*******
The rumors I heard were that McFarlane was making roughly 3 million a year during his heyday at Marvel. Dunno if that's true but it seems to me that McFarlane himself stated it once in an interview. Of course even if it is true, I wouldn't know how much of that was page rate, royalties, reprints, etc.
Kinda puts the "risk" in forming Image into prespective.
(Typo)
This message has been edited by SilentHaunt on Apr 2, 2004 5:51 PM
I find some fanboys do seem to have a sort of jealous agression towards JB because of his "rich guy" reputation (the stately Byrne Manor and all). Some "blame" the successful people for the others not making as much. "Why is Byrne so rich when 'fill-in-the-blank-writer-artist' isn't?"
To those people I point out that JB has produced a lot more output in his career. For example, in the past year, JB has produced more pages that Frank Quitely and Bryan Hitch combined. Shouldn't he have made a proportional take?
Jeff
[edited for grammar]
This message has been edited by jfettes on Apr 2, 2004 6:24 PM
"I find some fanboys do seem to have a sort of jealous agression towards JB because of his "rich guy" reputation (the stately Byrne Manor and all). Some "blame" the successful people for the others not making as much. "Why is Byrne so rich when 'fill-in-the-blank-writer-artist' isn't?"
To those people I point out that JB has produced a lot more output in his career. For example, in the past year, JB has produced more pages that Frank Quitely and Bryan Hitch combined. Shouldn't he have made a proportional take?"
Not necessarily.
I understand your point, but output doesn't necessarily equate with one's popularity in the marketplace, which tends to be the barometer for how well folks do financially.
For example, a prizefighter like Mike Tyson can make more in one fight than can a mid-level professional like Winky Wright, who might fight up to ten times in a year compared to Mike's one fight every eighteen months. Why? 'Cause Mike puts asses in the seats, and Winky does not.
Using that logic, one can see how eight issues of The Ultimates or New X-Men might sell more than twelve issues of Generations, four issues of JLA, ten issues of Doom Patrol, etc. Not saying that those numbers are accurate, just that its possible.
Add to those numbers different company policies re page rates, royalties and reprint payments, and the picture becomes clearer. It's feasible that JB will make more from his JLA run than he did for the last Generations series, so output isn't really the deciding factor unless the playing field is totally level in terms of rates and sales.
Of course, Glen. I realize that there was a reason that when I sang in a band, I was not making as much as Madonna.
In the case of comics, artists and writers typically earn a "page rate" so in this case, productivity is going to be a very big factor.
And it does factor into other areas of entertainment as well. The previously mentioned Madonna, for example, is much richer than Janet Jackson (according to Forbes), even though the two started out around the same time. Why? Madonna's put out more than 12 albums in the time Janet's put out 7.
"I find some fanboys do seem to have a sort of jealous agression towards JB because of his "rich guy" reputation (the stately Byrne Manor and all). Some "blame" the successful people for the others not making as much. "Why is Byrne so rich when 'fill-in-the-blank-writer-artist' isn't?"
*******This is another one of those If-Byrne-Does-It-It's-Bad situations. McFarlane has been quoted on several occasions as saying he's in it strictly for the money. He claims a personal worth of about $75mil (depending on who he's talking to), He is, of course, the Working Man's Hero. I've never been in it for the money (look at the titles I've done) and on a good day I'm worth about $3mil. I am a money-grubbing bastard.
**********
To those people I point out that JB has produced a lot more output in his career. For example, in the past year, JB has produced more pages that Frank Quitely and Bryan Hitch combined. Shouldn't he have made a proportional take?"
*******It's all about timing. Much as my detractors might wish to make it otherwise, there was a period of about 10 years where I was Number One Dog in the industry. My presence on a book could guarantee and increase of at least 20% in sales. Sometimes, even more. Alas, this was in the days before royalties. By the time we had fought and won that battle (long before McFarlane and the rest of the Image boys arrived to claim victory) my star was beginning to wane. No biggie -- that's what happened. When people tell me my old stuff was better, they put me into the best company in the world.
