Breaking news, broken news...

Those of you who are familiar with what being a professional comic book artist pays and/or have worked as one will know what I’m talking about here. 

Comic professionals don’t make shit. Prevailing $ is so low that to make it around equal to minimum wage, one has to work at an incredible pace. I failed at that, I have been working at a pace to competition, and not to a limited time. Such was that I wasn’t making a sustainable wage and was subsidizing these wages with credit, occasional tattoos (which were growing more and more occasional because i was concentrating on this book) and other sources, like my patreon. Without these things I wouldn’t have been able to eat, pay my bills, make rent, etc. 

Well this week those subsidies ran dry, I did the math and saw just what I was making an hour... and there aren’t enough hours in the day for this math to work out. 

I related all of this to the author of the book, and stated that the only thing I could do was work hard to achieve the appropriate pace and limit my time on each step of the process of creating a page, thereby making enough money to subsist off of this alone if it was all I was doing. He replied that I’m required to finish the book at the pace I started it at. Which is a) impossible because it would either leave me homeless or having to find alternate subsidies like borrowing money and b) bullshit. There’s no clause in the contract requiring me to continue to give my time away instead of doing what I should have been doing from the start. 

Things got ugly after that, and I was forced to walk away to literally save my life. Technically I’m in breach of contract but I think a judge might side with me if it comes to that. 

It would be nice to finish issue 2, but 9 issues I was already doubting I could make it through. Even if we work things out and I do finish this issue, the condescension from the author has poisoned what little love I had left for the project and it would be a definite joyless slog. 

This might mean I never get paid to draw someone else’s book again, but I can live with that. It’s not worth it to try to live off of minimum wage or less in your middle age in a city where that isn’t a living wage. 

So it’s back to a focus on tattoos, and the time to work on my own comics. I’m scrambling to make up for the money I probably won’t be paid for the work on that book I am owed, but expect things back to normal here afterwards, and maybe a little sooner. 

Thanks to everyone here. I feel like you got short shrift during all of this, but please know how many times the modest amount I get from you all here made the difference between a bounced rent check or not... (the answer is pretty much every month). It really helped and I love you all for it. 

Thanks for sticking with me.