Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment

Reilly Brown Challenges Mark Millar's Description Of Marvel/DC Page Rates

Comic book writer/artist Reilly Brown, best known for his work Cable & Deadpool and Spider-Man/Deadpool and his new creator owned series Power Play, has read the rules for the upcoming Millarworld Talent Search for 2017, run by Mark Millar. In which Millar stated that the winners would receive Marvel/DC start rates,  $90 per page for writers, $200 per page for artists, out of his own pocket.

Brown posted on Facebook,

I've been seeing a certain publisher posting about a big talent search they're planning on undertaking, and they say that they're paying Marvel/DC rates, and they list $200 a page as their art rate.
Don't let yourself be fooled.

That is NOT a typical Marvel/DC rate for finished art. That's a common rate for just pencils. Inks would be possibly around $100 more per page (just as a general figure– rates aren't streamlined like this), so they're cheaping you out of a third of your pay.

I know that a lot of people don't actually use "ink," but if your line work is tight enough and complete enough to use in a finished product, they're "inked," no matter what medium you use.

We've got to stop letting people devalue the time and efforts of artists in the comic book industry like this, because they will NEVER stop doing it on their own.

He followed up with other commentary,

Technically, anyone who makes this claim is wrong, and they all KNOW that they're wrong. I've heard plenty of people say the same thing at other companies to try to save money by not hiring inkers, but they never pay the pencilers more to compensate for the added workload.

This is simply the first time I've seen someone put it right out there in a press release.

For pencils AND inks combined, I've never heard of a rate that low from Marvel or DC. Not even a starting rate.

Although the writing amount was more accurate according to Brown,

That's pretty reasonable from what I understand, although I haven't talked to many writers about their rate histories– I probably should!

Also, my understanding (and I could be wrong– someone who knows better, please correct me!) is that writing rates for the comics industry aren't actually that bad compared to other industries. It's really the artists who are constantly being devalued and overworked, and their livelihoods slowly chipped away. This is the type of thing that does it.

Just consider– $90 a page for writing is just shy of half of the pay for complete line art. It's 45%. Can a writer really only write two pages in the time it takes an artist to pencil and ink one? If you think so, I hope you like stick figures!

Look forward to STICK in 2017?

Mark Millar did not respond to inquiries made earlier today.

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