“Mythical figures live many lives, die many deaths, and in this they differ from the characters we find in novels, who can never go beyond the single gesture. But in each of these lives and deaths all the others are present, and we can hear their echo. Only when we become aware of a sudden consistency between incompatibles can we say we have crossed the threshold of myth.
Abandoned in Naxos, Ariadne was shot dead by Artemis’s arrow; Dionysus ordered the killing and stood watching, motionless. Or: Ariadne hung herself in Naxos, after being left by Theseus. Or: pregnant by Theseus and shipwrecked in Cyprus, she died there in childbirth. Or: Dionysus came to Ariadne in Naxos, together with his band of followers; they celebrated a divine marriage, after which she rose into the sky, where we still see her today amid the northern constellations. Or: Dionysus came to Ariadne in Naxos, after which she followed him around on his adventures, sharing his bed and fighting with his soldiers; when Dionysus attacked Perseus in the country near Argos, Ariadne went with him, armed to fight amid the ranks of the crazed Bacchants, until Perseus shook the deadly face of Medusa in front of her and Ariadne was turned to stone. And there she stayed, a stone in a field.
No other woman, or goddess, had so many deaths as Ariadne. That stone in Argos, that constellation in the sky, that hanging corpse, that death by childbirth, that girl with an arrow through her breast: Ariadne was all of this.”
– Roberto Calasso, from The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
Hello, long time follower just on other platforms and I love your work. I am currently getting my Masters in Comics and Graphic Novels, and do tell me if this an inappropriate question but how much do you make? Like a month doing comics and art? Also what do you do on a day to day basis? I'm worried about my future after I graduate.
Thank you so much! This is a great question, and I wish more people would be candid about answering it because I'd like creators to demand more money. This will be a very long post! Keep reading if you're interested. MASSIVE info dump below.
I think earnings in comics and books can look wildly different for almost every creator, and it depends on a lot of things. With that in mind, I make a slightly different amount every year. I view my finances mostly through page rates, contracted projects, and passive-ish income. Because I'm terrible at math, I'm just going to tell you how much I make per contracted projects, plus some relevant information in terms of Life Stuff. This will be very long, and I will highlight some important details that people maybe don't like to talk about very much.
Please also bear in mind that I live in Minnesota, away from all my major publishers and editors who are situated on the coasts, so my cost of living is much more manageable.
Background: Building a Foundation (2012-2018)
I graduated from college in 2012 and lived with my parents until 2018. I did not have to pay rent or worry about food, so I got to save up a lot of money to invest in developing as an artist–paying for printing zines, making merch, travel to conventions, table costs, and secure hotel accommodations. This helped enormously, and I would not have been able to spend six years developing my portfolio and connecting with comics peers and professionals without my parents. They were very supportive, even if they had no idea that I was developing professionally as an artist (LOL, they're very proud of me now, but they truly just thought I was being a weird internet gremlin the whole time). They're also not wealthy people by any means. My parents immigrated to the US in their 20s as refugees with absolutely no money and one baby (it me, I am the baby), but they each became pretty successful small-business owners in their own right and were able to help put me through school with minimal debt, even through the financial crisis in the late aughts.
I started making art in 2012-ish as well, but only semi-professionally, and barely on purpose. I was employed full-time in a non-art job between 2013 and 2018 at a local non-profit that specialized in pediatric therapy. I occupied a role as their front office person/corporate assistant. I made about 40k a year at that job, with benefits, and I made a negligible amount of money doing art and making comics. I should also note that throughout this time, I was working 40 hours a week at my day job, commuting between 2-4 hours a day depending on the weather (my commute was an hour for each direction in good weather and up to three hours if it snowed), and then working on comics for 3-4 hours in the evening, every evening. This meant that I would frequently be working anywhere between 65-85 hours a week for five years, and I do not recommend this! I burned out pretty bad! I didn't go to art school or learn about comics, either, so I felt like I had to spend time building my portfolio to make up for lost time. I didn't even know I wanted to make comics until maybe two years after I graduated from undergrad.
I did manage to build a nice portfolio and connect with people who were making the sort of work I liked to make, so the portfolio-building did help. I posted regularly online in different platforms and steadily grew an audience over the years via Tumblr (heyyy!) Instagram (which I personally loathe), Patreon (stressful, but necessary and also getting more comfortable to use!), and Twitter (which I have very mixed feelings about, but I'll miss it if it dies). I did a few short comics with writers whose work I admired. The Fresh Romance Anthology in 2015 was my first major published work, and it was with writer Marguerite Bennett, who remains one of my absolute favorite people. I was so inexperienced at the time, and she would check in with me to make sure I got paid for my work, and then she would follow up with everyone responsible if I was not properly compensated. Not everybody is this on-the-ball about making sure their colleagues are treated well, and she absolutely set the bar for me going forward.
Doing It For Real + Some Numbers (2018-2021)
In 2018, I put together a pitch document for The Magic Fish (if you'd like to see my pitch document, here is a Dropbox link to it! It's just a book report for a book that doesn't exist yet, and I hope you find it helpful if you need it), shopped around for an agent, and found one I'm very happy with (Kate McKean at Morhaim! She's amazing! She runs a newsletter where she gives you the lowdown on how the publishing industry works, so if you're interested in Books, you can check out her writing over at Agents and Books). Then my agent shopped the pitch around to editors and publishers, and Random House Graphic won out. Also, every time she negotiates a contract for me in my home market (the US), she gets 15% cut, which is entirely worth it to me. She does so much. It's incredible.
Random House Graphic's offer wound up being for two books at $45k each, with pretty standard royalty rates, I think around 10% in general, though there are stipulations around royalties that I can't remember off the top of my head (and also bear in mind that you do not earn royalties until your book sales have earned out your advance, and not all published books earn out). To me, this is a lot of money! BUT the graphic novel took two full years to make, so that $45k needed to last me until 2020, which is not livable if you're on you're own. Also, the advance is paid out in chunks at certain milestones of project completion. I'd get a few thousand at a time for the script, another few for the thumbnails, more for the inks, and on and on until the book is done. I would not start to get paid for the second book until I started working on it.
Earlier in 2018, I'd moved in with my partner, so we managed paying the bills and groceries together. Luckily for me, I had also completed a full tarot deck as a separate personal art project to help build my confidence as an illustrator, and my agent sold the tarot deck project (The Star Spinner Tarot) to a different publisher for a $15k advance, so I had some extra wiggle room in 2018. I quit my day job because this was a rare instance in which a book deal provided me with enough money to live on making art, with the caveat that I shared financial responsibilities with my partner. By this time, my Patreon, which I started back in 2015 I think, was also earning anywhere between $800-$1000 a month, which was really great semi-passive income. I'd post process shots and WIPs a couple times a week, and that really helped from month to month.
In 2020, The Magic Fish was published and got a lot of really lovely press. It debuted on the Indie Best-Seller list, and it got pretty popular in schools and libraries. Suddenly, my responsibilities expanded to also being a public speaker (side note: if you make a book about topics of some academic interest, make a generic powerpoint presentation about it now! I'm so serious!). I stopped tabling at conventions (the pandemic), but I would also be paid for speaking gigs in between. I'm not an enormously in-demand public speaker, so I usually asked for an honorarium of about $500 from schools and institutions for online appearances, though I'm about to ask for a lot more because it's cutting into a lot of the time I need to make comics and hit my deadlines. As people are more comfortable meeting in person, I usually ask for a speaking fee of at least $1500, and it must be after they've already taken care of my travel and accommodations. I'm not very well versed in the standards for speaking fees for debut authors, so this might not be standard! It's just my best estimation of the value of my time and effort for that instance.
Speaking of comics and deadlines, I sometimes take on smaller projects for DC (you might have seen these) and Marvel (shhh it's not been announced yet), and the page rates for those, as they've paid me, are usually as follows: $90 per page for writing ($45 for plotting and $45 for scripting), $160 for pencils per page, and $90 for inking per page. I've never colored or lettered, so I don't know those rates. I do regularly talk to other writers and artists, and the rates for writers are all over the place and seem to depend on whether you've signed an exclusive contract with either of those companies. I don't know what a contracted penciller or inker is paid by them, or if that's even a thing that happens? I also sometimes do comics cover work, and I usually charge between $1200 and $1500. I tend to charge a bit more for covers these days because I personally don't like doing covers all that much.
Starting to Reap the Benefits Maybe? (2021-2022)
In 2021, I started getting royalty checks for both Star Spinner Tarot and The Magic Fish. These payments will vary wildly, and I think they will naturally peter off as time goes on, and I'll need to make more books and projects. In both cases, I was surprised. I think at one point a random check hit my bank account for like $20k and I nearly fainted, but some of the other royalty checks will be much more modest. This process of getting paid is also immensely eased by having a good agent! I cannot stress this enough!
Then both the Star Spinner Tarot and The Magic Fish got foreign language licenses, and those come with small advances of their own, each between $2k and $3k, from what I can recall, with varying royalty rates depending on the publisher who acquired those rights. Those royalty rates are, in my limited experience, more modest than my American publisher's, come to around 7% or 8%. The Star Spinner Tarot got an official French edition, and The Magic Fish has been licensed for publication in Italian, French, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish so far.
Since 2021, I've also signed on to draw two more graphic novels for other people, and my agent is able to demand higher advances for me, even when I'm only doing the drawing part.
My Day-to-Day
I think that's about as comprehensive as I can be about numbers. On a daily basis, my schedule depends on whether I'm writing or drawing. Graphic novels are long projects. I'll be writing for months at a time and then drawing for even more months or even years after. I spend a lot of time answering emails for speaking requests, and my agent will sometimes pass along emails about legitimate project requests (another advantage of having an agent is I don't have to sift through scam emails or shady collaborators). I spend way more time answering emails and trying to iron out my calendar than I'd like.
I'm currently working on my second graphic novel for Random House Graphic, and I'm extremely excited about it.
Another thing I've learned is that I like to bounce between projects, but they have to be between a paid project and a personal project. If I'm juggling paid projects, I get overwhelmed and stressed. If I can work on a paid project and then also make personal art, I can feel some relief and maintain a positive relationship with my work. If you can ever get to a point where you can manage to do this, I highly recommend it. I never want to hate making comics, and this balance of personal-to-paid projects helps me keep loving the work.
Closing Thoughts
My only hesitation in talking candidly about all this is that I'm not sure my professional trajectory is applicable for most people. I think I've had a uniquely positive experience once I got off the ground, and I know most people's journeys are very much not this smooth. In a lot of ways, I got very lucky. And along the way I had help, especially before I got my foot firmly in the door. I don't think I make stratospherically high amounts of money, but I know this is still an atypically stable amount for a lot of artists and authors. And even so, I anticipate that some years will be better or worse than others.
Obviously, I couldn’t cover absolutely everything, but my hope is that this will be a good starting point for you to figure out what you need to plan for the future. Best of luck! Thank you for your question! I’m sorry it’s so long.
recommending hirano to kagiura (the holy grail of slow burns) to other people is hard because how do i say “ok so there’s this really good slice of life roommates to best friends to lovers slow burn. chapter 1 technically starts on volume 2 of this other manga called sasaki to miyano. well, if you count the prequel it actually starts as a spin-off light novel. anyway, the manga yes, it’s called sasaki to miyano go to the extra bonus chapters at the end of the volumes that’s where hirano to kagiura’s story starts. after you’ve read all the bonus chapters you can start the spin-off manga called hirano to kagiura.
it updates every 2-3 months. we’ve already had a confession scene and they’re still not together. one of the leads straight up turned down the other guy but they’re in some schrodinger’s cat kind of relationship. they hold hands and hug and stuff but only for 10 seconds per day. kagiura is a giant basketball guy with big puppy dog “good boy” energy. a bit of a brat. teensy bit stubborn and possessive. he can ask for whatever he wants because he’s special and he knows it. and then there’s hirano. don’t even get me started on that pretty boy. kagiura was doomed to fall in love with hirano the day they met and this scary blond boy started calling him “kagi-kun”.
look at this aro/ace king. he’s never had a crush in his life. hirano is a walking contradiction. he’s a “former bad boy” who’s now a member of the disciplinary committee club. a grumpy boy with straight A’s, earrings, bleached hair and a soft spot for his roommate. calls him cute nicknames and dotes on him (ie: wakes him up every day, eats the food he doesn’t want, goes to his basketball games, tutors him, compliments him all the time, gets mad at him when he tries to create distance, has the biggest smile around only him, can never say no to him). except he can say no to him because of course he turned the guy down and yet. he is still willing to… try. a little trial relationship of sorts. because it’s kagiura. his roomie and his bestie. and i just
what the hell is this indeed.
watching them discover love in the slowest of slow burns is not only agonizing but also amazing and sweet and the best thing ever and i need more people to know about them. they’re also hilarious and have a huge height difference. hirano’s not even short kagiura’s just a titan (6'3"/190cm)”
Thinking about the final scene of of Kristin Lavransdatter: I. The Wreath again... The culminations of the glances we've seen of the relationship between Lavrans and Ragnfried. The way that their issues are the opposites of Kristin and Erlend's. The weight of their years of marriage and years of silence.
That single unveiled glance in which the hearts of bridegroom and bride had leapt together—the two young faces flushing up redly—to him it seemed a very shamelessness. It had been agony, a scorching pain to him, that this was his daughter. But the sight of those eyes would not leave him—and wildly and blindly he strove against the tearing away of the veil from something in his own heart, something that he had never owned was there, that he had guarded against his own wife when she sought for it.
and
When she tried to take his hand and kiss it, he snatched it away. But then he looked down at his wife, took one of her hands and laid it on his knee, and bowed his cold, stiffened face down upon it. And so they sat on, motionless, speaking no word more.
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