Stop doing spec pages: Why DC, Marvel, Boom etc. should pay you for your test pages.
(I figure this will get the appropriate people’s attention)
A quick preface: Yesterday a friend of mine told me the story of how she was scouted by DC Comics to participate in their “talent” workshop. My colleague, who worked as a professional for 7 years and had books from Marvel under her belt, made time to meet up with a rookie editor only to subject herself to the editor’s rejection and novice opinion as to how my colleague may one day meet the standards of the DC talent workshop- some other time I’ll talk about how lame this DC Comics talent workshop is in how it is manufacturing the spectacle of demand for their brand by creators and using that to forego the cost and editorial aptitude it takes to curate and build a stable of … but they had the gaul to ask my colleague to do test pages, so here’s my opinion on that.
If you’re Marvel or DC or a company, like BOOM, that profits off large licenses, you should pay for samples from prospective contractors. The hours that an artist spends making a sample are bankable hours; it’s work. By not paying for that sample art, these corporations are offsetting the cost of their R&D on labor. Artists shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of a corporation’s R&D.
“But how do they know if the artist is appropriate for the book?” If you’re asking for a sample, you’re interested enough to pay for the sample. Should artists pay to waylay the risk that the editor or whomever solicits the sample isn’t qualified to shrewdly select prospective artists for a property? If you can’t afford for the samples, maybe drop one of the dozen batman books you’re putting out, and put that money towards R&D.
What’s more is that there’re few ways for the artist to recoup the cost of making the test pages that are the intellectual property of that corporation.
I think in order for we artists to get treated more fairly, we are going to have to stick to standards of practice. Companies exploit the lack of communication and solidarity between artists. We can’t really trust corporations, ones with a history of exploiting labor, to have our best interests in mind so we are going to have to keep the lines of communication open and hold corporations to a standard. Hold the line!
…that said, I’ve done free samples for comics corporations before. And I regret it. I won’t do it again.
For many it’s exciting to have an opportunity to work for a large company or on a property or license that has pop culture currency and visibility. Large companies exploit this. It’s important, however, to consider the value of the labor that went into sustaining these brands. Brands that are big enough to garner enough capital to sustain a film production, let alone the occasional 300 dollar sample page from a cartoonist.
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