Posted in: Comics | Tagged: dc comics, jerry ordway

The Lament Of Jerry Ordway

Published Mon, 04 Mar 2013 08:00:16 -0600

Last updated Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:24:08 -0600

In a blog post entitled "Life over fifty", comic book artist Jerry Ordway is lamenting his current career options, and how these issues also apply to his peers.

A few sample paragraphs;

I was offered, and accepted an exclusive DC contract in hopes that this would somehow help me to land a regular assignment, and steady work. After 9 years, still being the guy who was thrown at late deadline material, I was still not any closer to getting regular work, nor was I being treated by the company as a valued employee. In my last year on exclusive contract, I was starved of work. Kind of had to believe, but there it was.The contract had no clause to require DC to give me a minimum amount of work, as the issue never could have happened, or so I thought at the time.

….

Do I think DC comics owes me anything? Yes and no. I understand that no company owes anything that isn't contractually stipulated, but in my heart, I think I deserve better than being marginalized over the last 10 years. I'm not retired, I'm not financially independent. I'm a working guy with a family, working for a flat page rate that hasn't changed substantially since 1995. I may have opportunities at smaller companies, companies that pay less per page than I made in 1988, with no royalties or ownership of any kind. I'm not at all looking down at that, but it is hard to reconcile, as I can't work faster, and refuse to hack my work out to match the rate.

….

As a comic reader and customer, the publishers use our older work in collected editions, for what they call first copy royalties, no reprint fees. They publish the All Star Squadron trade, for example and you buy it for whatever the cost. My royalty is maybe a couple hundred dollars, if I'm lucky, for 11 issues worth of work. On a recent Absolute Infinite Crisis hardcover, I had 30 odd pages reprinted in there, a book that retailed for over a hundred dollars– a book that DC never even gave me a copy of, and the royalty amounted to a few dollars, I couldn't buy a pizza on that windfall. I want to work, I don't want to be a nostalgia act, remembered only for what I did 20, 30 years ago.

You can read the full article here.

Jerry doesn't want pity, he just wants to work into his seventies as those his age did when he came into the industry.

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