Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, DC Comics, Image, Marvel Comics | Tagged: big two, comics artist

So What Does A Big-Two Comics Artist Get Paid When They Start Out?

So what does a Big-Two comics artist get paid when they start out? And how close is it to the US minimum wage?

There has been a lot of fuss of late. I think it's time to throw down some figures. What exactly does a Big-Two Marvel or DC Comics artist get paid when they start out on their career with the company? What other opportunities are there? And is it really minimum wage labour, as some say? Bleeding Cool crunched the numbers.

I have been reliably informed that Big-Two penciller starting rates are around $160 a page, maybe a little bump for the Batbooks or Spider/Xbooks, but that's where we are. And artists are expected to do a page a day, say over eight hours, or twenty pages a month. There's no holiday pay or sickness pay in this gig, let alone healthcare, so bear that in mind. So that's $3,200 a month. A year, that's $38,400.

In New York, the minimum wage is $17 an hour. Forty hours per week, that's $35,360 a year. But you might get holiday pay, sick pay and health insurance as part of that. Maybe.

But you don't have to live in New York, with New York expenses, or Burbank either, you can work wherever you wish. And Big-Two can, and do, hire from wherever around the world they wish. An American living and working in the USA may be preferable for most jobs, as they are more likely to have a common cultural and social language with the editors and other figures at Marvel or DC Comics. However the more recent increase in artists from other countries  – who aren't paid any less but where dollars may stretch further – show thus is far from an insurmountable problem.

Also, as a penciller, you can also sell your original artwork. For someone starting out, that might be an average of around $100 a page, depending on the characters and the action sequences. Now, if your artboards are inked, you will usually get two-thirds of them back. Some pencillers send in scanned pencils for inkers to ink, and so keep all their pencilled boards. The demand – and price for them – is less, but the penciller gets to keep all of them. The same is true for the inked boards done on scanned-in and printed pencils; the inker keeps them all, but the demand is less. That inker, by the way? Starting out, a $100 a page, but you are expected to work faster than a penciller and could earn more.

Either way, a starting out Big-Two penciller should add another $15-20,000 onto their salary by selling the original artwork generated and returned in that year, if they so wish, putting you more on about $55,000. Of course, you may also be selling away your future, those art boards have a tendency to accumulate in value over the years.

If you are working digitally, however, you don't have that option, but you can work faster and maybe find it easier to be a penciller/inker as well. However, the original art market is also why the majority of Big-Two artists are still creating original art rather than switching to digital.

You can then add to all this, including convention commissions, covers, prints, and the like, which should be worth further tens of thousands, if you can find the time, and maybe an agent. Being a Big-Two artist might also increase demand for your work. Even if it reduces the time you have to do it. And while, as the decades pass, you should get more than a starting Marvel artist does, there's no guarantee. Also, there is no company pension.

Which is also why you might want to take advantage of the fans you have gained from your Marvel or DC work and see if you can pull them over to your creator-owned comic book. Which if it gets made into a film or TV show, might actually get you a pension…

As a comic book creator, you are in charge of your career more than anything else. If this is what you choose to do, fine, but there are so many other options out there now that you can be a successive comic book creator without going anywhere near the Big Two. However, for smaller comic book publishers working in the direct market, work for hire can pay around a third of the Marvel/DC rate. It may take an agent and a middle-grade or YA graphic novel series to make money these days, or you may get lucky with a webtoon. But this kind of thing is more accessible than it has ever been, and you have a greater ability to explode your work to more people than ever before. But, of course, so has everyone else.

After all not too much has changed since I tried to rip off Charlie Brooker sixteen years ago…

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