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Jeremy Whitley Wants To Get Artists Paid For Raven: Pirate Princeless

Published Tue, 09 Jun 2020 12:37:46 -0500

The #ComicsPaidMe hashtag has followed up on the #PublishingPaidMe hashtag which has, amongst others results. highlighted the disparity between payments made, even to newcomers, with ethnicity often being a major factor in both the payments and opportunities offered. There's lots here to talk about.

But author Jeremy Whitley wanted to talk more about the comic Raven: Pirate Princess produced by Action Lab, which is the spinoff to the long-running Princeless, comic book published by Action Lab Entertainment, which was his big break and which brought him to a number of people's attention. Princeless had its beginning as a strictly creator-owned, back-end publication, but over time that changed to one where Action Lab pays a page rate. In a series of tweets, he writes;

Looking through #ComicsPaidMe I can't continue in good conscience without saying this. Action Lab contracted with people to work on Raven: Pirate Princess for me. Action Lab then told them that they wouldn't be paid until books were released. And have delayed them for a year. There are still people, including myself, who have not been paid by Action Lab for work that had been done for at least a year. If you're coming up in comics, don't do work for Action Lab. It's not worth it.

I don't believe it was ever Action Lab's plan to leave people unpaid for a year, but I believe they prioritize their own profit and position over creators and contractors. I know there is a perception from some folks that Princeless is massively successful. I can assure you that under Action Lab not only has it not paid the bills, but I haven't gotten a paycheck that I didn't have to chase down off them in years.

However, people who have been following Raven will note that is started out with single issues coming out in print and online. Then single issues online and trades in print. Finally, the first two issue of the current arc were published digitally, then pulled down. This is because I insisted that artists be paid for issues that had already been published digitally.

We clarified with Jeremy that he had planned with Action Lab to speed up the publishing process so that physical books were published on a regular basis and got permission to put together two art teams to follow separate stories in the book, with the intention of publishing digital issues every two weeks and therefor having a trade ready for the market every three months. Jeremy also tells us that Action Lab agreed to this idea and that they put the teams together and started making the books – but then people stopped getting paid, hence the problems above. That they first stated they couldn't pay individual artists when their portion was finished, only when they had a full book. Then when the full book was ready, they argued that it hadn't been approved because it wasn't published yet. Then when Jeremy pointed out that they had digitally published issues already for which people had not been paid, they pulled those issues from Comixology rather than pay the artists. His tweets continued;

Rather than make good and pay those artists, Action Lab went through the trouble of yanking those stories of Comixology so they could pay after they printed the trade. A thing which they have not done half a year later. I, also, have still not been paid on those, but that's of much less concern to me than people who have no share of ownership in the book who drew beautiful stories with promise of pay.

Just so we're clear out here, part of the loophole by which ALE avoids paying people is that contracts say pages have to be "approved" before payment and the publisher doesn't approve things until they go to print, so they can hold them forever and not pay you.

We clarified with Jeremy that "the terms of the agreement were that the artists are paid "when art is approved". What that used to mean to Action Lab was when art was done, they paid artists and sent the book to the printer. However, single issues of both Raven and Princeless have not been selling as they would like, so they made the decision to make single issue digital-only and to only publish trades in the physical market. He tells us that Action Lab took nearly an entire year to publish volume 7 of Raven once they had a finished book, Volume 8 also slowly crept out and volume 9 has been sitting waiting to be published since 2019. While publishing delays held up the books, but still the publisher hasn't paid the artists. The coronavirus pandemic saw Action Lab shut down without notifying creators but leaving artists that haven't been paid on finished art for the better part of a year, some more than that. Jeremy is clearly upset, not so much that he hasn't been paid but that these artists signed on for a project he created and he clearly feels guilty.

I don't know what the future holds for Princeless. Emily and the team have been working on volume 10, which is our big finale. Raven has 4 issues drawn and 8 written that haven't seen the light of day. I wouldn't expect any Raven artists to come back after being stiffed this long. Beyond that, I wouldn't ask any artist to walk into that situation. By the contract Action Lab could hire people to do more, but we'll see. 10 would be a natural end to Princeless, though I have wanted to keep Princeless and Adrienne going on new adventures, so we'll see where we end up.

Jeremy tells us "I owe much of my career to Action Lab. They took a chance on Princeless when I was an unknown, but they've also used Princeless and my success to recruit new creators and books to the label and I am not okay with artists going unpaid. My goal is to get people paid." Bleeding Cool contacted Action Lab representatives last night without response. However, we know many staff at the publisher have been furloughed. We are happy to represent Action Lab's own version of events if they would like to get in touch.