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Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: greg capullo, jonathan glapion, layoffs
Marvel Comics Hasn't Paid Jonathan Glapion, Down To Disney Layoffs?
Marvel Comics still hasn't paid comic book artist Jonathan Glapion for work done... is this down to those Disney layoffs?
Article Summary
- Jonathan Glapion says Marvel Comics still has not paid him for five covers delivered months ago before deadline.
- Greg Capullo publicly backed Jonathan Glapion, calling the non-payment outrageous and saying Marvel ignored efforts.
- Reports suggest Disney layoffs, including Marvel administration cuts, may be slowing freelancer payments and responses.
- With Jonathan Glapion still awaiting payment, wider concerns are growing over Marvel freelancer pay and support.
Greg Capullo posted to social media, "My longtime friend and inker @jonathanglapion , despite my intervention, cannot get paid for work rendered months ago from one of the "Big Two". Hint: it ain't DC! Just outrageous. Shameful. Totally unacceptable." That's Jonathan Glapion, comic book inker extraordinare, now also drawing The Curse Of Sherlee Johnson and No Home Here for Todd McFarlane. And even though the Big Two are Scholastic and Webtoon these days, Greg means Marvel Comics. Jonathan Glapion replied, "Despite turning the work in BEFORE the deadlines given. FIVE covers inked in the middle of drawing and inking my own book. Unreal!" and then "… and STILL no reply to my email."
Marvel didn't respond to the e-mails I sent yesterday or today either. And the thing is, he is not alone. This is not some kind of deliberate oversight, but Disney's payment systems are famously antiquated. That's hardly a new observation, but they were working okay, even if they were rather labour-intensive. People would call up, cheques would be chased, staff would go out of their way to make sure that whatever the system said, their employees, their freelancers, their vendors would get paid. So what happened?
Well, you may recall that Disney just fired a whole tonne of people, including at Marvel. Across the company, at all levels, from the board to the executives to the people doing administration. And mostly the people doing administration, it seems. As a result, people aren't getting paid, and trying to get paid is now an uphill struggle for some. Literally, they are not paying enough people to pay other people.
And the shoes have very suddenly started to drop off of the Disney Millipede, if you will excuse the metaphor. There are many more shoes still to drop. This is, by the way, what always happens with layoffs, and the kind of things that corporations never consider when making their decisions. And then someone like Greg Capullo, immensely respected in the comics industry, whether for his work on X-Force, Spawn or Batman, co-creator of Haunt with Robert Kirkman. He is one of the biggest artists and writers around, in talent, sales impact, and bicep width. And it is on call when a major project like Wolverine: Revenge or Deadpool Vs Batman, while working on his creator-owned comic book, Creech. And when Jonathan Glapion, as inker on many of these titles, starts complaining, and Greg amplifies it, people notice, and start posting on social media as well…
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