Posted in: Comics | Tagged: comic creators, ed brubaker, wga

TV Staff Writers Earn Even Less Than Comic Book Writers

Because, yes, the WGA strike is upon us, which includes Ed Brubaker's work in a writers room adapting his comic book Criminal for Netflix.  

Ed Brubaker posts in his newsletter "In case you have no idea what's going on in the world of TV and film, basically, the studios in the streaming explosion moved from doing pilots then launching shows, to running small rooms to generate an entire season and paying everyone crappy fees and some rooms going as little as 4 weeks. While a lot of this doesn't affect someone like me because I'm not a young staffer trying to start a career, it's an untenable situation for the industry at this point. People assume everyone working in film or TV are millionaires, but sadly this is not true. Most moderately successful comics writers earn much more than the average TV staffer makes, and that staffer works much longer hours under much more stress – I know, I've done both gigs at the same time."

Because, yes, the WGA television writers strike is upon us, which includes Ed Brubaker's work in a writer's room adapting his comic book Criminal for Netflix. But the comic book industry is seeing a bit of a ripple effect.

Comic book artist Victoria Ying tweeted "Already getting emails from screenwriters looking for artists to do their graphic novels… This is not to say that screenwriters shouldn't get into comics! But please, pay your artists fairly upfront. Remember to give them their fair share of the IP rights (50%) They will be bearing the brunt of the labor. It will take one year of full time work to produce a GN."

Comic book curator Karen Green noted "Same thing happened during the strike 15 years ago. I don't think any of those projects reached the publication stage. Screenwriters learned fast that writing a comic script—even if it LOOKS like a tv/movie script—is a very different animal."

While Kelly Turnbull quote tweeted "Oof, every artist I know support writers but in exchange you gotta be careful not to treat us like Starter Wives for your comic pitch that you wish was actually a TV series pitch"

While former Crunchyroll and Boom Studios editor Hillary Levi just crackled her knuckles, saying "I have a spiel I give screenwriters who claim want to write graphic novels. Send them to me, or better yet, screenwriters: reach out to me and I will explain it to you. Get ready for some tough love."

While this little clip has been doing the rounds. Anyone care to guess who this might have come from?

Ed Brubaker also adds;

They want to have the option of using our writing to train AI software to write scripts — something that can't even be copyrighted, so that's a bit chilling. Imagine a future where an exec hands you a ten page document generated by an AI program — "Prompts: outline for an international action film. Things blow up. No sex please." and asks you to polish it at a low rate for a week. F-ck that idea forever and burn it to the ground. That's my position. Writers are already treated enough like jukeboxes in Hollywood, and we aren't. I'm not worried about AI writing anything with any meaning or humanity in it, but how many movies have meaning or humanity in the first place?  And actors had better start worrying about AI if they aren't already. I saw Harrison Ford say this next one is the last Indiana Jones movie, and I was like "Yeah, you wish, they'll be putting your face on someone else's body for 100 years now." This is not a future anyone should be welcoming, even trolls, but many of them are already AI bots, so whatever.

Also, in the old days of networks and cable there were things called residuals so you got paid when your work was shown again. Like how if a book gets reprinted the publisher has to pay you royalties. Those have essentially disappeared with streaming, where your work is available forever. There are other issues, too, and if you want to see where things stand, this is a great primer from one of the WGA negotiating committee:

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