Zwol.org

ok, first off, I'm not exactly a pro.
not even semi-pro.

But! I do have some experience under my belt, some comics in print, and almost a steady income drawing small pin ups and other smaller gigs.

What I want to share here with everybody is my only advice.

Avoid back end deals

the reason is simple, that book that took hard work and time to complete , might not sell enough to give you a proper payment for your time. might not even sell at all, and that's if it's even completed.

of course, taking a back end deal from a decent size company (alterna comics? dark horse?) is different than taking one from a company starting out that have no published titles, convention appareances and so on.

to all the artists here, please share your stories on back end deals, so people starting out avoid those people taking advantage of good artist.

thanks!

I used to work for a company who offered back-end percentages of comics sold and one of the major disadvantages of that deal is there is no transparency for the artist to know how many copies actually sold. Additionally, it's been my experience that the company never pays the artist anything! Please only work for companies that will pay you a per-page rate and pay you as you complete EACH PAGE. Another company I was with promised a per-page rate, but then only agreed to pay 60 days after all 22 pages were produced ... also a bad idea! Ask to be paid for each page you work on. That way, if they flake out on you, you are only out one page's worth of time. The company I own pays its creative staff immediately for each page provided. dojokuncomics@gmail.com