Anyone can Draw!!

[samurainoir]

That was Dynamite magazine? That must have been an 80s issue, b/c none of my 70s mags have that.

It appeared in one of those Scholastic magazines that you could order from the book club... Dynamite, Bananas, etc. I can't remember which one.

I'm always fascinated by the stories you hear from the first graduating classes... which had the Swamp Thing team of Rick Veitch, Steve Bissette and John Totleben. They often talk about it on their blogs...
SRBissette.com - MYRANT
Rick Veitch

I don't tend to stumble across much in the way of the later years at the Kubert school, other than the fact that it became much more of a structured technical college, and many graduates went on to other fields like animation, storyboarding, advertising and commercial illustration.

It must have been fascinating to be in a classroom with the likes of Kubert, Dick Giordano, et al.


Visiting the Kubert Schools Open House - Blog - Broken Frontier

[samurainoir]

I wanted to but it was in Jersey and I didn't want to travel there. I instead worked as an assistant to Ken Landgraf......got more out of that. Ken knows a lot of the old greats and got to meet lots of cool artist who gave me great advice.

I noticed he's back on ebay lately.
landgraphics items - Get great deals on Collectibles, Everything Else items on eBay.com!
When I stumbled across his previous auctions a few years back, they always had an odd yet humourous desperation to them in the "Buy my stuff so I can eat!!!" vein. I hope your mentor is getting on okay these days.

I always feel a great deal of sympathy for the old school illustrators when the industry moves on to the new flavours of the month. (even Steve Bissette had a blog post addressing the fact that he was working in a Video Store for a decade post-Tyrant/1963).

[ctc]

Draw?

Bah! We know where the REAL sould of a comic is:

Stupid Comics

Funny thing, I met a guy a couploe months back who was going to the Kubert school but ran out of money. That's how he ended up in the army.

Don C.

[samurainoir]

Draw?

Bah! We know where the REAL sould of a comic is:

Stupid Comics

Gary Brodsky has become the swarthy version of Tom Cruise in Magnolia.
Gary Brodsky Presents Modern Alpha | Any Woman, Anytime, Anywhere

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ09LUgFuIA

The guy seems to be nothing but a series of Get Rich Quick schemes.

[MIB41]

I attended that school for one semester in the mid-80s. You had to send in your portfolio for review. If they liked your stuff, you then got a phone interview. They would go over the expectations of the school and what you would be doing. If they liked you after the phone interview, you were accepted. Suffice to say, I was accepted. I was excited and scared all at the same time. I had never been away from home. So driving all the way to New Jersey was a big deal for me. It was one heck of a long drive too. !2 hours from Louisville and I drove it straight through. We got to see a lot of the people in the business, including going to the Marvel and DC offices. That was the first time I got to meet Stan Lee whom, at that point, was only well known in the comics circle. Anyone else on the street didn't have a clue who he was. He only had a small cult following at that point. The school was interesting and gave you a very good knowledge of what the real industry was like.

So why did I stay only one semester? Well there were ALOT of childhood myths that got blown away when I arrived there. The most important was the artists at Marvel and DC did not make a lot of money. To my utter shock and dismay, many artists did this job on the side while they worked other jobs to pay the bills! There were only a privileged few that did enough (writing, drawing, inking) that they worked those jobs full time. A good example at that time would be John Byrne. He was drawing and writing many titles at that point, so his money was good. But it was only good because of the accumulative amount of work he did. It wasn't like he logged eight hours and got a check. He worked long hours every day. But he was the exception to the rule. Most artists would just get paid so much to pencil a page. Another person would get paid to ink it. And so on and so forth. The starving artist rule is/was very real.

So as much as I enjoyed it, I knew I wanted a better living for myself. So I came crawling back to town and had to tell my dad he was right. He never thought it would pay anything but he let me go to see who was right. So, from there I went to U of L and got my business degree. Thank God! It has served me well. One of the reasons why I can talk here while I work in my own office at home. But going to that school was a good time. It wasn't that far from New York. It was in Dover, New Jersey. I got to go into the city with some people I met from the Bronx and boy did I get an eye full. Plus I got to see the twin towers. I remember standing where Kong had fallen, thinking how neat that was. Little did I know.

[Earth 2 Chris]

^Great story there.

I pretty much gave up on the dream of being a full-time comic artist after I met some of the guys who worked for DC and Marvel and found out how they have to scrape by. It's almost impossible to raise a family like that. So I keep my toes wet with stuff here and there, but I don't quit my day job.

shame you didnt go Chris...you have very good story telling ability.

Thanks Mitch! Praise from a master!

Chris

[MIB41]

^Great story there.

I pretty much gave up on the dream of being a full-time comic artist after I met some of the guys who worked for DC and Marvel and found out how they have to scrape by. It's almost impossible to raise a family like that. So I keep my toes wet with stuff here and there, but I don't quit my day job.
Chris

Here's a good example that will blow you away. Many out there who are artists probably know or have heard of Bernie Wrightson. He is so well known for his cross-hatch technique, which has probably never been done better than when he did the graphic novel of Frankenstein. I've included a pic below. As you can see, the detail is INSANE. I've done cross hatching and the technique is painfully slow depending on the scope of detail your after. Well do you know that the majority of this work he did initially for NOTHING? YES! He did this on the side because he thought it might translate into a few bucks one day. Eventually he found a publisher who saw the work and paid him to finish it and publish it. He made some pretty good money, but it only went to pay bills and keep him afloat for a while. I talked to him a year ago and he laughed about how his electricity had been shut off ONLY twice that year, but it was a better year than most. So I guess my point is, there is being well known and then there is being well known and having money. Seldom do the two work out that way. And artists, for all their talent, seldom get paid well for the effort. And seldom have consistent stability like many of us enjoy in one aspect or another.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Wow, yeah if Bernie Wrightson can barely make it, what chance do I have!?!

I've heard horror stories of working, popular comic artists losing their homes. These are folks that you would assume made at least $60,000 a year easy. Not so much.

If you read between the lines in many interviews with older comic artists, like say Back Issue, you pick up on how they all had to, or still have to, work other jobs to make ends meet. Sad.

Chris

[samurainoir]

Which always baffles me when you see fans coming down AGAINST creators and their families when it comes down to getting their slice of the pie from DC and Marvel.

Given the fact that we live in an age where actors are given royalty cheques whenever they appear on TV or for sales of DVDs. Given the non-stop cable airings of the Swamp Thing movie, you'd think Wrightson and his family should deserve something for CREATING Swamp Thing. Not just because they hired him to do some design work (like Kirby and the Super Powers cartoon).

That would include royalties for every Alan Moore Swamp Thing volume that DC sells now. As well as those Swamp Thing action figures and animated series from the eighties, and the DCD merch.

I don't think it would have hurt Marvel that much to cut a big cheque to Steve Gerber and Marv Wolfman for Howard the Duck and Blade when windfalls like movie adaptions occur.

At least there are many creators that are benefiting from the royalty programs instigated in the eighties, but then again for every Deadpool created there is also hundreds of incidental characters that are easily killed off en masse by the likes of Scourge and Crisis with not many missing them at all. Not every character is going to be a Wolverine or Superman (and by that I mean popular, merchandise and licensing friendly). In the case of Seigel and Shuster, they only ever had the one breakout character in their lifetimes, and that would have been enough.

[MIB41]

Hey Chris. Don't give up on the craft though. I really liked your work on the Phantom backer card you did. Your a good artist. The one good thing about this industry is you can always find a niche to make some descent money on the side. I think the phrase 'on-the-side' is the best way to utilize this gift. That's what I do with mine.

[MIB41]

Which always baffles me when you see fans coming down AGAINST creators and their families when it comes down to getting their slice of the pie from DC and Marvel.

Given the fact that we live in an age where actors are given royalty cheques whenever they appear on TV or for sales of DVDs. Given the non-stop cable airings of the Swamp Thing movie, you'd think Wrightson and his family should deserve something for CREATING Swamp Thing. Not just because they hired him to do some design work (like Kirby and the Super Powers cartoon).

That would include royalties for every Alan Moore Swamp Thing volume that DC sells now. As well as those Swamp Thing action figures and animated series from the eighties, and the DCD merch.

So much of that is based on who owns the rights and how well it's managed. And then the other part is whether there is a license on that character and whether it's generating money. You typically need attorneys to manage characters or likenesses that you have rights to. That requires more money.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Oh, I'll never give up. I have some things in the cooker. I hope to be able to share some things here soon.

I know Wrightson and Wein do get participation in Swamp Thing now. In 1980 or so DC started giving creators compensation for characters they created, if they generated over a certain amount of money in whatever medium they were translated into. They went back and post-dated Swamp Thing and Kirby's stuff at least.

I've said it before, but Chuck Dixon told me Bane's appearance in Batman and Robin bought him a house.

There is a Back Issue interview with Wein and Wrightson where they talk about getting participation money. In the same issue Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch mention how they make more money now off of Swamp Thing trades than they did when they were working on the title!

Chris

[samurainoir]

I don't know if the situation has changed, but my understanding is that the royalty program at DC and Marvel did not kick in until the eighties and that there was even a relatively arbitrary cut-off date of somewhere around the mid-seventies for a character to be covered.

I thought Swamp Thing was not part of that being created in 1971. In the eighties in particular you have a property that was generating revenue via two movies and a TV show on cable and home video, an animated series, a toy line, not to mention Warner books publishing Moore and co's run on Swamp Thing as a best selling trade paperback. With royalties from that, it would be nice to think that Wrightson might not necessarily had to draw stuff like JLA: The Weird or Batman Vs Aliens for a paycheck.

DC has plenty of lawyers and an existing royalty program that could easily accomodate older creators. Hopefully they are taking care of Martin Nodell (is he still around?) or at least his family for the income the Green Lantern movie is generating.

[kingdom warrior]

I noticed he's back on ebay lately.
landgraphics items - Get great deals on Collectibles, Everything Else items on eBay.com!
When I stumbled across his previous auctions a few years back, they always had an odd yet humourous desperation to them in the "Buy my stuff so I can eat!!!" vein. I hope your mentor is getting on okay these days.

I always feel a great deal of sympathy for the old school illustrators when the industry moves on to the new flavours of the month. (even Steve Bissette had a blog post addressing the fact that he was working in a Video Store for a decade post-Tyrant/1963).

Knowing Ken he's doing alright. I'd be shocked if he wasn't........Ken has a Barbarian mentality "take no prisoners and knew how to sell and hustle. I always liked that about him.

Great guy and fun to work with with lot's of great stories he use to tell and it was through him I got to meet Gil Kane one of my idols.
Ken use to put me through the grinder to learn to ink with brush and dip pen.
he Told the best Wally Wood stories and showed me Wally's work method.

[samurainoir]

Although Bernie Wrightson is probably the perfect example as well of a creator who went to other media to earn a living. As a fan I thought he was simply not productive on the monthly grind, when in fact he has a huge body of work designing for the movies.