Maybe it’s not that glamourous

Augie De Blieck said somewhere in his blog that comic book artists, especially those who work for comic book publishers, don’t earn much. Especially if their creations and stories are owned by publishing houses that it can be hard to earn royalties from them if it goes to the publishers. This is also the case with American comic strips, only a few are truly creator-owned as far as I know.

Thankfully this isn’t the case with Philippine comic strips where the cartoonist does own them and can freely take them to other publishers, whilst receiving a lot of royalties. Well, I know one cartoonist who’s like this and his name is Pol Medina Jr. Okay, not all Philippine cartoonists are rich but if their comics are really popular it would enough to alleviate their economic and financial situation. (Then again, some work two jobs.)

A number of American comic book artists are essentially no different, they even work two jobs to make ends meet. It might be possible for American comic book artists to earn enough to live comfortable off of their creations, especially when it comes to the really popular or young adult comics. It’s always possible, but that involves realising one could earn more from earning royalties from owning their creations.

Even if not all novelists and writers in general are rich, if those books sell well it can make them live comfortably. It gets complicated by that in other cases, especially if creator-owned stories as published outside of DC and Marvel, authors and cartoonists don’t earn much working on those that they end up earning relatively more from working for DC and Marvel.

I think if the Philippines are any indication, it’s possible for a newspaper cartoonist to earn a lot from their own creations and freely move them to other publications. But not all countries are created equally, so it would be this hard for cartoonists to do the same if they lived in the States. Not to mention, not all can earn a lot from their creations comic strip or otherwise. Pol Medina had to take up advertising when his cartooning gig didn’t pay much.

Frank Cho had to switch to doing art for Marvel Comics as it paid more than if he focused on his own creation, Liberty Meadows. While it’s possible to earn generously from one’s own creations, not everybody will become this successful and in America it might not even be enough to support themselves and their families so either they switch careers or work two jobs to make ends meet.

This may not be unique to Americans themselves, if a good number of Philippine cartoonists are any indication, but I think while it’s possible to earn a lot from a best-selling comic book or cartoon strip not everybody can. Others are at least moderately successful enough to live nicely, there are those who aren’t so lucky so they switch to other industries to earn more.

Then again in some cases, a comic book career’s not that glamourous. Not just because it doesn’t always earn much, especially if that story’s not that successful and financially viable enough to live comfortably but also because that involves working long hours. Especially in Japan, where some cartoonists don’t even sleep that long when they and their assistants are made to work on that series for a long time.

This makes me wonder if working in newspaper cartoons might be relatively better, especially if it doesn’t involve working on so many panels that it gives authors enough time to do anything else. Surely it’s done daily, but since it doesn’t involve many panels so there’s enough time to do other things. While working on a 20 page story involves a lot more to depict, it consumes more time this way.

Trust me, I actually spent almost a week working on a six page comic. I spent less than an hour and just one day working on a three panel cartoon, which says a lot about how much time is spent on making a comic book story with more pages. If working as a comic book artist isn’t a bed of roses, it’s not just that you wouldn’t be paid much but you’d work longer hours if you do more pages.

So if working as a comic book artist isn’t cut out to be (for some people), would comic book adjacent stuff be any better to some extent? That’s what he pointed out, though to add my take on it if you really want to do comics but still want to own them and earn as much as you can whilst working for something big you better move elsewhere to do this. You wouldn’t become rich overnight.

But at least you earn enough to live comfortably, though living in a poorer country and working for a big international company by proxy would make you earn more. That’s if certain currencies are converted into the next nation’s equivalent, though that hasn’t stopped the likes of Gerry Alanguilan from working in architecture at some point. Though in light of this, whether if working in comic books is even a good thing depends on the circumstances one is in.

Perhaps a surprising one if you are say Filipino and work for Marvel and DC, if monetary conversions were taken into consideration.

Can we separate the art from the artist?

At times it’s not easy to separate the art from the artist, especially if they reveal parts of themselves in the stories they tell. If a cartoonist has serious depression, if you have characters who’re very irritable, depressed or suicidal then these share the author’s experiences and innermost feelings in a way the former’s not always aware of. It’s a red flag if some of the characters are depressed and some have powers that induce suicidal thoughts.

(I could be referring to somebody as heard in a sermon but I won’t reveal them for now.)

In the case with Nate Stevenson, he was brought up as a lass in a strict Christian community and admitted in an interview that he left the church at age 19 and had struggled with Christianity. This gets reflected a lot in the one programme he worked on for a long time, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. He even projects this onto the stories he writes so much not only do fans reveal things he doesn’t realise but also relate to it on some level.

In the case with Carl Barks, he worked as a farmer for some time so it gets reflected in some of the stories he writes. Having actual experience in something gives a stronger air of authenticity in a way that being interested in something doesn’t, so much so it works for other stories to their advantage. But this also makes it harder to separate the art from the artist, especially if it reflects their experiences and thoughts.

To return to the case of the depressed cartoonist, if a good number of characters have symptoms of depression and the author turns out to be depressed one would have to look at the red flags to know what they’re suffering from. Having depression can get reflected in the way the characters are written, but as I said before it makes it harder to separate the art from the artist once the latter’s outed.

That would surprise fans, even though the red flags are there in the stories for us to see. But that goes to show you how difficult it is to separate the art from the artist, especially if the art reflects what the artist experiences or feels.

Body Fat and Female Characters

When it comes to the subject of body fat in comics, it’s not just a matter of being fat but also having flabby arms and legs in an otherwise normal weight body. I even half-suspected that why some cartoonists don’t give their characters and especially female characters flabby legs and arms is that either they’re so used to drawing muscular/skinny characters they can’t draw actual flab or that they’re afraid of making their female characters fat.

Even though ironically women tend to have more body fat than men do and if some women are predisposed to carry more fat in either their bellies or their legs, then the goal of having a toned stomach or toned legs would be this hard for them to achieve. In the case with big butts, it can go with muscular thighs but for some people it can also go with flabby thighs.

The latter, however, doesn’t show up that often in comics even though it’s one of those cases where if there’s a generous amount of fat in the lower body this should give way to a fattier, bigger bum. A proper pear shape if there’s ever one at all, though it’s something you don’t see that often in comics. Mostly due to a fear of making women look fat, which explains why they keep on giving them broken spines.

Or for another matter, giving them really narrow waists that can only be achieved due to a long time from wearing corsets. Maybe there are already cartoonists who give their female characters flabby arms and thighs, though it’s either not as well-known or possibly nowhere as popular as giving them toned arms and legs but really big butts and breasts. The latter I think you’ll encounter in cheesecake art a lot.

So much for claims about celebrating the female form, yet ignoring or glossing over the bodies of other women in favour of a nearly impossible ideal. It doesn’t help that the bodies of other women are often ignored or sometimes compared to the idealised physique unfavourably (especially in Frank Cho’s drawings). If it’s true, then there might be another reason why you don’t see flabby arms and thighs that often in comics.

But the thing here’s that for other women, losing body fat in other body parts is going to be hard. They can lift as much as they can, walk a lot as they can but still have flabby arms and thighs. They do get muscled, but they still have an amount of body fat. It seems in the world of superhero comics, the ideal woman has very muscled arms and thighs but also a big bum and bust. Not that there aren’t any muscular busty women.

But the only one I could name who isn’t fat is Rasa von Werder (also known as Kellie Everts when she was younger), she’s the only one that I can think of who’s built like a superheroine. It’s not that superhero cartoonists necessarily draw really muscular, almost flat-chested women (when they do, they get flack from misogynistic readers). But there’s a fear of making a woman look both fat and less feminine, as if these traits are mutually exclusive.

Maybe they are to an extent, but both because women tend to have more body fat than men do and that breasts contain a lot of fatty tissue so some women would find it hard to get rid of fat in their highs and some women wound up getting flat-chested if they lift a lot, diet a lot or are genetically predisposed to be thin. So it seems the slim but muscled and busty female character’s an impossible ideal for many others.

Maybe not entirely impossible, however it’s almost always impossible for women who’re predisposed towards certain body types. If you tend towards flabby thighs, then getting really muscular thighs would be really difficult. If you tend to be skinny, you’ll risk being really flat-chested if you lose more body fat. It doesn’t help that there are cartoonists who don’t diversify much in drawing different body shapes, that they’ll tend towards idealised shapes.

It’s like how Frank Cho’s got a habit of giving his female characters toned figures but big breasts and buttocks yet no flabby arms and thighs in sight, or why J Scott Campbell can’t give his otherwise normal weight women actual stomachs. Either it’s a fear of making them look fat, or that they idealise a certain body shape that they go so far to distort the anatomy to go after it. (It’s also telling that a Campbell male still has room for internal organs and a stomach.)

I do think it’s telling whenever cartoonists barely give some female characters actually flabby arms or thighs that they do adhere to an ideal, or if one woman gets unfavourably compared to another (as you see in Frank Cho’s cartoons) that says a lot about how they see women as.

It’s really just a comic book/cartoon

It seems like in geek circles, especially outside of Japan and possibly a few other countries, anime is used to almost always refer to Japanese animation. You might say anime uses different conventions from Western animation and it does to an extent, I say extent because other times it’s practically the same thing. If you make a character move on separate sheets of paper or on a computer, you are doing animation.

It doesn’t matter what nationality’s the animation from, but if it involves making a character move from one piece of paper to another then you’re animating them. Not to mention 3D CGI anime exists such as Lupin III and Doraemon, so if it’s animated using different kinds of software or on paper it’s still animation. That’s something a normal person would’ve known and figured out immediately.

Likewise, perhaps unfortunately, comic books in the Anglophone world almost always refers to superhero comics whereas cartoon books (from personal experience) is used to mean comic strip compilations, even though the latter’s just as much of a trade paperback as their non-comic strip counterparts are when bound. Not to mention those who do non-superhero comics are referred to as cartoonists.

That may be true for most of the part, but cartoon strips using a more naturalistic style like Mary Perkins, On Stage exist. Not to mention the late Al Plastino didn’t just work in comic books, he even worked in comic strips like the newspaper versions of Batman and Superman as well as Ferd’nand. So I’m justified in calling comic book artists cartoonists, which’s what they technically and practically do.

I suspect why comic book artists aren’t referred to as cartoonists not just because they draw in a different style but also or perhaps most importantly whether if they like it or not comic book artist sounds more dignified than cartoonist. It seems like a game of semantics where they deem a Granny Smith different from a Fuji apple, even though they’re both apples.

(A real apples vs oranges analogy would be the difference between comics and pure texts, with picture books and any illustrated text being pears and cherries.)

Steve Bolhafner made a good argument calling cartoon books comic books in that they’re books with a lot of comics in them, though they’re not commonly regarded as such due to the perception whether among non-geeks or sadly among geeks. It seems when it comes to semantics, a comic book would pretty much be a flimsy magazine with cartoons in them and a comic strip is a cartoon with sequences.

A cartoon book would be any cartoon containing cartoons in them, whether if it’s a single panel or with multiple panels, so a cartoonist would be different from a comic book artist even though they do illustrations with sequences and word balloons in them. Let’s not forget that regular newspapers have cartoons in both, both the sequential variety and non-type and that regular book publishers also publish cartoon books.

Regular book publishers also publish comic books and there are comics publishers that publish cartoon books, so the line between comic book and comic strip can be pretty blurry. So is the line between manga and comic book if mangaka also work on American comics, some like Jodi Picoult rightfully call manga Japanese comics because they’re comics from Japan.

They may have different conventions, but if it involves a sequence of cartoons and word balloons the shoe will fit well. Actually even editorial cartoons and single panel cartoons also have word balloons so calling comic strips and comic books cartoons as well as comic strip and comic book illustrators cartoonists fit. The shoe fits too well if you call a comic book artist a cartoonist.

While animation and cartoons are related in some way when it comes to drawing figures, they’re also rather different as the latter involves static images. Same with photography and film, so to speak anything that combines text and image is comparable to comics and anything that involves capturing actual motion is comparable to animation.

Animation is the drawn counterpart of live action, cartoons and storybooks are the counterpart to any text with photographs in them. Well, that’s one epiphany I have regarding comics and animation.

Trying to get published

Lately, I’ve been trying to get published but I think my comic strips got rejected because I feel the art was too crude and unrefined to get published at all. In my defence, that’s just me trying to draw on a tablet but the results are less than stellar than what I’m used to. Even then, I feel my artwork may’ve been too mediocre to be published anyways. The third time might be the right time, but I’m not sure if God is willing to let me do comic strips at all.

I did make a comic strip in May to June, but because we don’t have a scanner it never got posted online even though it would’ve helped boost my career in comics in some way though I’m being unrealistic about it. Either I should make my standards higher to get published in something like the Philippine Star or do something different like a webcomic or write comics for instance.

Whatever my desires, I ought to be more realistic when it comes to getting my comic strip published at all and it ought to be different from what I wanted to do. But then again, I want to have something better to do in my life which means I need a way to find income and money when I wanted and needed to. I’m not sure if I’ll even get hired by Marvel Comics if I was dead set on doing comics at all, I could get rejected thrice.

I might be too pessimistic this time after trying my hardest to get my comic strip published, only to be rejected twice despite my revisions, but I could get lucky this time around even though it could turn out to be a pipe dream again. I might still be pessimistic about being hired by Marvel since it has requirements for its employees to come from college or university, so doing a newspaper comic strip would be a more accessible calling.

It’s probably much easier working on a newspaper cartoon, given my minimal education experience (though I have way more luck selling something myself) even if that too has its setbacks from my experience. A girl could dream of course, but I’m still finding a way to get employed and I’d even have to work two jobs to earn more money this way. If only I could find work after 11 years of being unemployed or perhaps 12 years, I could earn money.

It would be the hard way, given I currently enroll in online classes and I’m planning on going to vocational school one day but I need to find work to support myself as much as I can do about it.

John Callahan

The late John Callahan is one such cartoonist. He wasn’t just crippled but also embittered by so many bad experiences (being molested by a woman, hit by a car and the like) that coloured some of his more controversial cartoons though he eventually let his guard down in later years and was something of a conservative. Not to mention he’s the mastermind behind Pelswick, which I remember watching on Nickelodeon.

And the basic premise is that the titular lad wants to be seen and treated normally despite his own disability. Even Callahan himself thinks that same way. (I admit relating to this too to some extent.) To be honest, I also think John Callahan is like a real life version of Barbara Gordon (red-haired and wheelchair-bound), or at least what the latter was like for a substantial period of time in comics.

(Barbara Gordon’s often almost always the default Batgirl outside of comics but one wonders if Callahan’s own fame may’ve partly inspired Gordon’s transition to becoming Oracle.)

Definitely a case of reality being much stranger than fiction considering that Callahan worked in comics and animation if because he got hurt by a car accident and was very embittered from being molested by a woman.

Black and white comics

Kind of weird at times should characters’ hair colours be revealed. If I’m not mistaken, that’s even the case with Japanese comics before that of those colours weren’t even intended to be official, so identifying characters by their faces was preferred at least for a long time. Maybe not always exactly nor consistently the case but made sense in that many anime characters in the 60s and 70s didn’t have odd hair colours back then.

I even think other cartoonists never intended to imagine them with odd hair colours too. Though that eventually became the expected practise, made worse by that it can be hard trying to find the right hair colour at times. So again identifying them by their faces (though not always the case) becomes really important in here. Such is the nature of working in black and white illustrations and cartoons a lot. Finding the right hair colour’s going to be tricky anyways.