DOES DRAWING
COMICS PAY?
We ask indie comic artists about the industry and whether
they’re able to earn a decent crust...
Matt Taylor draws Wolf, a fantasy/crime noir
comic series published by Image.W
ith the buzz that
surrounds superhero
movies continuing
unabated, it seems
on the face of it that
there’s never been a better time to be
drawing comics.
Let’s crunch some numbers. Christopher
Nolan’s Batman trilogy brought in nearly
$1.2 billion for Warner Bros, the parent
company of DC Comics. The 2012 Avengers
film earned $623 million and in May 2015
Avengers: Age of Ultron came out with a
tale of $191 million in its first week.
But how much do the films actually help
comic sales? According to US sales figures,
in the month Age of Ultron came out, the
comic Uncanny Avengers Ultron Forever 1
took $201,331, while Uncanny Avengers 4
made $186,736 in sales. The industry was
boosted with the launch of Secret Wars,
which sold over 500,000 copies in its first
week, and sales of the top 300 books were
up 20 per cent compared to May 2014. Of
course, these numbers are dwarfed by the
film revenues, but they seem healthy.
Variant artwork
by Dennis Calero
for Marvel’s X-Men
Noir series.Feature