Arts Link-O-Rama 4-2-09
on April 1st, 2009Steve Bissette is blogging about his days working with Allan Moore on Swamp Thing, and it’s fascinating reading. Three parts so far. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
EDIT: I can’t tell what Bissette means when he admonishes people to not “lift text” – extensive quotes, in toto or what. I don’t like it when people crib my entire blog for their blog posts, either. I am going to assume he doesn’t mean a few sentences withing the bounds of fair use. Whatever, I’ll just paraphrase instead of quoting and let you know that Bissette recalls editors actively discouraging creators from speaking with one another. Trot on over to his blog to read his exact words.
I did have one old guard editor in the early 1980′s (who has since passed on) forbid my speaking to the author of the comic I was illustrating. But that was the only instance I can recall this ever happening at either DC or Marvel. However, Bissette is a good many years my senior, and had a longer history at these companies than I did. But for a few jobs, I didn’t start working on a regular basis at either company until around 1987, though I had had a few gigs at both companies prior to that.
Found a lot of articles on artists in the current job market, none of them good news. Artists are (not surprisingly) losing jobs at a higher rate than in the rest of the professional sector, and the rate would be even higher were artists not simply ditching creative fields entirely.
Artists are unemployed at twice the rate of professional workers, a category in which artists are grouped because of their high levels of education. The artist unemployment rate grew to 6% in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared with 3% for all professionals. A total of 129,000 artists were unemployed in the fourth quarter of 2008, an increase of 50,000 (63%) from one year earlier. The unemployment rate for artists is comparable to that for the overall workforce (6.1%).
You can find the study at the National Endowment for the Arts website.
Another article at The Christian Science Monitor. Same theme.
“Artists are entrepreneurs in terms of their employment character. They’re the equivalent of small businesses – they require a lot more investment up front. They’re already in a pretty precarious situation. And in a market like this, artists are really hit pretty hard.”
Gee whizz, I say that every week.
How the arts performed during the Depression.
If we look at the arts as a life-giving form of social therapy, many other fads and fashions of the 1930s fall into place. The thrust of the culture, like the aims of the New Deal, was to get the country moving again. At cross-purposes in conversation, Astaire and Rogers seem perfectly ill-matched. Endlessly bickering with each other, they can agree on nothing. But once they dance, a swirling poetry of movement takes over.
TS Eliot rejects Orwell’s Animal Farm.
“We have no conviction that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the current time,” wrote Eliot, adding that he thought its “view, which I take to be generally Trotskyite, is not convincing”.
The Oresteia in plain English. Dear God, no. Please, no.
BEFORE:
Is it some grace — or otherwise — that you have heard
to make you sacrifice at messages of good hope?
I should be glad to hear, but must not blame your silence.
AFTER:
So you got good news?
You’re optimistic?
Tell me, unless you don’t want to.
I don’t normally advocate book burning.
On the Orestia translation…. eeep!
All of a sudden I want to go watch the Redgrave version of THE BROWNING VERSION again (my DVD copy of it surfaced the other day when I was shifting some things out of the old bookcase).
How utterly ghastly that translation of the Orestia is. Wish they’d laid down until the feeling went away.
People who need to have the Oresteia dumbed down to that extent are not likely to have any interest in reading the Oresteia in the first place.
Just buy the Cliff’s Notes.
Quote away, Colleen, as you see fit — my ‘rules’ are to discourage folks from simply cutting-and-pasting script pages and art I’ve posted in these essays and presenting them as their own (which has happened in the past).
I’ll be getting into the editorial policies at DC and Marvel circa the early 1980s; I like to think at times Alan, John and I may have made some small difference in kicking down a few doors that used to exist, but I can’t say for sure. Fact is, we had to incrementally negotiate DC reimbursing the considerable cost of our communication between the UK, Erie PA (where John lived and lives) and VT (where I lived and still dwell) by giving up any claim to plotting credit on the issues John and I indeed plotted, and so on. It was a slow process, but in the end, by the time Vertigo was launched, the benefits of having creative partners collaborate closely had been instilled in the new paradigm — but it sure wasn’t the case in 1983-85.
Hope you checked out the rest of the site and blog, too, Colleen. I’m drawing my pants off these days; never forgot I once made you cry when I stepped away from comics and drawing for a spell. In fact I never stopped drawing — I just stopped drawing for publication. Still, hope you enjoy the new work I post almost daily, and hope you’re doing well. It’s been a long time…
Hi Steve! Thanks for the clarification. I’m with you, I can’t stand these blog hogs who just rip stuff from our posts and drop it elsewhere, so you have my full support and sympathy on that.
I only just found your blog recently and have linked it in my sidebar. Fascinating stuff!
Since I didn’t get my first job at DC until 1984 (I think), most of the worst policies you had to fight were already on their way out. I didn’t start doing steady work in the mainstream until around 1986 or 1987. The only editor I ever worked at any of the mainstream companies who was dictatorial and forbade me to speak to other creators was Julius Schwartz, and the book was Amethyst. I never had another mainstream editor even suggest I not speak with other people, though a few small press types tried that trick (I ignored them).
I’m glad to know you were a part of changing the way creators are treated in mainstream comics!
Nothing makes me happier than to know you are drawing and have never given it up. I had a complete meltdown in 1992, and was so moved by your sharing your experiences with me that I got off my butt and got out of my rut. I had another work collapse (I don’t know what else to call it) about two years ago, but for very different reasons.
Outstanding creators like you who are very honest with your experiences are a great inspiration to me and other artists. I am so very grateful that you take the time to post these stories. I don’t think the general public really gets what things were like in those days at various publishers.
No royalties, no rights, and no respect.
So many fans today just think we are all rich and spoiled. It’s utterly bizarre.
Thank you so much, Steve.