Go, Read: Heidi MacDonald On Freelancers In Trouble And What Gets Said On Both Sides

Here. Heidi MacDonald's article using the recent cancellation of a Wonder Woman project by Ray Dillon and Renae De Liz and their subsequent crowd-funding as a springboard brings up a bunch of issues, perhaps most widely the general low level of expectations we bring to behavior by people in comics. I've benefited from this, and need to get my own act together and I hope other people feel the same. Comics isn't a field with high margins and there are a lot of people that want in. If you're charged with shepherding certain projects and you can get the same, rough result for less hassle, you're probably going to lean in that direction.

The more interesting issues raised are just realizing that there are difficult freelancers in some cases as well as difficult companies. That shit river still flows downhill more often than up, but I and most people in comics do know of stories where a freelancer is partly to totally to blame for a mess that develops, but it just doesn't get communicated that way in accounts. Also intriguing is the notion of what we do about people not keeping crowd-funding promises -- something with which I can currently be tagged -- and whether or not difficult behavior is forgiven of men and not women, white creators and not black, and so on, on both sides of the editorial/freelance structure still at the heart of a lot of comics-making. I almost certainly benefit from that, too, and suspects it's a notion in play more than we realize. I think we just all need to do better and to keep public pressure on those of us who fail to meet basic standards on all sides of business arrangements. It's also worth noting that those companies that own characters whom freelancers use are likely to bring a degree of difficulty to these arrangements not seen in more self-directed enterprises.

I will admit that barring extraordinary circumstances I will still try to give anyone in comics that asks for money out of a need a bit of money, because I'd rather be optimally helpful and thinking that way rather than protecting myself against risk. Everyone's choices are their own, though.
 
posted 3:21 pm PST | Permalink
 

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