Comic publishing isn’t an easy business and the history of shady deals, bad deals, corrupt publishers, and more could fill volumes of books. On Friday, creator Will Robson spoke out about some of that in a series of Tweets concerning late payments to creators for their work.

Has it become industry standard to pay creators ridiculously late for their work? I’ve struggled ALL year with ALL the large companies I work for to get paid on the agreed time. I’m talking MONTHS late… it’s sad how nervous I am to even talk about this publicly in fear of being blacklisted for future work. But I’ve heard so many horror stories from other freelance creators recently about fighting for their paycheque and I need to vent this all out and hopefully raise some awareness to make serious change.

Here’s how it works. You’re hired to write or draw a book. The deal usually is you have to complete 5-10 pages first & then you will receive a payment for that work a few weeks after completing it. This means that when you start a new project, it’s not guaranteed when exactly you’ll see your first payment because depending on the difficulty of the work (team book, locations, crowd scenes etc) the length of time it takes to create enough pages of work is always fluid. Usually if you’re a pro you can gamble that your first payment will be 4-5 weeks upon taking on the work. So you’re already looking at each project you take on as a month plus minimum expectancy of payment for half or a quarter of the issue you’re working on. Now, this can be annoying as if you’re constantly hopping from title to title, these payments can stagger between each other and you can find yourself in some financial jams. But recently I’ve had (what I thought) was a stroke of bad luck with getting paid on that agreed amount of time after finishing work. And I’m not talking a week late, I’m talking 5-10 WEEKS late. These delays have caused me and my family so much stress it’s unbelievable. I’ve dealt with delayed payments in the past working with smaller companies but the biggest companies in the business are now delaying payments regularly and I’ve really have had enough. A project I’ve worked on recently still hasn’t paid me. I was expecting payment for it in mid November. Remember that 4-5 week window of expected first pay I talked about? That means I started the book in October! How do these companies expected me to pay my bills and afford the Holidays? I’ve been constantly living in a state of survival mode all year with barely affording to get by due to these delays. I just find it ridiculous that I’m a trained and skilled worker who works 10-15 hour shifts 5-7 days of the week to hit these ridiculous industry standard deadlines that already take you away from having any sense of a normal family / social life to then have to worry about paying your bills or feeding your family. I mean, I get to draw these iconic characters owned by these large corporations who are making millions off of adapting freelancers like myself’s art & creativity. But when you’re drawing these characters & internally stressing over wether or not you can afford to buy your family Christmas presents this year due to payment delays then enough is enough.

I work hard.

I hit my deadlines.

Pay me.

Robson’s Tweets go others to speak out, with multiple naming both Valiant and AfterShock as two publishers with this issue. A few others have been hinted at, but not confirmed. An example of that here and here.

We can confirm one of the named publishers as they not only have delayed payments to creators, but also are late in other payments. We ourselves are owed money for advertising that took place on this site and while we were initially told “payment was coming soon”, recent outreach has been met with silence with the bill over 6 months late. Another publisher canceled a month long advertising campaign during SDCC less than 24 hours before it was supposed to launch and refused to compensate for the lost revenue.

Nonpayment and late payment should be worrisome for creators, as it’s a sign of instability and cash flow problems and in an already volatile economy, any sign should give pause for not just future business but also receiving what’s owed.

Our understanding, having talked to numerous individuals within the industry with direct knowledge, is that PPP loans kept multiple publishers afloat during COVID and now the publishers haven’t adjusted to a new economic reality and the market isn’t where it “needs to be” causing money flow issues that are compounded by recent distribution/shipping issues and the increase cost of materials/business.

The result is in long run, we probably won’t be seeing some publishers making it out of 2023 as is. We’re also likely to see creators relying more heavily on crowdfunding and bypassing the traditional publisher driven distribution system.

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