Pizza Party!

So you want to be a comic book artist..? Here’s some sobering information.

One year. 12 issues. 264 pages. 4 covers.

As a full-time comic artist this is the expected output, more or less. Not to say I haven’t done a TON of work on the side to make ends meet, but as an artist on an ongoing monthly title, this is generally what you are expected to produce every year. Some artists do much more than this. Some less. It all depends on your productivity and drive.

It’s taken a lot of work and a ton of luck, but I’ve managed to stay busy for the majority of my career. I’ve gotten married, bought a house and have two beautiful kids. All the while, I was working full time as a professional comic artist. This schedule has allowed me to stay home with the kids until they were ready for school. I’m truly grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given and all of the wonderful people I’ve gotten to know and work with over the years.

I wanted to take this opportunity to give people a look at what it really means to be a professional comic artist; good and bad.

This was a strictly work-for-hire job on a licensed book. That usually means no royalties. The page rate on this project was $125. This is considered an okay page rate by today’s standards. Advances on creator-owned projects are a different matter and subject to different criteria, so are jobs at Marvel and DC. That being said, this is a middle-of-the-road page rate. Not great, not terrible.

Gross pay over the year in addition to those four covers was $33,625. After taxes? $24, 210. That’s $2,017.50 a month (again, I do a lot of work on the side to make ends meet).

Nearly all of that aforementioned salary goes to the mortgage, and so the majority of the financial responsibility falls on my wife.

Remember those kids i mentioned? Full-time daycare in Portland is somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000 -$1,500 per kid. Not to mention health insurance, utilities, car payments, school loans, credit card payments, et al.

Needless to say, you’re going to have to do a hell of a lot more work than those 264+ pages per year to keep your family afloat (should you choose to have one).

So. Here’s the schedule I keep:

7:00am - Wake up, feed the kids and get them ready for school.

8:30 - Take the kids to school

9:00-9:30am - Start work

12:30pm Pick up kid #1

3:30pm: Pick up kid #2

4:00-9:00pm - Family time.

9:00pm-3:00am Work

3:00am Sleep.

Yep. That’s four hours of sleep per day, best-case scenario. Weekends too. Due to the sleep deprivation, I feel like absolute garbage all the time. Depression, anxiety, nausea, fatigue, weight gain, compromised cognitive abilities, even hallucinations - I suffer from all of these.

So, let’s imagine you have a quaint little nuclear family, a mortgage, etc. and you land a high-profile, non-DC/Marvel gig like #BigTroubleinLittleChina, and you command a decent salary (by today’s standards) from whatever value your name/talent/reputation derives.

You will still likely need to work 50-60 hours a week, nearly 365 days a year to just get by.

So you want to be a comic book artist..?

My best advice to you is to find another way to make your money. Make comics for fun, and at your leisure. Make creator-owned comics, as this is some of the most rewarding work you will ever do, hands down. My books, The Secret History of DB Cooper and Hellbreak have been the most rewarding experiences I’ve had professionally. I implore everyone to do their own thing and not expect comics to pay their bills, because it likely won’t.

-BC

Hellbreak and The Secret History of DB Cooper are available through your local comic shop, and are published by Oni Press.

TMNT on BNN

Bebop and Rocksteady by brianchurilla

Raph's gonna take them out with a pure 'tude attack!

GROOT-kid. #guardiansofthegalaxy

The toughest sapling in the galaxy!

I need to resurrect Blood Farm as a webcomic. #bloodfarm

I agree!

Brian Churilla and Chris Sebela: separated at birth.

Artist interpretations of partially shaved sasquatches?

On the drawing board:

Cruel Biology - words by me, art by Brian Churilla, color by Dave Stewart - starts February in Dark Horse Presents #33. 

Gonna be a good one, guys and gals! Get ready!

Dark Horse Presents #33

Christopher Sebela (W), Jamie S. Rich (W), Darrin Grimwood (W), Brendan McCarthy (W/A), Dean Motter (W/A), Mike Baron (W), Michael T. Gilbert (W/A), Phil Stanford (W), Fred Van Lente (W), Rich Johnston (W), Chad Lambert (W), Brian Churilla (A), Brent Schoonover (A), Steve Rude (A), Patric Reynolds (A), Reilly Brown (A), Simon Rohrmüller (A), Christine Larsen (A), and Michael Schlicting (Cover)

On sale Feb 19 / Full Color / 80 pages / $7.99 Christopher Sebela (Captain Marvel, Ghost) crafts a horror tale from World War II—there’s blood in the water in Cruel Biology! And two misters return to the pages of DHP, as Dean Motter delivers a new noir tale starring Mister X and Michael T. Gilbert’s Mr. Monster faces off against a telepathic threat bent on world domination! Plus, new installments of Nexus, Fred Van Lente’s Saint George, Kill Me, and more!

So this just got announced. I have a 4-part story starting in February’s DARK HORSE PRESENTS called “Cruel Biology.”

Brian Churilla drawing, Dave Stewart coloring and Jim Gibbons editing. I’ll talk more about it as we get closer to February, but to say I am excited is the understatement of the decade.

Really not sure why I worked a Dave Matthews Band reference into that solicitation copy, but even so, you should be incredibly excited about Cruel Biology! A prime example of how awesome comics can be!