One more business post before I go back to reblogging cat gifs. If you enjoyed this and/or the contracts one, please consider buying one of my comic books (the Sensation/Wonder Woman issues I did and No Mercy 1 & 2 are both 99c right now on Comixology; and paper comics can be mail-ordered from TFAW in the US).



Toxicity comes in three general forms for the comics pro: nonpayment, bad managers/collaborators, and harassment/discrimination. I guarantee you over your creative career you’ll experience the first two, and while I sincerely hope you never experience the third, if you are a PoC, LGBTQ, and/or female identifying, chances are you’re going to get creeped on. Pull up a chair ‘cause mama’s going to dish.

First, NONPAYMENT. Frequently, this is a smaller-company issue. Little Hollywood-affiliated publisher hires you at a niiiice page rate (for writers, that’s over $100 a page) to write some work for hire. Great! But then your invoices start being ignored. What do you do? Sit there in your grotto looking at your own bills piling up while humming “some-day my check will come” to yourself? Believe it or not that’s what most people do. Don’t do that. As with so much bad behavior, folks get away with it because they don’t get called on it.

If your check is late, first: stop working. Do not throw good money after bad. If you’re going to sit at home not getting paid, now is the time to work on your novel / own comic book / screenplay / whatever. Stop IMMEDIATELY, and politely inform the company that until you receive your advance for Issue #3, you won’t start work on Issue #4. They may browbeat you or threaten you but none of that matters – they owe you money. They can pay it, and you’ll start working again. (Meerkat voice) Simples!

Remain polite. Your editor is not the person cutting checks. If a company is in nosedive and not paying its freelancers, there is a good chance your editor isn’t getting paid either, or has taken a pay cut. (Also, that editor will eventually quit and go to another company.)

Be firm and persistent. Ask for the accounting contact so you can email and call them directly. REMAIN POLITE. When a company is being overwhelmed by debt, you know what they pay first? The noisy creditors. Be noisy. Don’t splash their name all over social media – that’s a mug’s game, and may violate nondisclosure agreements in your contract thus (woop!) putting you in breach of contract at which point they will say they don’t have to pay you at all.

Get lawyers involved early. But Alex, I’m a broke creator in Indiana, how do I do that? First, get your contract. At the end, it will say “this contract is governed by the laws of the state of [NAME OF STATE].” Get thee to the internets and google “Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts” and the state name. Here’s New York Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and California Lawyers for the Arts, to get you started.

Now, 90% of the time the sort of chucklefucks who try to pull this shit are in California (hoo-ray for Ho-llywood!, &c.) This is actually great news because California has large and byzantine laws regarding freelancers and benefits which 99% of companies totally ignore, including (doubtlessly) the idiots currently not paying you. The wonderful colleendoran breaks down the consequences of this far more elegantly than I ever could (READ THIS).

VLA costs a princely $25 to find a pro bono lawyer. Often it only takes ONE letter from a lawyer for these Potemkin Publishers to crumple like the paper towns they are. Heck, once all I had to do was tell a publisher that I was about to engage one and it would cost me no more than $25 TOTAL to keep legal pressure up until they paid me, versus likely $500 per hour on their side, and wouldn’t it be better for them to just front up the $3,000-odd they owed me. They went on a payment plan, $1250 a month, but they paid every damn cent.

Now, BAD COLLABORATORS/EDITORS. Folks, editors exist, like much of life, on a bell curve. Most are pretty OK. A few are great – the great ones I’ve worked with in my career were Philippe Hauri at Humanoids (now he runs Glenat); Diana Schutz; and Brendan Wright – the latter two at Dark Horse, though Diana is now retired. I think Kristy Quinn at DC’s pretty excellent as well. Of course, the flip side means every company employs a small group of Damn Fools. What do you do if you end up collaborating with or working for a Damn Fool?

The main issue with Damn Fools is they waste your time. That lovely $100 a page you’re getting for writing (say) INCREDIBLE EMBIGGENING MAN for Detectarvel Comics works out to less than McDonalds wages after six rewrites, four of which were done after the script was “approved”. Some editors also fancy themselves writers, which is fine – until they rewrite your scripts without your approval. Plus, Damn Fools mismanage politics and don’t have your back. Artist drawing your female characters as porn models, and that’s not cool with you? Silence. Last minute rewrites/changes of approved arcs because someone up the food chain says you have to put Lobo in it, or can’t have Character X any more? Crickets.

And remember, the comics consumer doesn’t know what went on behind the four-colour curtain… all they know is when you started working on INCREDIBLE EMBIGGENING MAN, your work took a total nose-dive and you’re shit now. And that’s the biggest problem. They’re fucking with your shit and you’re taking the rap for it.

Plus, on the creator-owned side, there’s the writer who thinks his/her artist is their marionette, or never gets the finished project out even though you took no advance and were expecting only back end, or the artist who gets paid but never gives pages… This is why you always, ALWAYS have a contract with your collaborators before you begin work. Even if they are your friends. (ESPECIALLY if they are your friends).

If your collaborator is trying to convince you that nobody does contracts or gaslights you/makes you feel crazy to want one, run a mile. Don’t look back, just run. We ALL do contracts. Grownups put it in writing. Contract doesn’t have to be anything fancy. It can just be an email and an “I agree” response. It should cover who gets paid what and when, when is work due and what happens if deadlines are broken, who owns what % of the IP, when ownership vests (eg for the artist, when work is finished), et cetera. Pay especial attention to laying out in writing what happens if the collaboration has to break up (eg due to work never completed and/or your collaborator ending up being someone you just can’t work with). You will have to fire or split up with at least one collaborator in your career, I guarantee.

(Now, NDAs are a step too far and usually a n00b thing, oh bless, there you are with your one idea you think will change comics forever – aka a Batman pitch with the serial number scrubbed off –and you assume we’re all out to steal it. PASS.)

If a collaborator seems too good to be true – a fantastic artist, willing to work at a very low rate; a writer who had a couple big books then vanished for a while – it is probably because they are so unprofessional in their work behavior/ethic that nobody will touch them. (Ask an editor, if you’re suspicious about someone too good to be true. Editors are like elephants. Blow your deadlines, lie to them, and/or turn in bad work? They will remember your name UNTIL THE END OF TIME, and they will tell ALL their friends.)

Just walk away from those people. Part of it comes from not jumping at every opportunity you are given. The most powerful word in the freelancer’s vocabulary, the one that brings all the editors into your yard, is “no”. And obviously, not “no, you’re a damn fool”. But no, sorry, my schedule doesn’t have space until 2017. No, that character doesn’t strike a chord with me. No, I’m not taking on more creator-owned work at the moment. Take a leaf from Hollywood’s book here – folks in Hollywood can say no so cleverly and politely, you think they’ve said yes.

It’s tough, tho, especially when you need the money. If you have to take that gig with the bad editor, though, smile ALL the way through it, don’t say boo, and make friends with all the other editors at the company and transfer away from Mr or Mrs Toxic as fast as you damn well can. IF YOU TAKE THE DEAL, NEVER EVER BITCH ABOUT YOUR RATE OR THE EDITOR AFTER YOU TOOK IT. C’mon, you knew what the rate was when you signed up! You knew what the editor’s rep was (because you asked your other working pro friends who worked for him/her)! If you bitch, it makes YOU the Damn Fool.

Now, speaking of Mr Toxic…

HARRASSMENT. Hoo boy. I’m pretty lucky and have never experienced overt harassment / discrimination in comics. But here are some things that have happened to people I know in the industry: a well-known creator donating heavily to a young female creator’s kickstarter, then sending her increasingly sexual DMs; a creator basically stalking girls on Livejournal and pressuring young female creators to collaborate with him while cultivating a rep as a feminist ally (yeah, watch out for those. mostly they just want a fresh-baked batch of ally cookies and to feel your boobs); a creator and their girlfriend going to a comics publisher’s party and an editor shoving his tongue down the girlfriend’s throat while the creator was in the bathroom (seriously, this guy is still employed, though he has an HR file that would stop a tank); a male editor feeling up a female creator under the table (she stuck a fork in him because she was DONE); a creator with a creepy thing about very young girls utterly terrorising his female collaborators that he would ruin their careers if they ever said anything about him; and let’s not forget the everyday just talking over females and/or creeping on them during panels and then apologising to their boyfriends (but not the woman).

I honestly don’t think comics are any worse than any other industry, though. Remember: bell curve. Lots of silent folks, a few great ones and, in the shadows, a few lizards who occasionally scuttle out from under rocks to flick their tongues at the laydees.

And any small subculture has those people. Strong, abusive personalities who get off on power and creeping on younger, newer members of the culture. But, y’know, let’s all avoid those people. How do you do that?

First, make friends with other female pros. We’re generally all pretty liberal, pro-trans and pro-PoC, and most of us know who the creepy dudes are to avoid. I’d also shout out to Mark Waid and Jeff Parker as people you can trust to ask for advice and/or have your back.

Second, ask for help early. If you are thinking “mmmmaybe this will turn out OK?”, oh honey, it never will. Don’t be afraid to back out early from projects with collaborators who start creeping you out. Lie if you have to – “I have a severe illness in the family and can’t meet deadlines for the next few months, I’m so sorry, I think it’s best if you find someone else” – then go work on your webcomic. Remember, SELF CARE is always more important than that job opportunity.

Third, if God forbid you are a victim of verbal, sexual, or emotional harassment/violence, gather around you two people who care about you and report the person to the police and/or the convention. (NOT their publisher – seriously, the institutional inertia, it is huge, and the publisher will do fuck all. Go to the cops.) You WILL get victim-blamed hard, so prep for that. It sucks, but it’s true. “She led me on”, “I was drunk”, “don’t you know she’s a ho?” “She was wearing a short skirt. Boys will be boys!”, “well she invited me up to her room” (because you asked to see her portfolio there, dipshit, and she didn’t think that meant “and then shove her onto the bed”). But the internet outrage cycle will move on, and you’ll have your life back in at most two weeks. And they’ll have a police record!

The reason the same circa five people keep doing shitty things in comics is SILENCE and ABUSE. They threaten to end the careers of people they’ve harassed, and everyone stays silent. Girlfriend: they cannot end your career. If people can’t end my career (and I’ve done some DUMB shit and said some regrettable things to a whole BUNCH of powerful people), they cannot end yours. This is abusive-relationship dynamics: you are trained to behave via threats and emotional abuse in a ridiculous pattern in order to stave off more threats and abuse, and when you finally step out of it you look at the crazy mirror-universe way you were behaving, tiptoeing through an imaginary Skinnerian maze of landmines set by the abuser, and you’re like WHOA THAT WAS NUTS. Girlfriend, I was in that maze once – hell, I was married to the maze. I can tell you, once you step out of it, it all vanishes behind you like morning mist.

You’re talented. You’re smart. You’re young. They cannot take anything away from you without your permission. What’s he going to do, come to your house and take your laptop and copy of Manga Studio? You can survive this, and you can make them STOP the behavior they’ve been perpetrating. Do it for the next girl, who may not be as together as you (even if you don’t feel very together at all). There are many, many ways to be published in comics, and there is NO single person that can lock off all those ways to you. Heck, you could walk up to Robert Kirkman and bitchslap him with a haddock and you STILL wouldn’t be locked out of the industry. (Don’t do that, though. Robert’s a really nice human.) Don’t believe the threats of abusers.

Fourth, all of you reading this with your jaws on the floor, BELIEVE YOUR FEMALE FRIENDS when they say things about being uncomfortable. Listen. Help them. Raise your voice – especially men – against creepy behavior in the industry and at conventions/parties. Some male pro tweets something creepy or demeaning to a woman? YOU call him on it. Don’t wait for girls to do it. Silence = Complicity. You want to be all #NotAllMen? Well then SHUT DOWN the assholes. Don’t just whine to chicks about being one of the Good Guys – protip, 1) you will never get into our pants that way and 2) it’s pathetic – just go out there and BE a good guy and take action. Are you on a panel and some other panelist is talking over/not letting a queer, female, and/or PoC panel member speak? And you’re waiting for the moderator to say something? Don’t wait. Tell the dude to PIPE DOWN. Male on male peer pressure to enforce civilised behavior is an INCREDIBLY important process of curbing online and IRL abuse to women and minorities.

And ladies? This doesn’t mean don’t go have a good time or hook up at cons. I’m not going to go all bell hooks on you. Girl, wear a short skirt, get drunk / take drugs (if that’s your thing), hook up with dudes and/or chicks and generally have fun with your naughty self! Very few people lie on their deathbed thinking “I wish I had less sex when I was 22.” Just: bring a friend or two as a wingperson, and have VERY specific rules and situations where you can leave each other alone. Have a codeword that means “get me out of here now”. When in doubt, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR FRIEND. Take care of each other. Guys, I’ll say it again – if you see something weird happen at a party with a girl, STEP IN and ask if she needs help, and offer to get her to her door (you stay outside). That? THAT’s how you #NotAllMen.