There are a number of webcomickers these days who are able to make a living doing (or at least primarily doing) webcomics. That is fantastic! But a lot of them aren't making much (if any!) money from their webcomics yet. Maybe they're just new to the game, or maybe it hasn't been their focus, or whatever, but their primary income derives from some kind of day job. I've seen several that work as graphic designers; I don't doubt some work in retail environments; there are probably as many different occupations as there are webcomickers out there.

But if someone is getting paid to do a job that is not webcomics, that frequently means that webcomics by necessity become a secondary project. After all, you don't see CEOs and hedge fund managers making webcomics where they've got plenty of vacation time to take off if they need to. The people who are making webcomics typically have day jobs that are farther down the pay scale, often as hourly employees. With their the lower incomes comes less financial security. With less financial security comes a greater need to make sure you don't lose whatever income you're getting.

All of which means that webcomics that aren't make much money are going to take a back seat to a paying gig.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Perfectly reasonable approach in our capitalistic society.

But it does make for a big challenge in getting a webcomic up and running. After all, if the time a creator normally allots for working on their webcomic disappears or diminishes for any reason (change in job hours, relocation that requires a longer commute, etc.) the webcomic goes on hiatus. While on hiatus, a webcomic will almost inevitably lose some percentage of readership it has and the creator will have to work extra hard later to coerce them back.

A webcomic can run guest strips or re-runs for a week, maybe two, if they've things to take care of (convention travel, planned family events like weddings, etc.) but generally a hiatus comes unexpectedly and for more extended periods, often months. Sometimes, even a month-long buffer can be eaten away almost before you realize it!

And as I sit here thinking about the webcomic hiatus, it occurs to me that it mimics some of the social strata we see in American culture in general. The people who are living paycheck to paycheck have the most to lose, and have to fight the hardest to even keep up, much less make any headway in their lives. They are less likely to become financially secure because their daily fight is one of just surviving. Whereas someone higher up the career ladder has more flexibility; they have some measure of savings they can use as a security net should they lose their position, and their resumes look more impressive to give them a greater advantage in locating a new job.

Now compare that to webcomics. The people not making a living off their webcomic yet have the most to lose. Their small handful of followers diminishes noticeably even if only one or two people leave. By contrast, Randall Munroe doesn't give a rat's ass if I read his strip or not because he has so many readers that one more or less is insignificant. Similarly, if that first webcomicker drops their strip to start something new, it will be an incredibly hard uphill battle, but Munroe has a huge following that will undoubtedly jump over to (and fund!) whatever his next project might be. Munroe's comic might be, qualitatively, total crap next to this new person's but he will continue to be successful because he already is.

It just strikes me as interesting that the webcomic industry has become essentially a metaphoric microcosm of American capitalism. Where claims of meritocracy still abound and the American Dream™ of becoming anything you want if you just work hard at it is still widely believed. Even though neither is a terribly accurate method of describing what actually goes on. Webcomics likewise don't rise in popularity just because the writing or artwork is especially noteworthy. A lot of the OG webcomikers like Scott Kurtz and Kate Beaton have flatly said that you couldn't replicate their success today because they just happened to be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and got seen by the right people. They rise in popularity when they're given attention by someone with connections.

Doing a great webcomic is not enough. But doing an okay webcomic that you're able to get your friend with an already existing audience to promote on your behalf might be.

Here are yesterday's and today's Wizard of Id comic strips...

The Wizard being replaced by Curls from B.C. isn't that terribly surprising a notion. After all, both strips were originally created by Johnny Hart, and today both are made by Hart's grandsons Mason and Mick Mastroianni. (To be clear, both grandsons work on both strips jointly.) So there's obviously no issues developing a crossover, legally or creatively.

But here's thing: the crossover appears to be only one way. Here are this week's B.C. strips...

Nary a Wizard to be found!

If Wizard of Id had been a one-note gag on Monday, I wouldn't expect the Mastroianni brothers to do anything in B.C. as well. But they seem to be lining up for a week's worth of "Curls the caveman has suddenly replaced the Wizard" strips, so there's at least some thought going into a small story arc. But we don't see any reflection of that in B.C.

There's no law that says they have to show the crossover in both strips, of course, but I'm at a loss as to why you wouldn't. I mean, there's clearly joke and gag possibilities that would not normally be present, so wouldn't you want to take advantage of that creatively? Additionally, I expect the actual distribution of the two strips is virtually -- if not completely -- identical; that is, any newspaper that carries B.C. will almost certainly also carry Wizard of Id so it's not like you'd need an extended explanation in B.C. to narratively explain why a Wizard has suddenly popped up. If you're going to the effort to create a (presumably) week-long storyline out things, why not make it a bi-directional crossover? It would be more engaging both for the creators AND the audience, I think!

I think it's relatively common knowledge that comic books have decreased in their physical size over the years. It's particularly obvious when you compare Golden Age books against contemporary ones. And if someone wasn't familiar with the differences before, I suspect anyone who's ever accidentally bought comic bags or boards for the wrong era books got a very annoying history lesson.

Why have comic book sizes changed, though? I think most people who have any familiarity with the topic will give a pretty generic "cost savings" type answer -- if the pages are smaller, publishers are using less paper and therefore saving money. It makes sense intuitively, so no one really questions it much further. But how much money will a publisher actually save by doing that?

The first challenge in answering that question is that there are a lot of variables at play. Even the most stable comic titles fluctuate how many issues they sell month-to-month, so naturally how much paper you save is going to be dependent on how much you use. Additionally, the price of paper fluctates a fair amount so your savings is going to fluctuate a fair amount as well. Then there's other cost considerations; the per issue cost of a printer setting up their presses for a popular title like X-Men is going to be far lower than the per issue cost of a less popular title that sells maybe only 5,000-10,000 issues a month. Basically, there's bulk discounts for larger print runs.

All of which is to say that the numbers I'm going to be throwing out here are by no means definitive. They're a rough ballpark at best, and only meant to illustrate the general idea. So with that being said...

Let's start by looking at what kind of changes in page size are we talking about in the first place? It can't be much -- I mean, all my comics still fit in a long box, even if I have to get slightly different bag sizes. In the Silver Age, comics were 6.75" x 10.25" but now they're 6.625" x 10.25". That is 1/8 of inch (about 5mm) difference along one edge. That barely seems consequential, right? Well, let's then take a look at costs.

All US publishers combined printed 150,000,000 individual comics in 2022, with total sales at $1 billion US. Marvel accounted for 38.6% of that, or about 5,790,000 issues with sales of $38.6 million US. Printing costs will vary widely, of course, but depending on the volume of comics you're printing, a large publisher list Marvel can expect to be between $0.25 and $0.13 per issue. We'll average that out to $0.20 to make the math easier. Information on actual profits is even more sparse, particularly since all of the major publishers have been bought by corporations, but the data I have points to a per issue profit of between $0.90 and $1.42 per issue. Let's round that off to a dollar (again, for some easier math) -- that would put Marvel's profits specifically from their 2022 published comics at about $5.8 million US.

If we're talking about $0.20 for a 24 page book, that comes out to 8/10 of a cent per page. But if shaving off 1/8" saves you, say, 1/10 of a cent, then you're looking at 7/10 per page. Or $0.17 per book. A savings of 3 cents that gets added directly to your profits. Your dollar profit per book is now $1.03. Over an entire print line from a whole year, that comes to nearly $175,000!

Now, when you compare that against $5.8 million in profit, that doesn't sound like much. But that is $175,000 with effectively no extra effort. You're cropping one side of the page a little tighter, and that is done on the printer's side, not the publisher's. The artists can work in exactly the same way (although I'm sure they'd appreciate knowing a little bit more is going to get cropped), the file set-up and proofing process would remain unchanged... the only difference is that the printer moves the blades a fraction of an inch on their printing press, and they only have to do that once. From the publisher's side, the most effort they'd have to expend is maybe a couple phone calls or emails to let some of the key folks know there's slight change in the dimensions.

But that's why publishers have changed comic book dimensions over the years. It's a simple cost savings measure to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. If I could save 3% of my biggest expenses every year without actually having to do anything different, I know I'd sure leap at the chance!

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Al Williamson's Star Wars
https://ift.tt/RbuvZPF

Kleefeld on Comics: About Bob...
https://ift.tt/PWYFAeV

Kleefeld on Comics: The Impact of Judgment Day in 2026
https://ift.tt/LQpl9z0

Kleefeld on Comics: Not Enough Creative Outlets
https://ift.tt/vpC0odI

Kleefeld on Comics: Boatload of Batmen
https://ift.tt/nCwQGam

You ever stop to consider how many versions of Batman are running around in your head? Almost irrespective of how many/which Batman stories you've actively sought out over the years, there's bound to be at least a few distinctly different versions up there.

Off the top of my head, here are some of the ones inhabiting my brain:

• The original Bat-Man
• The rather sanitized, if kooky, Batman of the 1950s
• The "New Look" Batman of 1960s and '70s
• Adam West
• The dumbed down version from The Super Friends (which, in my head, kind of blends with the Filmation version, as well as the one that had a guest appearance on Scooby-Doo)
• Frank Miller's Dark Knight
• Michael Keaton
• Bruce Timm's animated version
• The more-or-less current continuity Batman

Those are just the ones I'm familiar enough with to recognize easily. That's obviously not all of them, and not all of these are my favorites. But they all inhabit my brain, and inform what I think Batman is supposed to be. Some of the imagery I accept, some I discard. I have to, since many of these ideas of Batman are at least partially contradictory.

In my case, the "New Look" and Keaton versions of Batman are the strongest, with the Dark Knight running a close third. Consequently, I think of Batman largely in terms of how he was depicted in the comics in the 1970s, with his Bruce Wayne persona largely informed by Keaton's performance. The Dark Knight angle just punches up his raw power a bit, so he's a little more willing to brawl than the karate expert I grew up with. That's who my Batman is.

And yet, I'm still able to keep all those Batmen separate in my head. I can sit and watch one of the cartoons or read through the latest comics offering and not get bothered by the fact that this Batman doesn't precisely match the one in my head. The closer he does come, of course, the more inclined I'll be to become engaged with the piece and enjoy it. The further from my version, the less likely I'll care.

I think it's a fascinating prospect, though, that I can juggle distinctly different versions of one character in my head and actively keep them all separate while at the same time amalgamating them into a sort of gestalt Batman.

I was talking with a co-worker the other day, and they made some an allusion to having more creative outlets in the office. Not in a "oh, I wish there were more ways I could be creative at work" way, but in more of a "you seem like you're not creatively challenged enough here, Sean" way. Maybe I was reading a bit more into his commment than was intended, but it sparked some reflection on my own creative endeavors generally.

I used to do graphic design for a living which, by most measures, is relatively creative. These days, I can sufficiently be described as middle-management. But I do try to bring a level of creativity to the table when I'm pulling together PowerPoint decks and such. So I'm not sure if my co-worker was responding to some (allegedly humorous) Photoshopped images I whipped up of other co-workers last week, or he found this blog, or he tracked down one of my books, or what. But I think he got the sense that I have more creative energy than can be funneled into my day job as it's currently structured.

And that wouldn't be inaccurate.

But the "as it's currently structured" part is misleading. I'm pretty confindent that, no matter how my job was structured and what I actually got paid to do for 40 hours a week, it would still be inadequate to express myself creatively. Not in terms of any limits that might be imposed by branding or whatever, but by the simple matter of time.

See, the thing about creativity is that, when you've spent time to develop your creativity (regardless of how or in what disciplines) it doesn't really get turned off. Ever. When I close my work laptop at 5:00, I don't suddenly switch off all the projects that I'm working on. My brain keeps going and making connections. Maybe I catch some interesting custom license plate as I'm picking up the dog from day care, maybe I hear an interesting news article on the radio, maybe there's some clever new billboard that went up, maybe they've reorganized the grocery store I stopped at...

The very notion of creativity involves putting together disparate ideas, and part of training your mind to do that means constantly and continually seeking out new inputs. Yeah, that news article on the radio may be the exact same one that hundreds of thousands of people are listening to at that exact moment, but you might be the only one who happens to be passing by a billboard with imagery that inadvertently relates back to what they're talking about. That new store layout is experienced by a lot of people, but you might be the only one who's looking for just toothpaste, deodorant, whole wheat fig bars and oats.

There have been studies that suggest that people are more creative when they're really tired or drunk. The reason for that is that in those states, you tend to lose focus. You start picking up things more on the periphery, and are able to see those in conjunction with either other things on the periphery and/or what's in your immediate focus. The difference between stereotypically creative individuals and non-creative ones is that the creatives are more readily able to lose focus.

There's a somewhat famous anecdote about Jack Kirby where he almost ran over his son while picking him up from school. Jack drove up to the school, pulled into the driveway, and proceeded to launch the car up on the sidewalk where his son was standing. It wasn't a deliberate act, certainly, and not a problem with Jack's physical ability. What happened was essentially that he was dreaming up some new comic book story, and lost all focus from the road. His wife Roz soon took away Jack's car keys because he simply could not drive a car without his creative mind making an endless series of connections with all that he was seeing out before him, both inside the car and out. The shape of the steering wheel, the dials and guages on the dash, the lighting as he broke through a line of trees, the guy on the corner trying to fix an awning... Jack just spent all the time making connections from one thing to another.

So when I sit down to write a blog post or my column for Jack Kirby Collector, or when I get behind a drum set to play, or when I pull out my tools and start building something, or when I fire up Photoshop here at home... all of that is because I can't not create. I can focus long enough to drive a car for a few hours or sit and read, but 40 hours a week isn't enough time for me to get done everything that's going on in my head. I'm glad I have a job where I can express myself creatively, but I can't just stop because I'm not getting paid any longer. I've spent far more money than I've earned in writing books. But I honestly don't think I could've NOT written them. I put together a Dr. Who time war trailer several years ago, not because I'm any good at video production, but because it was something that I just could not get out of my head. I still actively noodle with my now-decades-old Propaganda of the Deed comic idea because I can't not think of ways to improve on it, or come up with alternate possible avenues for it.

My point is that creativity does need an outlet. And a really creative person can't get that JUST within the confines of any one job, no matter how enjoyable or creative it is. That's why you see so many artists who also write or play an instrument or dance or whatever. There aren't enough hours in the day to get out everything that's going on inside a creative person's brain, and their life is likely a constant flow of ideas, only some of which may be relevant to what they're paid to do.

I was recently reminded of the classic "Judgment Day!" story from Weird Fantasy #18 (March 1953). The story, if you've never actually read it, is reproduced below... Now here in 2026, there seem to be no end of racial tensions. But, despite those tensions, we live in a world where some of the highest paid actors and actresses are Black. Where many of the greatest sports stars are Black. Where many of the most-loved musicians are Black. Where CEOs of major corporations are Black. Where mayors, senators, Supreme Court judges and other politicians are Black.

That's not to suggest we've reached any level of racial parity in our culture, but only to point out that today, in 2021, it's not particularly unusual to see a people of color in positions of power. When Black parents tell their children they can grow up to be anything they want, they can point to very real examples in pretty much every profession.

That wasn't the case in 1953. Jackie Robinson had only broken the color barrier in professional baseball in 1947. The first Academy Award to go to a Black man -- Sidney Poitier -- wasn't until 1963. It wouldn't be until 1966 that Robert C. Henry became the first Black mayor of a U.S. city. So the very idea of the protagonist being Black in "Judgment Day!" was novel; the "hero" of every story was a white man back in 1953. "White male" was very much the default for everything, so putting a Black man front and center in this story -- this story about prejudice based on superficial qualities -- said something very powerful. The character, up until the very last panel, would have been assumed to have been a white male and taking off his helmet to reveal otherwise was very much a story twist.

Particularly with the casual way it's done. Read the script closely. It does cite the color of his skin in the text, but merely as a description of his visible appearance; there's no comment or even hint of a suggestion at any cultural baggage based on his skin color. That is only brought to the table by the reader in the context of the times it was written. It's only in the backdrop of 1953 that his skin color holds any real significance.

So does "Judgment Day!" hold up in 2026? Is it still relevant beyond it's historical significance? The original story was aimed at kids in the 1953; would their contemporary counterparts get it? Or would they get to the end, shrug and say, "So he just leaves? What the heck kind of ending is that?"

Or am I too optimistic in that thinking? After all, Fuckface Trump has spent much of the past year trying to indecriminately elimiante people of color all over the world. Sending Americans to concenration camps, blowing up civilian ships in the Caribbean, starting wars with predominately Islamic nations... And many of the people specifically perpetrating those heinous acts in Trump's name are those ostensibly sworn to serve and protect everyone! Would kids still get that same 1953 impact if they read "Judgment Day!" today? I don't have any kids and make a point not to spend any time with racist asshats, but if you have access to either, try showing them those seven pages and ask them to read it in front of you. I'm honestly curious what their reaction would be.