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Alright, let's get on with the show. Waiting down upon the underworld to smash gangland, come a friend of the Unfortunate. Enemy of criminal. In a serious, all powerful character.
A problem to the police. But a true state of law. Hello everybody and welcome to the Elder Scrolls Exchange, I'm Sal. And I'm Joel.
This is the Comic-Book and pop culture, podcast we take topics from the world outside and apply them to our scrutiny and discussion. You can find Joel over at youtube.com slash cave Joel, where he does all kinds of fine stuff. If you want to participate in this show, you can always use super chats to help out the show and help me keep the lights on and the heat going, which is much appreciated. So, today's topic is ripped from the headlines.
By headlines, of course, I mean the Twitterverse. Declan Shauvey, whom you might know from his work on Moon Knight, the backups of a couple of big Batman books. And currently, he's the artist on the Return of Wolverine miniseries. Yes.
Shauvey tweeted the other day about creators not being paid by publishers. To specifically quote the tweet, he said. There's certain newer publishers out there who have not been paying their creators. Notice, creators are openly talking about this amongst themselves for months.
You are a hair's breath away from being exposed as a result ruined. You need to rectify this issue immediately. And then he goes on and on about it. And a bunch of other creators kind of chime in about like the problems with being not paid by smaller publishers.
He also goes on to reiterate, and this is something that bears reinforcement, that he's not trying to hurt any other publishers and especially believes that smaller press publishers need to exist in order to keep everything kind of culture here in the comic book world. It is like, you know, the more places artists and writers and inkers can go to work the better. And it means that, you know, it makes for a healthier industry if there's more options. Exactly.
Just like having independent creators in the film industry help keep Hollywood more artistic in some way. Same with music, even same with wrestling. That's where you need different companies. Every creative expression needs the independent creators and needs an outlet for those independent creators to express themselves creatively.
And so it really sucks when those outlets screw over creators. There's no way to put it. People are people are being screwed over. Now, your creators pay your damn creators.
Now, and I don't want to get into talking about specifically which publishers, because Shallie didn't want to talk about it and he didn't want to point fingers and we don't want to hurt those publishers, especially if they produce really good stuff and want to keep them employed. However, if you Google it or if you look up any of our sources in the description box below, we can find the tweet and also an article about it, you can draw your conclusions. You can probably piece it together. Some publishers have actually gotten ahead of it because they've had problems with this in the past.
And so they have pledged to resolve these issues and have paid their creators in full by this point. Good. But it got me thinking about making anything creative, but particularly in comics and film and whatnot, and getting screwed by either the entity that provides a platform or by the creators of selling. Happens all the time, happens way more times.
And it's happened to us a number of times. I don't know about usual. I don't know how specific you want to get into it, but I thought we'd share some waltz, some of you war stories about getting, about getting sift. Because it does happen.
And you know, you think with YouTubers, it's like, oh, there must be some kind of protection there for you guys. No. Yeah, no. That's true.
In fact, I would say there's less protection for us because it's like, well, what am I going to do? Get a lawyer over this now. Well, it depends. And that certainly has come up.
So before we get into our own specifics and also the ramifications of not paying your creators and the inside baseball that shall be kind of teased a little bit. Because I do want to talk about the industry a little bit as well. We want to talk about the super chats that are happening right now. We got two payments from an anonymous individual who retracted the message.
So thank you very much for that. Thank you, anonymous. Yes, Joshua Wright says, here's a couple bucks for being awesome. Well, thank you very much, my friends.
I appreciate it. Congrats on 75K. That's right. This channel hit 75,000 subscribers not too long ago.
And so as a result, we're doing a big, old thank you live stream on Friday the 25th of January. Join us around 3 PM Eastern Standard Time till whenever Ethan has to leave. And then we'll be doing it up. It'll be a lot of fun.
Can't wait for you to get my package with a GBU set toys and some dark chocolate goodness. So thank you very much. And Adam, as I'm all of says, hey guys, how are you doing? Doing well, Joel?
Joel, how are you doing? Always pleasant. Excellent. So when are you ever going to do the second part of the ultimate ultimate two and ultimate three?
More than the future kind of package coming to you. Well, thank you very much. It's just simply hasn't been time to talk about it. Like it's now.
I haven't had a really good opportunity to really cover it. And the diminishing returns on ultimate swaggerman kind of like making me look unshy about it. But when you do the bad ones, Sal is what they're asking when you do the two bad ones. And when we really should.
Like I would love to talk about like more like people think that ultimatum is the book that's Jeff Loebru and the ultimate universe. No, no, he had the writing was on the wall long before that. It was a steady decline into shit town. Exactly.
So thank you very much to everybody down there and throughout the show. But so yeah, in terms of what Shelby's talking about, I have certainly known a number of creators in my time who have either been shortchanged or. Stiff completely. Straight up stiffed by publishers.
Now here's the interesting thing. You'd think that like DC and Marvel and image for that matter have their shit together and that it never happens over there. The fact is like for the most part, it does not happen. They'll find every reason to not pay you if they can.
Oh, absolutely. But they're pretty good about taking care of whoever they put in their employ mostly because they have a done it a long time and be have safeguards in place to prevent any of that kind of thing from happening. There's never going to be a circumstance in which a Marvel book straight up Marvel. I'm not talking about ancillary titles.
I'm not talking about when Marvel is going bankrupt. I'm not talking about like spin off things like like a manga verse or anything. I'm just talking about like if you were on a Marvel book, you have been put through the ringer such that by the time you need to be paid, you will be. At the very least, you won't be surprised by how much you get paid.
They don't want anyone going on Twitter to be like Marvel scrutiny or DC scrutiny or image doesn't pay the grade. No, they can't have the bad press. They work very hard to protect that. In fact, that's how most companies like strong companies or even just like companies that are shit together operate.
They have those systems in place, usually protected by what's known as and you know this term a contract. Good old contracts. Contracts are your friend though they aren't a guarantee of protection. They are at the very least a promise of protection.
Better read that fine print. The fine print is of course that old bear trap. But when it comes to a contract, it doesn't hurt to have it looked over and to have it like scrutinized because it's about mutual protection. I've rarely heard of a circumstance where people get screwed over and there was also a contract in place.
I've seen people try to use a lot of other contracts. I've seen acquisitions of companies who had an ironclad contract and the larger company tried really hard to get out of it. But because the work was put in at the front end, they got a big old payout in the back end. I wasn't able to do the thing they were contracted to do.
They got paid as though they did. Why that's there. And there's a lot of situations in my life I can say I wish I had an ironclad contract in place and not a handshake agreement or like a my word type agreement because you know I will always stand by those other people not so much. And here's the other thing about that.
About the verbal agreement. I never trust a verbal agreement simply because I can't afford to. And because I myself have not been able to live up to a verbal agreement because sometimes you're at a convention or you're a show or you have a lull and you can commit to something. And you say like yeah it sounds awesome.
Some folk will also misconstrue a verbal agreement which is why I've written contract is always the way to go. If I said something like if Joel were to say to me like dude we should create a show and it's going to be over here. I'd be like oh that sounds great. I mean what I just said that sounds great.
But Joel might take that to me and we're doing it and he'll start spending money to facilitate this thing that I didn't really technically agree to. Oh should I not have spent all that money I just spent. I wouldn't. I might keep the receipts.
But that's just a simple understanding of business and work with other people. And if you're going to have a contract make sure they sign the contract because I've been dicked over by that one to the oh I'll get to it I'll get to that right away and then the contracts just go on sign. Now that's a thing. Can you tell that story without using names about like getting a contract them not signing it and then what became of it.
Yeah there was a situation where some work for hire stuff I was doing other technically everything I did before starting my own channel was work for hire. So you know lireed into that what you will and my thing was like look I will do this thing. I know you haven't been flaky at the best of times but you know I'll keep doing this if a contract we can enter into this one and I wrote it up and everything and you know I use the actual what is it that official website you get where they like generate contracts for you when they sign it on your end advice first and it's all legally binding and everything. And I always heard that I'll get right to that and it never got right to and that was like the beginning of the end anyway for me on a bunch of stuff that I was working on so I'm like alright then I can't trust you to do this then I guess I'm done and I was.
Yeah that's rough the promise of just doing the bare minimum that also usually is a good indication is also kind of like a I guess an advice show as well in this particular topic because like every negative experience you have in business hopefully can be leveraged into a learning experience. Indeed. When you are working with someone that either you have been working for a long time I've seen in both ways where you've never worked with them before and you've or you've worked with them forever but if you're in a situation like that where it's like hey listen I I need like party A needs something and party B wants to deliver something. Party A is asking for something.
Party B provides a contract and party A starts flaking out. That's a good indication of what what the entire relationship is going to be like from here on out and that's on you as a creator as a provider of content to say do I is the money that I might make worth the hassle of working with this person. And knowing your worth that's probably one of the greatest lessons I've learned in the last few years after going solo and really starting to work for myself on my own channel knowing my worth knowing what my time is worth and knowing what I think I am worth monetarily. Absolutely.
And that's like that's a question only you can really answer although I usually can't like I've been doing this for five years and I have no idea what our value really is but I do know how much I have charged for services rendered I know how much colleagues have charged service rendered. Shali's point about saying that like industry professionals are talking about what these publishers are doing and how that gets back to them creators are all like that in all walks of life in every industry where we'll all talk to each other. It's interesting when like a sponsor will come around and they'll be like I want to get into the comic book YouTube scene and they reach out to the same seven or eight people. Yep.
And at least four or five of them all talk to each other and that's a couple of us where it's like hey that's someone so reached out to you. Yeah they did what they offer you. They offer you this. Okay.
I can't count the times I've said to you before I've even started the show. Hey have you heard from blank? Oh they just wrote me then? That's a little fishy.
Exactly. But it is a good way to calibrate your value or the very way your value your value is like intrinsic and subjective but like the value that you're rate what's your going rate. Going rate exactly. And I find it's funny as a person myself like I value time over money almost every single time.
And so as a result I will quantify like how long will it take me to do this and what will be and this is fair to say and to think and don't feel bad about it because it took me a long time to get myself out of it at that mindset and that's what's the benefit to me. How will this directly or indirectly benefit me is it all one sided or is there some usual back and forth. That's true. If I'm not being paid will I at the very least gain something out and follow.
Absolutely. Like new audience members notoriety or some kind of like feathering my cap creatively. Well I opened myself up to a new avenue that I didn't think before I I go through that all the time where it's just like you know maybe maybe I should maybe I shouldn't but maybe there's something to be gained in the long run. Exactly.
I find it surprising and also disappointing that like it would go so far as work is provided for a comic book publisher right art is produced delivered books apprented and then the artist never sees a check. I think that that is it's horrifying but it's also like I would have to ask how did that happen how did you let that happen and I don't want to blame you because I really hate that but I'd also want to say if you are going to be a professional treated as such you have to do your own due diligence no one out there if you're going to be a professional and you're going to go out there and be like I'm a grown up and I live out here and I'm going to pay my own bills and I'm going to keep a roof over my head and I'm going to buy my own food you need to also be like no one out there cares about me and that doesn't necessarily translate like I know that the audience is very interested in us and they really care about us but like and you have loved one's everything but like a company that needs something doesn't care about you as a person you know even if they do to some degree but the company the space is entity that exists solely to make a profit does not care about you and it's not going to protect you no human resources at any job is not there to protect you they're there to protect the company we've had this conversation before on the show they're there to protect themselves exactly as such contracts if if a company doesn't offer you a contract says we don't need one of those a company that is a person I get that I know a lot of people who are like oh man contracts make me feel uncomfortable blah blah most of the time that's because they don't want to commit and be held accountable but I do know people who just find them at Horrind and I get that but if a company refuses to offer you a contract that is red flags number one and two and I'm sure it happens a ton in the comic industry because it's like well you're really just a freelancer you know you don't work here we treat you as a freelancer and listen there are freelance or work for higher contracts very easy to draw up you can literally type in work for higher template and you will get one and it says all the legal ease that you want to be protected for you know we'll talk more about that and being stiffed and how the protections help to cover your ass a little bit in a little bit because I do have a story about work for higher contracts and how it's like you how you can structure your arrangement such that you don't lose a friend or you don't screw over somebody who could be a potential future colleague yeah those protections are there for that I find that I find that crazy that like a comic book publisher that's been around for a year or so maybe two that has produced award winning or nominated books that have industry professionals working at the editorial level stiff and creators yeah that is like if you're ever in the situation where you could pay someone else for the work they did or yourself always pay them first because you can't sue yourself yeah exactly that's how it works and some people don't get that common sense right well also like you're trading on your value and your reputation and if you gain a reputation of like it doesn't matter if they can't see how screwed up everything is in your crappy office right if everything's like the roof is caving in everything's being outsourced or desperately done on like a crappy iMac you know like they don't see that shit all they see is the work is appreciated it comes out and they get a check they're not concerned with how it looks you can operate like an unprofessional as long as you professionally pay your creators but you have to do that because at the end of the day companies don't care about you they're interested in the bottom line but so are you yeah as a creator you are interested in the bottom line you're producing work and that's always like rewarding a valuable share but you're doing it for an end result and that's the thing to you know as you know world of artists and creators and everything you find that interesting little line between commerce and creativity and you know it's a very interesting dynamic yeah it's true jumping back into the super chats Dan Lane says you're my your favorite spider fighter get um i don't know i guess spider punk is pretty yeah spider punk but it was the first and only one i think i read and i love the hell out of spider punk and harlot's bank says there was a 99 cent sale in common psychology back in 2014 and ignorant fool that i was i bought every issue a future send out of curiosity does that count i don't know what it would count towards but uh you wasted 99 cents i'm sorry per book you wasted a lot of money but hey i guess you can like read along with us if you watch our episode of back issues on it that'd be kind of fun those covers were nice if nothing else yeah covers were nice they look pretty good um so yeah uh company screwing creators this happens every day um in some way or another i certainly i saw an interesting tweet the other day from patrick's nurture who did the covers covers for futures and but also apparently very dissolution with dc because he did a bunch of work for them and like editorial slash some other body he didn't work with coming back and being like changed this and that's another thing that happens yeah one of the things i saw was actually a brilliant image of superman like in the unfortunate youtube too but it's still in the internet and he wanted to like do this kind of like chris reef evocation where he's like he has his arms kind of like back and he's just kind of like flying up no like no superhero pose arm in the front and like he did this comparison he's like that's a full redraw and you know certain when you when you work with an artist usually if the artist knows how to do that has done a bunch of them before an artist will say you get a certain number of acceptable changes you can make to the art without getting having to pay more right i guarantee you that was just if you want the book if you want the page in the book just redraw it full top to bottom like redraw like all you're doing is changing the arm no i'm changing the structure of his entire body if i just it's here and then it's got to go here everything changes but yeah but i've seen that happen where like companies try to take advantage or try to push a little more and once again that contract is there usually and the more specific it is the better protected you can be that that's happened for me a bunch to you know when i'm working with app companies which is kind of a necessary evil when you're on youtube you know sometimes sometimes i need a little extra rent money that month and i might not always do it but you know there was one situation where companies like oh talk about our app on here and i'm like okay i don't normally like doing this but this looks like something i could see myself using and they're like okay well we want you to make a profile like that seems like a little much if i'm just telling people to use it but i'll do it and then i did the thing like yeah we want to run it on sunday okay here it is sunday i sent it over for your approval they never wrote me back about it i'm like okay well i'm running with it on sunday that and they're like yeah we would have liked you to include a little bit more information could you redo the video like uh no it's already up it's already a thing and i already downloaded your stupid app not only am i'm not doing it again i'm deleting your app keep your money and i'm re-editing the video to take your ad out wow so you you refused the money i refused the money because they were jerking me around saying don't say you want it sunday then go radio silent all weekend long after i've sent it to you that's really bizarre and i i've seen it a number of times where if you're providing work for youtube not for youtube like the company but for youtube videos if you're making making work i see a lot of people request videos for a month for sunday a very much a not work day yeah yeah for me i'm like yo if you're gonna ask me to work on a weekend you're paying weekend rates like for real because i know because it's a value to me like i work monday to friday saturday too sometimes i work a lot and if you're asking me to work on a day when i'm not normally working that's a work day you have a tree like that i'm very surprised however i'm not surprised however that uh most people undervalue or totally don't value youtube and youtube content creators because it's super strange i don't think that app company is even still around anymore like you can tell because we get so many of these offers where it's like well you're a flash in the pan who's not going to be here next month but you clearly have some capital on her trying to spread around so i mean hey why why shouldn't i wet my beak a little bit no i completely agree we can't about do occasionally sponsored ads in our videos and it's very selective and it's very rare and it's only because most of the time it's either something i don't believe in it something i would never use myself or something like an audience which is completely reject and there's another fact of that and it's what you mentioned kind of the idea that like you know in a month early gone will they be around long enough for me to be paid yeah because i've certainly done a number of things like in our videos and you can go back to like year one and two of comic pop to find them where we've done like sponsored videos or like hey try this out and scene zero return zero like help and it dates slash hurts our videos as a result yeah but hey remember this great video we did and has this stupid tag in the front of it you know it's rough um but uh but i will say i don't think i've ever been stiffed by an advertiser on youtube this was the only one everyone else i've worked with has been pretty solid they were they were the one yeah i am waiting to be paid for a big advertiser and it makes me nervous every time that like there was an expectation and then like three weeks a month later there's nothing yeah um thankfully it's been handled by third party so i actually don't even have to pay oh that's good my um my thing too is you know i was in a similar situation i was working with a country or a company it was birthed i'll just say it was birthed i was working with and they did actually sign all the paperwork there was paperwork there oh well but it took a couple months for my money to actually come in i was getting to the point it's like hey it's been like over a month where the hell's my money right and they're like oh hey sorry you know that's getting processed it comes out at the next of the month there and i'm like all right then it better be and it eventually was but it was getting to the point like that was my foot down warning where it's like you know pay me or i tell everyone how sucky you are that's the worst because you've seen even kind of kind of professionals you've seen you two were i know behind the scenes i've seen many a deal uh being made using very harsh slash threatening language where it's like yes we need like you need to be able to deliver because otherwise i'm going to use my popularity slash the thing you want to hurt you and i hate being that guy i hated it having to come to that point but it was a month and i'm like all right pay me and they were another one so it's like we would like it a different way we'd like you to do it slightly different like all right all right i read i read it two times two times that's like that is egregious like the fact is just make it like just put your parameters into the text when you send it like it's also like hey i think i know my audience i think i know what they would like and i think i know how to best sell to them yeah no i completely agree with you um talking about getting screwed i've also read i read an interesting story literally yesterday about people who um what was it people who you've seen how publishers can hurt creators i've also seen the other side of that where creators have stiffed customers people want something interesting this is a very dicey subject when it comes to comic book comic book art and the comic book industry artists are artists right like you're an artist you have a particular type of quirk yeah quirk you're not a business person at the core you're an artist first hey man i'm in it for the creative expression man right i get that and i'm not like i'm not judging certainly i worked with enough artists in my lifetime to say like artists are uh incredible people who um who believe in what they do and i'm actually and i'm so thankful that they're not business people they're not like you know here's the here's my full contract but i've seen that they've gotten savvier over the years where they're like because they need protection like i do need to be savvier about this and like it it i'm sure it's there's a little bit but uh because we've heard too many horror stories of like and that guy got nothing that guy poured his heart out on the page or on the written word and he got nothing but i read an interesting story about an artist i'm gonna i'm gonna use leave the names out but uh i saw an artist who i saw a story about an artist who had been working in the industry the comic industry for 40 years and he took a commission and artists do this all the time by the way to pay the rent like comic books don't pay a lot of money no no you don't get a lot of royalties if you get royalties at all there's a whole generation that has no royalties but you'll also notice like why whenever a creator takes an takes a new book they make a new character um but uh i this creator worked in the industry for a long long long time has had a big uh foothold in this in this whole world and takes commissions because like that's how you help pay the rent like if you um and you sometimes have like a website where you can like request commissions sometimes you do it through a convention it's why so many of them go to conventions it it ain't all fun and games for them they're coming to work and that's the thing like conventions are crazy because like people want us to go to conventions all the time and i want to go to them because i love conventions but like i'm not an artist if i make a video like most folk don't want to watch a video about me being a con so if that's how i make that's that but true then i'm not going to make any at this con whereas if you're an artist i'm gonna go answer that phone yeah deal with that um but uh when i'm a convention i talk to artists all the time like artists are there for the most part to do work to create to draw uh something for a number of people and it's interesting actually you can actually reach out to these artists and say like i'm gonna be at this show can we do this ahead of time but that's a whole different topic my point being um artists make most of their money through conventions and so as a result uh you know i'll tell the story in there but for your benefit artists will take on a number of commissions when they're at a show uh they'll set up like like basically like a sign-up sheet where you're like this is how many slots i have left so make sure to get here early and sign up uh and then basically that person locks it in and says like i'm drawn this much stuff for this many people for the whole weekend which is why whenever you go to art style they're always doing this like they're always buried deep into some kind of like sketch book or big piece because they're working on like 20 to 30 kitties which you know 20 permissions at like 100 to 500 piece not that so that could make some scratch but this creator that i'm talking about uh worked out for the website um they took on a commission for about five hundred and 75 dollars and uh they set up a whole thing they i don't know how about the contract deal oh i do know as they set it up and uh they set a date of one of a month and a half later so it's like i will have your your piece done the month and a half at the end of the month and a half the injured party will call them reached out to the artist representative and the representative change the date move the goal post so to speak and this happened four times wow so like and i've been there where it's like hey how's the piece coming along and because you said it would be done by now and it's i gave you an extra week and by the way that's that's fair to do if you ever take a commission um assuming it's gonna take longer than whenever they said it's gonna take i commissioned some art just recently actually and i'm going through that right now yep where it's like okay i've done a month and then a month goes by and you're like give them an extra week then email them um they'll appreciate it at least the person i'm working with too i know they were taking on other work and they know i'm good for it they're like hey you know i got some other higher pay it's like that's fine get to it when you get to it that's fine it's not a rush job if you're working with a with an artist who is an anyway professional they will reach out to you before the deadline to say it's gonna take a little longer yeah um that's them just covering their ass which is fair um so anyway they reach out they move the goal post four times and then while that was going on this person was like i'm getting screwed like i never see this art again i can feel the hosing happening uh-huh um this happened this happened to me um and they moved it to the point where it never happened um so he reached out to a number of other people who had gotten commissions or tried to get commissions from this artist and they formed like a kind of Confederacy and they were like yeah and so and a couple of them like reached out and wrote like a kind of like group letter that said like if you don't deliver our art we will take the story to the public we will tell everybody that like you don't honor your requests and by the way everybody did everything wrong um the person who was injured paid full price all up front right at the beginning never paid full price no no no no never never you do is you set a contract oh sorry you set up a contract that says i'm gonna like this is the full part price i'm agreeing to pay x amount now and then x amount upon receipt of services rendered sometimes if it's a long project or the bigger budget you'll want to pay paid off in milestones yeah like okay i'm gonna pay like let's say it's a thousand dollars let's just use that as a number thousand dollars um i'm gonna pay like 200 up front and then i will continue to pay two hundred dollars every month right until it's completed my father who worked in the trades drywall taper his whole life still doing it that's still how he gets paid you know installments at milestones right that's and that's that's how it works or how it has worked and it's not a bad system because then no if they screw up or they screw you over number one they're on the hook for less money to pay you back and if they flake out or disappear you have lost less money than you would have and you paid all up up front my dad actually had some pretty funny horror stories there from the trades he said the two jobs you never wanted to take doing freelance construction for people you didn't want to have to work for a cop and you didn't want to have to work for a biker because if they just either of those groups decided not to pay you what were you gonna do right and i'm like jesus christ that is terrifying yeah what what are you gonna do yeah that's scary um but true by the person brian says if we as an american society really understood knowing your worth i think our society very different yeah yeah oh yeah i think that's true of everyone i think that's a big cultural problem across the world people not knowing their worth i think um it's a double-edged sword i mean there's also people who like over inflate their value a lot of that there's a big problem with that the people who greatly over exaggerate it yeah so you know it's a double-edged sword but i think it's more like if every big it's just the old ablingian quote be excellent to each other and party on dudes like that's yeah if people were just like not out to screw you it's like i would like this i will pay you this okay like i think that's all we let's start there let's start with just like being people of our word yeah radical honesty um instead playing games like it's always always a freaking game it is it's always a roundabout yeah so they reach out to the to the uh to the representative of this artist instead like we're gonna screw you over which is like mutually assured destruction i'm not i'm i've already accepted my money's gone what when you get there it's already too late when you're at the mutually assured destruction state yeah uh and sure enough um about a week or so later the injured party received their art oh the art was a drawing of the character they asked for blowing them a raspberry saying patience is a virtue wow they also spelled virtue without a T that's a punch line i was like wow then um the the injured party reached out to the representative and said i don't know anything about that the artist sent that themselves there's a signature from the representative on the customs form for the art piece so like everyone's a liar it's all bullshit wow that is just a comedy of i was not gonna call it errors it's just a comedy of penniness now here's the here's the silver line to the story this story was shared on a message board that is populated by a number of professional comic book artists and i will not mention the name of the artist who was the dick but i certainly learned that lesson was like i'll never work with that person again like i'll never get anything signed by that person um i will say this name john bern i know that guy showed up in the chat and said here's my email address send me your mailing address and i'll send you something worth five hundred dollars wow what a good do john bern holy shit so cool story and you know it is that's like this is my trade i can i you know exactly where bern was coming from this is my trade this is my industry i make my money now since no one's hiring me to draw anything at marvel or d c right now oh which is too bad uh i'm making money by drawing shit if this guy poops in the punch ball and fucks up the what is it the whole landscape for the rest of us yeah just like it reduces all of our stock um i produced a book on kickstarter um it was a book called girth kirby in the club with the gods i've heard of it you may if you are of this if you are a very long time viewer have you may have actually contributed to the kick starter what you don't know is that that was the second kickstarter no wait i'm sorry you didn't you did not contribute to the kickstarter there was no second kickstarter here's a deal it was in the early days of the kickstarter we set up the whole thing um by the way if you're interested in kart go to kot go to conxellage.com find the digital version um it's by a new comic artist victor bogdanovik it's his first comic book ever anyway pause for purchases i think it's a book uh so we created kickstarter where we're like we want to get an artist and by the way i set up all that in the front where i i searched for artists i selected an artist i worked out the arrangement i set up a kick a uh work for hire we set up for milestones set up the page rates got all set up then put up the kickstarter um reach the goal barely and fund the book now here's what we need to do send the artist the money in installments we had it all set up in a good system in place the artist comes back to me after never delivering the first milestone um eventually sends out something resembling the the first couple of pages this is not figured by the end of my life yeah i was gonna say i was the original artist the first artist on this book i was gonna say sweetheart back down to the bottom of the box rocks now he's cool cool dude and great to work with um he loves to ink his own work by the way uh so we um we work that out those things seemingly were back on track but we were a month behind now and then his computer broke his computer broke this guy is a public figure he had been on a prominent youtube channel at the time he used his real name i assumed incorrectly that there's no way that he could be lying in full of shit because he would i would ruin him right if like if this came out i proved that he was full of shit he so obviously his computer broke and i want my book i gotta get this book done so i paid the next few milestones ahead of time so that he could go buy his new computer he bought his new computer presumably or didn't the reality is he probably didn't have a computer problem at all um by the way had to do its cell phone number new impersonal like had all this information so weird that he would think like i think i'll scrum over anyway um but this is all things that i thought protected me right not just the contract but also like having all this information about this person who i still haven't mentioned by the way um this is years ago now uh long and short of it is i never got work back like i never got a book i paid him practically in full for a completed comic book and he never paid me back that sucks and it went to like it got to the point where like we were sending like he he i i believe he might actually be like a sociopath like because he was legitimately like oh hi i'm sorry like it's just really like sad pathetic things like to me where i'm like why are you telling me this like i don't i don't need to know this i just need to know how my pages are so actually girth curbing in the cup of gods is entirely funded by me after having wasted all that money on this son of a bitch yeah now they lived in another state far away uh i worked out uh small claims court and found out that the cost to sue him would have outweighed the amount owed by like two thousand dollars at that always the way um i did yeah and so as a result like even though i had a contract like it was it was no it was not enforceable and the other tricky part and that's why i was like oh man like that's why i'm always dodgy but like well don't do this or i'll screw you over here if you do that you push the nuke button on a creator or on a person on somebody who was or injured you you might look unprofessional yeah it's true can you imagine like how it looks because that's that's just back then it was just like it would have just been called like drama you know i didn't have like a youtube channel at the time so i couldn't just like put my face on camera and be like hey this guy totally screwed me because they might help me out like i would have to like contact bleeding cool or something yeah i screwed me over it let's let's do it and even then he was such a like crazy person there's no way even if like everything fell on him that he would have paid me if he was dead broke there's no way he was gonna like and he was like what how would i even like why would i even do it like especially now he's used all of his bargaining chips like he's totally said everything now what like why would i ever pay him now you know what i mean it's true um that that is a horror story that i that is told a thousand times it's why i did the whole like that's why i did a whole series on else worlds about like how to make your own comic book and just protecting yourself it's why it always suggests milestones in life anybody says like yeah you should like like pay don't if you if the milestone and like contract system deviates in any way think very hard about whether you want to continue that relationship it's very easy by the way just say like nope never mind we're good and there should be a by the way a termination clause in your contract yeah that i have the right to fire you whenever i want and become and can be fully paid you know like or i will pay i'm willing to sacrifice x amount in order to terminate the contract right artists like that because they want to have their own protection as well they want to get paid something yeah the worst thing is like you hire an artist who has a really good like portfolio and then they can't do your thing the way you envisioned and then you're like oh no then they go like oh well but i did all this work i should be paid they deserve something like you changing your mind about who you wanted because you didn't do your due diligence that's not enough like you need to yeah on the hook for some of that money um interesting post post-work that story is years later um i was at PAX with Tiffany and uh i guess it was Washington and he was there he had made a big deal of being there and i saw him like i saw him like in the crowd like walking by and i was like hey there's the guy tiffany was like well if she turned around and chased after him found him and she went hey are you so and so he's like oh i certainly am because Tiffany's a pretty young lady she's like oh he's like oh my big hanach's like hey you owe my boyfriend a lot of money oh tiffany's the best he's like oh uh and she's like yeah so we can meet you like later and you can pay up and he's like oh yeah i should probably get back to him this is years after that happened by the way uh like this is years after he screwed me he left the convention and never returned i was first day but i was like oh my god that is worth it thank you so much tiffany worked her verbal kung fu on him it was like mortal combat you got pretty sure that's for us all right that's just like unbelievable and it's just like and by the way i think like at that point the rest of the money that was owed to me was like i think 500 like 500 bucks but like come on like come on i guess that's a good question too you know without getting too personal how much have we been left in the lurch for that deal was for 200 you said that was for 500 some so there you go oh yeah no i i paid i think it was 2000 bucks for the boom so and i think i eventually got certain amounts back but like at the end of the day what was owed to me was still an outstanding balance about five hundred dollars which is rough like you know especially back then i was very broke i had no business making comic book um by the way getting arts with a lobster in the super chat say savage tiffany is savage it's true she rocks like she completely destroyed because i was like at that point i'm like i don't want to do that i'm not gonna like deal with i don't want to see him you know i mean i don't want to like get in his face and complain stuff like that um so you say that because you're a nice guy i wouldn't want to do that because it's like i cannot be held accountable for what i'm about to do in the next few minutes no it's true i couldn't even like yeah i don't know it was just i really like to try to avoid confrontation in that situation um but like again there's nothing i can do when i do kick his ass and take what was on him like i mean i'd be a story wouldn't it you know long to tell the story i wouldn't explain this to all the enforcers and packs like no no you understand so we had this usually and i'll ultimately by the way it worked out boggdanabic art trumps this dude yeah ghar kirby looks even better as a result and uh so yeah um that's one story of a thousand of like getting screwed and not protecting myself more than i should have but we get a little wiser don't we it's true so when i hear like about creators being stiffed from legitimate outfits that have no right skipping you because it's like on guys you're on the stock exchange for christ sake right like i get rando from la fucking me over but i don't like but major company with like you said like stocks i don't get it and uh and it's like because there is no benefit outside of like keeping the small the relatively small amount of money there that you could like retain from really over because like it's just and comics are so small and so niche everybody knows oh yeah the second year you're late if you're late they'll all talk about it oh by the way like someone's oh they're gonna be late so you know and some people like rob liveell continue to carry around the chain of chronic lateness all these years later too yeah no it's true uh so yeah like it's it's interesting and also like frustrating um to keep out it and to live through it oh yeah no this reminded me of another funny story of scams or possibly scamolas that took place in the nerg me do you remember uh that game per rap of the rapper yeah yeah the the guy who did the voice of perappa the rapper apparently he has done nothing but perpetrate scam after scam ever since that game so he's a voice actor yes and apparently like he was like oh yeah hire me for your fan project hire me to like record your voicemail and everything and apparently he's just taking money left right and center it's crazy and like not giving back any money apparently perappa's an asshole but like he would like write really condescending messages back like hey yeah i'll get that done you gotta believe because that's what perappa the rapper says that's the thing for me it's like you should be ashamed of yourself if you can't pay your rent or if you can't pay your pay if you can't fulfill your obligations there's no benefit to being a douchebag about it part of the reason why i like didn't kick the shit of this guy when i heard he was physically there was because like he's really pathetic and he was a different kind of asshole and you'll meet all different varieties of assholes right but like if he had been like low or he'd take some picture of him like counting money he would never have seen me coming like oh exactly fine you'll never sure you're coming i would have like hit up a a Harley Quinn cosplayer grabbed her like bat big giant bat but yeah uh just weird it's it's it's shameful there was also another story that made me laugh uh one uh one of the power rangers who doesn't get invited to the power ranger cons anyway this this was much later like apparently a bunch of the actors had gotten together and signed like a big thing to be rappled off for charity okay and this guy just took it what what he mean took it he just took the big poster that a bunch of the actors were going to sign and rappled off for charity and he just took it and tried he tried to resell it later what yeah i know right here's the funny thing his character on the show was a thief that's funny so it's like hey man i just living my role yeah now here's a question if uh if the publisher releases a statement that says like we screwed up we're never gonna do it again do you give them the bet like you personally how do you feel about that if you were the injured party that's a rough one because it's like you got to figure if you say we'll never do it again is this the first time you're apologizing or is this just the first time you got caught yeah well and it exists in the back of my head in a small like community like comics you'll be able you'll know you know i mean like the information is there also it's like why why couldn't you pay this guy yeah that's a good question like i don't know um i can read a little bit of their their statement um we learned from our mistakes improved our payment systems and payment communications with the goal of issuing payments in full and on time meanwhile we've worked rectify all outstanding billing issues while we've lost the support of some we've also gained even stronger support from those who stood by us as we fought our way back back to paying creators on time back to seeing our series released regularly back to what brought us here in the first place to do better by everyone in the industry from creators retailer to reader it's very double-sick but it also feels like that's not good enough no it needs to be i think more it needs to be like real like yeah i keep asking but why though right but why did you fall back now if you are a smaller publisher i mean like how many publishers do you think emerge in the 90s that like shut down a year later they're more than a few like and it's because costs are unimaginable oh yeah know how much it costs and how little return you're gonna get for making a company so i even that even bigger companies that had like you know connection to marvel in d c like your milestone and like your image hey why are the checks coming later and later that should be an indicator for you like i need to find something else to do like i need to find another avenue it's happened to me yeah josh all right says i work in music getting screwed over is all too common that is too freaking bad the music industry wrote the book on it hey mr berry gordie really you're gonna sell my cd for a dollar and i can have five cents of the dollar oh wow thanks you sure can son yeah i mean every industry video games comic books oh yeah everybody um can was reminding us this whole episode could have been a movie pass movie pass just i mean here's the thing unsustainable oh yeah like and the same i was almost gonna sign up but when i found out that it was like they send you a like paid credit card and you use the card i'm like no i was like nope that's not legit and i didn't be at that fell apart again you know we mentioned the video game industries they are the voice actors famously went on strike there because they were getting paid such a pittance for all the work they put in for it you know these things are selling billions of copies but they're like it's just not sustainable enough to pay you voice actors more that's such a core shit but it's also like you know how much you're getting paid up front of the very least it's not like they showed up to work they recorded their lines the game came out and they were like hey uh when do i see some of that you know at least they do get us there should be a rate for that and at least some sort of bonus thing for the work that they put in for that was like okay now we need 37 grunts and 37 jumping sounds yeah well that's the thing like we heard Kevin Conner talk about like how much he had to do and how many different alternate versions of what he had to do and how it's like oh and that's what the main character i can't even imagine that was what it was like for all those like all the the nameless dudes who were like there he is and also two actors as we see many times pulling double triple duty in one show or one game where it's like oh let's get a john or a joe demad john dovaggio up in here because you know he's really good he can be our main character and he can be the several background schmuck's too oh yeah well that's and that's like a thing in voice acting where it's like you are usually expected to do double duty yeah um so that's i guess it i mean i just wanted to kind of like shine a light on the injustice that takes place and kind of also provide a cautionary tale to say like yo do everything you can to protect yourself and don't ever feel bashful or no you'll feel bad about trying to protect yourself it's the hardest lesson you'll ever have to learn but you'll be thankful when you learn it and you'll pretty much earn learn it once yeah because i have worked with dozens of artists after that one experience and they've all been successful what's what's that old saying once burned twice shy that's right that's right getting our to the lobster back again says all the double takes on red dead two where you can you can tell they record a separate line based on distance to the character yeah sanity with us by the man where it's like he did a full gamut of like all the dialogue and then all the dialogue while he's exerting himself again if he wasn't getting paid extra for that he really should have been i agree but i mean like that's part and parcel of the job it's what they ask you to do if you don't know that you should do due diligence but like in terms of working with other creators and being a career self contracts with your friend always always put as much because here's the thing i've also done things like i remember i was reached out we went we had another comic book or comic series called horseman and we were reached out by a comic publisher who i think still exists who reached out to us and they're like we want to publish your book and i'm like okay finally let's do this and they sent me a contract and the contract was like we own it all we can replace you and your name as the creator of the work it was buried in like 25 30 pages of contract but like that was the the end result was we can we can take everything you own change it to the point where it doesn't even look like the thing you made and i'm like this is a real publisher like does this how it's done and i sent them a counter contract i spent the weekend drawing up with my my mom who was a lawyer oh no really yeah uh so she helped me out with that but uh super yeah i don't usually use her services but uh but uh it's invaluable to have a lawyer on retainer like that yeah but uh but we drove a contract a counter contract where it was basically like you keep basically like no and they didn't ghost me but they might as well have the response literally so i go i said uh i go um thank you so much for your offer here's our counter contract please have a look at it let me know and we'll come together come up with a new contract that is that is a uh a compromise between the two the email that i got back said we were withdrawing our offer at this time good luck i was like holy shit what a miserable bastard like oh no if i can't irrevocably change what you did and own but i don't want it like fuck you that's funny um but like i said like uh that's also one of those things i was desperate i was broke i had no youtube was not on my mind i had no plan and i was desperate to have any kind of like notoriety or like some kind of thing that i call mine and create and put out in the world and i still said no so i was like well what do i what do i have after this there's nothing here same deal uh when i was selling that book when it was self-published we went door to door to comic bookstores and we're like i did a print run i'm like do you want to sell this book we'll put it out in your store i'll take like 70 percent or something like that uh pressy eddy 47 that's just got a class what did i miss uh the show i don't want you to watch it later he'll be here for posterity um but uh i i gave 15 copies to every single store they all sold out and out of like five or six stores um two of them never paid me like they didn't give and i remember going back me like hey how did it do they're like oh uh it's all sold out i'm like great where's my cut and they're like one of them said oh i didn't know that we were supposed to give you a cut and then and then like basically said you know go away i'm like why would i do that and uh the other one just like ghosted me uh one of them is it is like a bigger store the other one doesn't exist anymore so geez and you wonder why people say comics stores are unos binble places oh no mr. Roboto says idea crowdfund uh get rights back for ultra force yeah uh yeah i think for who for mere soud we have to write ultra force now right do we yeah we own ultra force all right i guess that was fun that was something of a punishment where it's like okay now you have to write ultra force you want ultra force now do something about it here are 20 people who remember it i don't know make it short make it digital make it like injustice i guess exactly but then again that's my pitch for anything if you give me any ip make it like injustice make it short make it digital yeah um marvel owns ultra force i think right camp says oh sell the starving artist has a ring to it thanks cam thankfully i ain't starving no more and uh those days are not fun like i'll tell you this i i love making comics comments are my blood but this is way more fun like this is way more beneficial like i'm doing better i'm happier like it's just way better and just beneficial across the board and more fulfilling yeah oh no it's true um and i wouldn't say i'm a starving artist but at least a hungry artist my artist who could use a sandwich it's right i i could go for one but uh yeah so anyway those are a couple stories about the industry about like warnings hopefully the i'm very very much a proponent of like learn from other people's mistakes why fuck up if you if there's so many more out there who could do it for you and never let it be said that you didn't learn anything watching the else world exchange this is a very much an educational show but a lot of different stuff going on out there and uh so we want to thank you so much for hanging out with us and watching our show and we'll see you guys next time another episode of course stay tuned tonight for back issues and of course if you want to catch the bonus show that spins out of the show go to patreon.com slash com and we'll be up tonight so you listen to it and we'll see you then everybody thanks a lot for watching so long bye bye