LRT: People who have been following me for years are probably sick of hearing about it, BUT:

In my 20s, a common feature of comic conventions was a row in Artist's Alley full of elderly men, selling $50 sketches of superheroes they created, but didn't own the rights to.

They could charge a lot (and in the 90s-00s, that was a lot) because they were the creators, so wow, hey, big deal.

And the publishers who owned the characters looked the other way (mostly, unless the creator Fucked Around and Found Out).

Maybe you think being celebrated and thrown $50s at a comic convention is a good time and would be worth the trip, but prooobably not in your 70s or 80s.

And these guys weren't really there for the hell of it.

They were broke.

They had a line of waiting fans snaking down the aisle, and were churning out the $50 sketches at 74 years of age in Artist's Alley, because there was no retirement plan for them. Everything they did was freelance. No royalties.

There was no retiring.

Maybe you know about Bill Mantlo? (If you love Guardians of the Galaxy, maybe you should.) He left comics. Became a lawyer.

Todd McFarlane, Mike Mignola, Neil Gaiman, Geoff Darrow, Ben Edlund. There's a theme, here. They shifted focus, AFTER becoming established in comics.

And I won't pretend to know their exact, detailed motivations, but I don't doubt they saw what we all saw, had that "So what's the 10/20/30-year plan? Keep making this comics publisher a fortune with my skills, then die in poverty?" thought. And maybe that's why they noped out.

Cuz I know *I* had that realization. And I knew I'd potentially be worse off than any of them, because, y'know. "Alternative/Small Press Comics."

I wasn't even making a formal page rate.

So, like.

What was the plan, here.

And to be frank, you've met the plan. It's called @ironcircuscomix.

Which will have two fates.

- They will find me one day, slumped dead over my desk in the ICC offices, or
- I will sell it like a prize show pony the nanosecond I decided I don't wanna be here, anymore.

So honestly, I can't go TOO hard on people like Jim Davis.

I don't LIKE Garfield, but he's not FOR me, is he. He's a bullet-pointed, calculated exercise in mass appeal, because Jim didn't want to die broke, either. Who does?

But man. The concept of working until you fall into a grave, because there was no other option. Not because you WANT to, but because it's The Work or The Gutter.

I KEENLY remember being genuinely frightened of that fate.

Anyway, capitalism is bullshit.