| May. 16th, 2008 @ 02:19 pm Support Comics Creators |
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Do you love comics? If so, you have to appreciate the people who made the comics you love, and especially those who created the characters you enjoy, whether in their current incarnations or their classic Golden and/or Silver Age eras. If you want to do something to help these creators, support universal health care. Many of these guys are suffering the problems that come with old age. Unlike the CEOs and executives of the companies they worked for, they don't have a lot of assets to rely on in retirement (royalties?! what sort of Commie talk is that?), and many simply don't have decent health care -- or any health care.
Mark Evanier got me thinking about this all over again after I read his recent report on Gene Colan. Go read it here. Considering all that these great artists and writers have given us and our culture (and Hollywood, judging from Iron Man's box office), it's a moral crime that they have to suffer like this because they're Americans. If they were Canucks, Brits, French, Swedes, or citizens of any industrial country, they'd have health care.
The same predicament is true of any American pop culture creator, especially those whose work mainly consists of work for hire or out-of-print potboilers. I single out comics here because of Gene Colon's plight, and because the plight of comics creators is seeping into popular consciousness more and more, especially with the recent Siegel-DC Superman case. But the situation is also personal: It applies to rpg and game designers like me. I don't own most of my work and the bulk of it was done for mere pennies, even though the properties I helped to create and nurture will continue to make money in new forms of media. I can't necessarily look forward to a future of "passive income" like even a one-hit wonder pop star can (Dexy's Midnight Runners must still be making royalties on "Come On, Aileen" to this day).
This isn't sour grapes. It's what I signed up for -- sort of. I didn't sign up for the "no health care" in my old age clause. Why should all the other industrialized nations have the competitive advantage of universal health care? A British comics creator like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Brian Bolland, Warren Ellis, etc., etc., has a distinct advantage here. Even though the dollar is falling and their paychecks yield fewer pounds for the same amount of work, when you consider what they're left with after taxes and after the dollar-pound exchange, they still come out ahead.
But even if you think I'm spewing evil socialist bolshevik cant, the question remains: Why should Gene Colan suffer without care? |
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