#colorists

"IF THEY MAKE YOU THIS OFFER, DO NOT ACCEPT IT

It is known that Christmas is the best time to announce mass layoffs and spending cuts. Italian comics are no exception! GFB, the company that manages the coloring of comics and series published by some of the main Italian publishing houses such as Panini and Bonelli, has announced to its colorists that their payments will be reduced by 20%, going, in the case of the colors of Mickey Mouse, from €8 gross to €6.40 gross per panel. This is an unjustifiable offer and should not be accepted. Normally a flattist takes between €10 and €15 per panel. This is without considering the growth in the complexity of the work in recent years, especially on the panels of series such as Mickey Mouse. Coloring it no longer means making simple flats, but managing more complex atmospheres with timing ranging from 40 minutes to 3 hours at the table: the compensation in this case drops to €2.7 gross per hour. The situation is similar for those who make the flats of the collections attached to the Corriere della Sera of Bonelli series such as Blek or Commander Mark.

All this always as freelancers (with all that this entails: no coverage for sickness, holidays, maternity, fixed income) and without stable contracts.

We want to respond to this offer with three messages. To those working in the publishing sector, we want to say, once and for all, that proposing to someone to work for figures like these is mortifying for the professionalism and commitment shown by the author. This applies to the company that pays €2 per hour to the flatter as well as to the publisher who pays the designer €15 per table. This is even more true for those comics where there are no royalties on sales and where you can't even bet on an unexpected success of the project. Nobody forces you to be on the market and make comics. Nobody forces you to use third-party agencies that withhold part of the payments for intermediation. And the fact that there are professionals willing to accept such wages cannot be a justification. We contest the frequent narrative according to which your company/publishing house is presented as a large family in which you have to help each other and make sacrifices together. This is not the case. Cartoonists and their clients are not related by blood or friendship. They have a professional relationship. Companies are the subjects that can and must most sustain the entrepreneurial risk and the sacrifices that derive from it without passing them on to the author. If you want to do so, make the authors your partners. On the other hand, we want to tell the authors not to accept these figures and to always carefully evaluate the conditions that are proposed.

To give you an idea of ​​how little colorists are paid through GFB, consider that in the best case scenario we are talking about a salary of €6.40 gross per hour (corresponding to approximately €5.60 net) and in the most common (2 per table) of €3.20 per hour (€2.80 net). The minimum wage for a housekeeper (among the lowest paid jobs overall) is €6.11 net, for a babysitter it is €7.03 per hour. In both cases we are talking about jobs that give the right to sickness, maternity, thirteenth month, severance pay and unemployment benefits in addition to a higher basic hourly salary.

Do not accept conditions like this first of all for yourselves, for the quality of your life and for your career. Working in the world of comics and living off comics is very difficult, but there are many opportunities, especially if you look abroad.

If you are offered a low-paid job and you are considering taking it to gain experience, always evaluate whether it is actually something that can give meaning to your portfolio (making only flat, unfortunately, no).

But don't accept it for the sake of others. Taking low-paid jobs is harmful for everyone, because it justifies your clients to propose these rates or to reduce the compensation, even now that inflation and consumer prices are increasing. Each of us has our own life and our own needs, but if we remain isolated, certain things will never change. Publishers, fairs and agencies often have a paternalistic and condescending attitude towards those who make comics. We are treated with condescension, without the care or respect we deserve. We must be a united front at certain times and remind publishers, fairs and agencies that we are the professionals who allow them to exist and as such we must be treated and paid. Let's network.

To those who say "why complain? Our industry works like this!”, we reply: it’s true. It’s normal that those who make serial comics are usually external collaborators but in practice employees, deprived however of all the guarantees that an employment contract offers. It’s (bad) practice that those who make comics are not entitled to holidays, sick leave and that they work constantly and even more than the hours provided for by most collective agreements (and without overtime payment, to boot), but to this we cannot add the fact that they don’t even get to receive the lowest hourly wage achievable by the least generous of employment contracts. Do you like this? We don’t. This system can neither be justified nor normalized. We need to talk about it. The system is wrong and must be changed.

We condemn GFB’s choices to reduce compensation so suddenly and drastically, at a time when it would be useful to increase it to align it with the market and to allow a dignified life for those who make a living from this profession.

We ask Panini, Bonelli, Corriere della Sera and anyone indirectly involved to verify the adequacy of the conditions offered by their service providers and third parties to the final workers, if necessary adjusting their budgets, acting as bearers of the legitimate rights of professionals in the sector and ensuring that they have sustainable working conditions and adequate remuneration. We ask you to join us in showing solidarity with all those professionals who have collaborated with GFB for years because it happens too often in the comics profession to have to choose between giving up everything or having to continue working in absolutely unacceptable conditions. We are with you!

Found this on archive.

Meanwhile everyone else around me is in the dark, oblivious, and wondering while I’m not jamming out like everyone else. It’s because I’m aware of the subconscious repercussions of it all....sometimes I can separate this, sometimes I can’t.