This article originally appeared in Ink Magazine #10, 2017
Ah, the noble dedication of the lonely artist, working long into the night! Sworn to a puritanical existence; eschewing simple pleasures so that they can commit fully to their craft. Their métier. Their fucking oeuvre.
I’m not sure who ever found this poetic view of their daily life to be accurate, but allow me to knock it from the rafters like the sinister wasps’ nest that it is.
I am 34, and one day I will be dead. When that day arrives, will I look back over my creations and whisper “it was all worth it” into the empty room? The room that is empty because I’ve ignored everyone who ever loved me so that I could get those sweet ISBNs?
Comics are the most sublime form of storytelling, and I will never, ever stop making them. They offer such a perfect balance of narrative freedom and restrictions, of clarity and subtlety, that whenever anyone asks me why I make comics I wonder if they shouldn’t be asking all other writers and filmmakers why they’re not, the cuckoos. Comics are everything.
Another question I get asked regularly by non-comics civilians is if there are many female comics creators. I’ve developed a special laugh in response that is two parts tired to one part baffled. There are loads of women. There is, however, a bigger issue which we in the industry don’t talk about enough and urgently need to address.
Creative discipline
Human beings need money in order to pay for food and shelter, in order to not become dead. People who create things fall under the classification of ‘human beings’, and so have similar needs. This is a truism that is somehow still forgotten in today’s skill-devaluing, pitch-for-work, ‘it’s good for exposure’ climate.
Graphic novels – long-form comic books if you prefer – take a long time to make. My three books took me about three years each to write, draw and polish up for publication. It’s true that I made a rod for my own back with regards to style (my artwork is what you might call ‘elaborate’, and I like to paint a narrative picture by, you know, really painting a picture), but even if you’re not an idiot like I am these things take years to complete.
Since 2010 I’ve been one of the relatively few people I know to be working on comics more or less full-time. I take on other jobs – miscellaneous freelance work, events, workshops etc – but my main source of income is the graphic novels, so finishing these things as quickly as possible is an absolute necessity. To do that, I’m always working.
That’s not cheery hyperbole – the idea of stopping because it’s the evening or the weekend is absurd. Bank holidays are just that: holidays for the bank. I work on my birthday. On Christmas day I’ll sneak away from my family to get a couple of hours in. If I’m prised from my desk to go on holiday I’ll bring a script and a pad and get some planning done. When meeting up with friends I’m notoriously late because I’m trying to finish off a page/panel/whatever. I actually lost a really close friend though my inattentiveness, and I’m amazed anyone else still hangs around with me. I’m even more amazed that my partner is still at my side. When the sun is shining and everyone else in Brighton is on the beach, I’ll be at my desk with the window open. It’s a punishing way to live, but I don’t see any alternative. I’ve just become used to it.
Unconnected to the poor work/life balance, last year I had a miscarriage. They are very common but, if you’ve not experienced one, are exactly as brutal as you imagine. It was pretty devastating. My partner and I went to the park with a trowel, dug a hole beneath a small willow tree in a secluded area, and buried this tiny thing, this almost-being that we thought we would some day be pushing on the swings in this same park. Immediately afterwards, I went back to work. Even after this, I couldn’t allow myself to get behind on my weekly page quota.
We are not kind to ourselves, as creators.
But this oppressive self-discipline is born from necessity, because this is my full-time job and I need to make it work. I need to make comics work. I imagine this will be painfully familiar to a lot of people reading this.
Simple needs
Let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? We’ve come this far together, let’s not get all coy about the financial side of things:
As a comicker I’m extremely fortunate to be published by Jonathan Cape, who as part of Penguin Random House are able to afford a bigger advance than a lot of other publishers of graphic novels. Specifically, for Livestock mine was £10,000. (NB never ask a prose novelist about their advances at similar points in their career because it will keep you up at night.) You only get a portion of this advance on signing the contract, though – the rest you get on delivery of the final thing and on publication. My editor is a kindly man, and so he arranged for the portion on signature to be £5,000.
Fortunately the Arts Council also offer grants under their Grants for the Arts scheme, and I made a successful bid (fourth time lucky) for just over £10,000. The various bits of freelance work I did on the side amounted to maybe another £9,000. Altogether that makes an income of approximately £24,000 over three years.
Now, I’m a simple girl with simple needs, and part of my puritanical mania manifests itself in living as cheaply as possible: I’ll wear clothes until they literally fall apart; I brought a hip flask to my BFF’s wedding; my wildest extravagance is being alive in Brighton. But despite all of my best efforts, £8,000 a year is not enough to live on.
The only way I’ve been able to survive as a graphic novelist is by being supported by my wonderful, long-suffering, devilishly handsome partner. As a fine, upstanding feminist, this does not make me feel good about myself. It’s actually pretty embarrassing to admit, in fact, but here we are.
To make a graphic novel takes me three years of blinkered, fanatical dedication, and I realised while working on Livestock that I just can’t do it again. I’m done. I’m out. And from quiet talks with many other graphic novelists, ones whose books you know and love, I can tell you that I’m far from being the only one.
This is the problem with making graphic novels in the UK today, and it’s one we need to address: the numbers do not add up.
“Oh boo hoo, Hannah. You’ve got your dream job and you’re grumbling about it! Hold on while I get out my teeny tiny violin!”
First of all, that’s very rude of you. Jeez. Secondly, this is a bigger problem than just some pencil-necked chump having a difficult time. By comicking terms, I am super privileged: I’m published by Cape, I got an Arts Council grant, after 12 years I’m at a point in my career where I can get paid gigs for speaking, cartooning, illustrating, editing and whatnot, and I have a partner who is both willing and able to support me. I have all of this behind me, and I. Still. Struggled.
Unwritten
How many people are out there who could be, should be, making graphic novels but can’t afford financially to commit to this lifestyle? Or can’t afford the time to focus on a novel-length comic? Or any comic, for that matter? How many stories are left unwritten because circumstances force them to be forever kept on the back burner? Yes, we have gender parity in the creator-owned comics scene here in the UK, well done us, but we can’t afford to sit back and celebrate because there is an ugly-looking class issue at work here. On top of that, financial stability still favours white people in this country, and a look at the lack of creators of colour in the comics – particularly long-form comics – landscape should be enough to raise flags.
So what’s the solution? I can’t blame the publishers: the readership is so small that they can’t take advantage of economies of scale, so there’s very little profit to be made and passed on. Even at Jonathan Cape my kindly editor has had to fight to keep the graphic novel list going in the face of pressure from the holders of the purse strings. I can’t blame the readers, who already part with surprisingly large amounts of money in exchange for our marvellous works. I can’t blame the comics community itself, which is as supportive and welcoming a group of people as ever existed.
But I do have one idea. Increasingly I’ve been turning my eyes towards the wider support for the arts across the country. These are tough times for arts and culture all across the board, but if ballet can get hundreds of millions of pounds worth of funding, why shouldn’t comics? Our audience is far broader, and our need is far greater, and as artists we work just as hard as those gnarl-footed prancers. (Sorry, ballet dancers, that was uncalled for. I didn’t mean it.) Maybe the way we move forward, as a group, is to take what we do as an art form seriously? Maybe it’s time we demanded some funding and recognition for this fucking oeuvre?