Research Prompts from IJOCA 26:1 - #2 Who have been the richest cartoonists?

 Some Ideas for Articles, written by Mike Rhode, and excerpted from the print edition.

Who are the wealthiest? Who are the best paid? Who inherited enough money to be a cartoonist? In America? Franco-Belgian? Europe? In Japan? In the world?

This would need to be adjusted for inflation, but some American names might be George McManus, Chic Young, Hank Ketchum, Charles Schulz, Herblock, Matt Groening, Walt Disney, Todd McFarlane, Stan Lee, Bob Kane, Cathy Guisewite, Barbara Dale, Ranan Lurie, Al Hirschfeld, Peter Arno?

Joachim Trinkwitz responded, "A good candidate would be Sidney Smith, creator of the comic strip series The Gumps (1917–1959), who in 1922 signed a contract about $100,000 $ per year for ten years (and a new Rolls Royce on top of that). In 1935 he even signed a new one about $150,000, but couldn't cash in on this one because he died in his car on this same day. I can't remember the source right now, but Smith should have had a higher income than the US President of his day."

Håkan Storsäter responded, "This CBR article mentions the Top 3 Mangaka as Eiichiro Oda, Rumiko Takahashi and Akira Toriyama - https://www.cbr.com/richest-japanese-mangaka-ranked/ (Certain deceased, historically very successful mangaka such as Osamu Tezuka, Fujiko Fujio and Mitsuteru Yokoyama aren't mentioned...) For the Franco-Belgian market, names like Hergé, Goscinny and Uderzo have been very successful, but my impression is that historically, there have been less money involved than in USA or Japan...

I replied, "I wonder about Willy Vandersteen, and his colleague Marc Sleen. Sleen's recently closed museum had shown him with a pretty comfortable lifestyle.

Pedro Moura retorted, "A better prompt would be, how the hell do comics artist even survive?"

I replied, "Do you really want to do that research and read that article, Pedro? I know you meant it sarcastically but..."

And Pedro Moura responded, 

"Undoubtedly sarcastic, but nonetheless pointed, I hope.

There are a few dissertations and articles, leaning on sociology, on the French-speaking artists' economic and social milieu. I can't check it right now, but if I remember correctly, 30% of the people working within that industry in France lived below the poverty line.

As a teacher - and a comics author - I always reserve at least one session to discuss with my students issues such as taxation, contracts, rights, and the management of expectations. There is simply no money to be made in comics in Portugal. You cannot live off them. I know it's slightly better elsewhere, but precarity is a feature, not a bug. 

I'm very old-fashioned, so I tend to still follow the close-reading the aesthetics of the work of art school kind of thing, but many scholars are also focusing on the whole process thing, or in comics as process, industry, economic machine, and so on.

So, in truth, yes, I'd like to read more about these issues. Actually, every time I meet international artists, if the conversation allows, I will ask uncomfortable questions, off the record, about how much money one makes with specific work, books, contracts, etc. How's their daily life, schedules, how they manage family or personal life. It's just anecdotal, of course, but maybe someday we will read something more systematic about this from various markets."

Ken Gale shifted the conversations, noting, "The best-selling comic book in the world is not in any European language.  It's "Old Master Q" published in Hong Kong in Chinese.  Since all Chinese languages read the same printed language, just don't pronounce it the same, there is a potential readership of well over a billion.

    It's gone through a few artists and writers.  When I discovered it in the '70s, it was without dialogue and I could and did enjoy it.  Somewhere in the '80s they started introducing more and more dialogue and now it's almost all dialogue.  I don't enjoy the wordless strips as much, either.  The comic is on sale in New York City's Chinatown and is available at the NY Public Library in Chinatown (East Broadway)."

IJOCA area editor CT Lim, concurred, "Good point. Yes, most Asian comics are ignored except for Japan manga and Korean manhwa. 

Old Master Q was drawn by Alphonso Wong who passed away in 2017. His son Joseph Wong holds the copyright and licensed the characters for various purposes and ventures. So I think there was some money for Alphonso when he was alive.

IJOCA EiC John Lent has written about HK comics so he would know about the wealth of Tony Wong and Ma Wing Shing. Not easy to find out how much they are worth but maybe some data in Wendy Wong's book on HK comics and others that are written in Chinese published in HK.

Wong lost quite a fair bit of his fortune when he went bankrupt and went to jail in the early 1990s. But he rebuilt his wealth and reinvested in his comics and comics companies. 

From what he made, Ma Wing Shing (The Chinese Hero, Tianxia) invested in property in HK instead which made him very rich. He has since retired from drawing comics. 

I conducted a short interview with Tony Wong in Mandarin in Singapore in 2023. He has many Malay fans and collectors (usually in their 40s and 50s) from Malaysia. It's at https://sgcartoonhub.com/interview-with-tony-wong-at-the-singapore-comic-con-on-9-dec-2023/