The Comics Rack

To Strip or Not to Strip

   Someone asked me the other day why Siegel and Shuster were trying to market Superman as a newspaper strip. Why, continued the questioner, didn't they just take the character directly to the comic publishers; wouldn't that have been much simpler? This is a very good question and to answer it, we must look at the early days of comics and newspaper strips.
   Newspapers have always looked for ways to increase circulation and very early on, it was discovered that it was not only the editorial stance of a paper or the quality of the reporting that brought people back. Often it was the features that a paper offered. In Europe, for example, papers found that serialized novels brought people coming back for more, either weekly or daily. Some of the works of Alexander Dumas and Charles Dickens were originally published in this format, to name only a few.
   By the early 1900s, papers in the US had found a new way to attract reader, this being the comic strip. Starting with single panels and eventually evolving to a standard of 3-4 panels a day, the owners of the newspaper chains found that readers enjoyed comics and would even follow a favorite strip from one paper to another if the owners could woo creators from one syndicate to another. Also, in a complete reversal to the trends we see today, continuity strips were considered desirable and were encouraged, since studies found that readers would buy a paper each day to find out what happened to their favorite character (this is the reason why many early humor strips had a light continuity to them rather than offering a gag a day). Of course, once the newspapers found that comic strips were a saleable commodity, the demand for the strips increased. Salaries for the strip creators increased and very large sums were paid for the most popular strips of the time.
   By the time comic books started regular production in the late 30s, there was quite a disparity between what comic strip artists were paid and what comic book artists were paid. Comic strip artists, often acting as penciller, inker and writer, were paid a salary based on producing six 3-4 panel daily strips and one Sunday page, that averaged 9 panels, per week. To put this into simpler terms, a comic strip artist had to produce (at the high end) 36 panels per week. For many, the salary was high enough that they could employ an assistant, sometimes two, who, depending on the artist, would pencil, ink, color or letter the panels, further reducing the work load on the primary artist. Most comic strip artists were required by the newspaper syndicates to work 4-6 weeks ahead and many artists worked even further ahead and simply sent in the strips when they were due, so they could enjoy a couple of vacations each year. Add to this the possibility of residuals from character licensing and producing a comic strip must have looked quite inviting to Siegel and Shuster, or to any artist, especially when one considers how things worked for comic creators in the comic book industry.
   The vast majority of comic book creators were not paid a salary, nor did they receive any compensation for their creations once the work was finished. Rather, comic book creators were paid a flat page rate depending on what work they did on each comic page. Writers were paid one rate per page, while pencillers, inkers, colorists and letterers were paid different rates. While this sounds like an equitable system, it was the creators who ended up on the short end of the stick.
   The early comic book stories averaged around 8-10 pages for each story and each page had an average of 9 panels. This meant that a penciller (or penciller/inker) had to produce an average of 72-90 panels of comic art for each story. Since the penciller was not on salary, he would not get paid until the entire story had been completed and turned into the comic publisher. Since many of the artists of the time also inked their pages, they also got a higher page rate than those who did pencils alone (often artists in the early days would work with an inker and split the page rate).
   The key here, however, is in the amount of work that was necessary to complete each page. Most accounts by artists of the time suggest that completing a single page per day was pretty much the norm. This means that a comic book artist would take 8 days to complete twice the number of panels that a newspaper artist would complete in a week, but at a much lower rate of pay and no additional income except for what was produced. No residuals, no working ahead, no ownership of characters: just payment as each story was turned in. Considering that this work was often done without assistants, the disparity in workload (and compensation) between strip creators and comic book creators becomes even greater.
   So, it is not surprising that Siegel and Shuster wanted Superman to become a newspaper strip. To them it would have been the difference between riding the street car and driving a Cadillac. Since the duo was already working for DC while they were shopping Superman around as a newspaper strip, they would have been aware of the rigors of comic book production and, I'm sure, saw that a syndicated newspaper strip of their own was the only way to go. The workload of a syndicated strip was less and the financial rewards were much greater. By offering Superman as a newspaper strip, Siegel and Shuster were trying to make the step up out of the rigors of comic books into the security that a syndicated feature would have offered them.