The CAG Road Map

The Comics Advocacy Group is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that is committed to helping comics become a stable and accessible career for more people. We plan to start small and, with your support, push forward to more ambitious work in the years ahead. Read on for a more in-depth look at our goals for the next few years:

Grants

Comics professionals must often work on multiple projects for low pay under tight deadlines in order to make ends meet. If these people are freelancers – and most American cartoonists are – they are accomplishing all of this while paying self-employment taxes and covering their own health insurance. Having a monetary buffer can allow comics professionals the flexibility to maintain healthy schedules, focus on personal projects, or simply visit their dentist.

Our immediate plan is to offer regular microgrants, which are small amounts of money that can be disbursed easily to cartoonists for whatever they might need. It is hard to create a graphic novel pitch when you have to worry about scraping together another $200 for rent, after all.

Once we have acquired more funding, we aim to offer larger grants for specific purposes. These include:

• Education
  • Grants that can be applied towards art school, program subscriptions, or memberships to art education websites.
• Editorial
  • Financial support for people who are working towards careers in comics editing. These grants would be available for education, internships, or professional events.
• Creative
  • Virtual residencies: funding to go towards a comics project, with the stipulation that the recipient run a workshop or presentation for CAG.
  • Grants to cover convention expenses, such as printing, traveling, or table costs.

Resources

Comics is a decentralized profession with many different paths to entry. It can be difficult for creators to know where to seek out information that is applicable to their specific needs, or where to find useful feedback on their work, especially when one well-known option – art school – can be prohibitively expensive or geared towards specific styles of comics making.

Page rates, book advances, and timelines vary from publisher to publisher with no set standard, and there is currently no centralized, up-to-date source of information available on current compensation rates for comics professionals. All of these factors can contribute to predatory publishing practices, wherein incoming artists may take on projects with meager compensation or tight turnarounds believing that there is no room for negotiation.

We plan to build out a robust, centralized, free resource for information about working in comics while paying our contributors the fair rates that we wish to see across the industry. As we acquire more funding over the next several years, we will:

• Pay contributors for in-depth written (or illustrated!) resources, such as tutorials and explainers, on a wide range of subjects relevant to comics professionals
• Run virtual workshops and classes with paid speakers
• Purchase services which allow us to make virtual workshops more accessible, including transcripts, recording, and file hosting
• Establish a new annual payment survey for American comics professionals and hire analysts to properly evaluate the results.

Mentorship

As we continue to grow our network and resources, one of our long-term goals is to foster connections between emerging and established comics professionals. Having mentors who can share their experience and insight can often make a world of difference for an emerging creator as they learn how to pitch their work, navigate the book market, or avoid predatory publishing practices. Mentorship is also beneficial for established creators, who are able to directly contribute to the longevity of their craft, pass along their knowledge to the next generation, and ensure a robust community for years to come.

We are currently operating a mentorship and resource database for those who are open to taking on mentees or offering advice, and we encourage you to add yourself to the database if you would like to participate. In the coming years, we plan to establish a more structured mentorship program. With proper funding, this program would be able to provide additional benefits to both mentors and mentees, such as:

• Opportunities for mentors to connect and exchange information about best practices
• Forums for mentees to network and exchange constructive criticism
• Grants for mentors and mentees
• Educational workshops
• Grants for resources such as software subscriptions or comics supplies

Thank you for your support, and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions or would like to be involved in any way!