President, publisher, and chief creative officer of DC Comics Jim Lee made news recently with the announcement of his new commission rates. Lee came up in the business as a comic book artist in the 1980s and broke out as one of the industry’s superstars. His work on 1991’s X-Men #1 sold more than 8 million copies. With his executive workload, he spends precious little time at the drawing board these days. When he draws new things, it’s like a special event.
So when Lee’s agent announced that his fee for new pieces for individual fans would be $8,000 to $20,000, fandom had a meltdown. Some fans leveled criticisms like greedy and out of touch, while other pros countered with tales of Lee’s generosity and how rare new pieces commissioned from him would be.
The Lee complaints are an extension of a brand of complaining that runs like this: “I can’t believe that athlete/movie star/musician/artist gets paid that much, while [insert regular job here] makes so much less.” On one level, that’s just the good old free market. Jim Lee, like Jayson Tatum or Taylor Swift or Tom Cruise, should get paid whatever they’re able to get paid, because that’s what the market allows for them. After all, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans spend over $200 billion a year on entertainment. Shouldn’t a large chunk of that go to the ones who entertain us?
On another level, some people decry entertainers’ high paychecks without considering the fact that the corporations that pay them make much more money than the talent gets. In his stand-up special Never Scared, Chris Rock succinctly outlines how Shaquille O’Neal is rich, but that the man who signed his checks is wealthy. For talent to get big money, someone else has to be making bigger money.
In this year’s NBA free agency, Boston Celtic Jayson Tatum locked up the title of the league’s highest-paid player with a contract extension of $314 million over five years. That might seem unimaginably high, but last December, Sportico estimated the value of the Celtics franchise at $5.12 billion, and that was before they won the NBA finals for the 18th time on June 17. Tatum is part of a much larger machine, and the machine recognized his value, but it took in so much more itself.
If the counterargument is that “regular people” should be paid more, I agree. Everyone wants to be paid more. If we’re going to elevate any job to a higher rate, let’s start with teachers. They’re an entire ecosystem that takes care of the country’s kids on a daily basis, and they often spend their own money on supplies. Otherwise, let’s stop complaining about the people who get rich making other people wealthy.
This article is featured in the September/October 2024 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
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