Minimal Wage
New podcast with Danny Fingeroth, art +/- money, & A New Bird
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 565 of The Virtual Memories Show, feat. writer & editor Danny Fingeroth as we celebrate his new biography, JACK RUBY: The Many Faces of Oswald’s Assassin (Chicago Review Press), following the 60th anniversary of the assassinations of JFK & Lee Harvey Oswald. Danny & I talk about what drew him to tell Ruby’s story, how many JFK conspiracy rabbit-holes he had to avoid, the challenges of separating Ruby’s life from myth & speculation, and how the bio began as a graphic novel collaboration with Rick Geary (!) before its prose incarnation. We get into what he learned from talking to Ruby’s rabbi, the figures he would have loved to interview for this book, what Ruby’s siblings & their kids went through in the aftermath of Jack’s moment of infamy, the circus of Ruby’s murder trial, and the danger of treating Ruby’s life like a sitcom. We also discuss Danny’s dizzying résumé, including his 20-year run as a writer & editor at Marvel Comics, discovering himself as a biographer with Stan Lee: A Marvelous Life, the complexity of the (working) relationships of Lee, Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko, the surreal of experience of meeting Gabe Kaplan (!!) while promoting Jack Ruby, and more. Give it a listen! And go read Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald’s Assassin
Last week, I posted Episode 564 of The Virtual Memories Show, feat. cartoonist & editor Matt Bors. With The Nib, Matt helped build a venue for political satire, graphic journalism and non-fiction that featured some of the best names in comics and gave space to a bazillion up-and-comers. We sat down to talk about his decision to close down The Nib after 10 years, how it felt to bring together the best political cartoonists under a single online umbrella, how tech money giveth and taketh away, and what this fall’s farewell tour means to him. We get into what comes after The Nib (like his Justice Warriors comic), the challenges & rewards of building a diverse roster of cartoonists, and how mainstream comics and dystopian science fiction have always held an appeal for him (and why he’d love to do more with his Wasteland characters). We also discuss how it feels to have traded America for Canada and how the move has changed his perspective, the ways his post-Nib self spends less time getting mad online, how he plans to catch up on all the comics he’s missed in the last decade, what it’s like having his first two-week stretch as an adult without immediate editorial deadlines, and more! Give it a listen! And go read Justice Warriors and check out The Nib’s archives!
Recent episodes: Phillip Lopate • Leslie Stein • Josh Bayer • Adam Sisman • Lisa Morton • Daniel Clowes
Minimal Wage
There was Some Discourse on my Bluesky feed this week about whether people in the arts need to rely financially on family, spouse, partner to make a go of things, or should also get jobs and make art in their “spare time”. (This can be writing, fine arts, comics, whatever.)
Never having tried to make a go of life in the arts, I am not qualified to give an opinion on how to do that. WHAT I CAN DO is tell you about what happened when I finished grad school in 1995 (without college debt, thanks to the kindness and efforts of my parents) and tried to find a job in publishing in NYC (magazines, trade books, etc.). Because I was going to be A Writer, remember?
So, 1995: before much by way of internet, no craigslist, Monster, job-search sites, etc., just the newspapers’ classifieds. The highest paying entry-level gig I could find in a New York publishing house paid $18,000/year. Before tax. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index calculator, that comes out to about $36,000/year today ($30,000 in 2019 $, before recent years of wage inflation/growth). I will not tell you what my father said when I told him about those wages, but suffice to say,
it was offensive to certain ethnic groups, and
I looked for something higher paying (business-to-business magazines, northern NJ), which took me on my strange career path — Juvenile Merchandising & Auto Laundry News magazines, to Happi, Cosmetic Packaging & Design, and Contract Pharma magazines, to whatever the heck it is I do now.
Again, I have zero idea how anyone in the arts makes a living, or how much they have to rely on family/spouse/partner, and what tensions & dynamics accrue from those decisions. I tacitly gave up on all that 28 years ago, choosing a career + dilettantism.
(The B2B route started at $24,000/year, and when the (son of the) owner of the company promoted me from Editorial Assistant to Assistant Editor, I asked, “Do I get a raise with that?”, and he replied, “I believe in roses, not raises.” I left that co. after 18 months, ~17 years at my next co. (starting at $28,000/year in 1997 bucks!), and next Jan. will be 10 years since I gave notice there for my self-run gig.)
I never really looked back, except for the time I recorded with Jonathan Galassi, when I looked around the lobby of Farrar Straus & Giroux and the amazing display of its authors’ Nobel, Pulitzer & other prizes, and thought, “Man, I wonder if I could’ve given this a go.”
Art
Speaking of my dilettantism, I felt like a heel for not making any art this week, beyond a couple of unusable sketches of Bendico, so this morning I sat down with a photo by Marie Mutsuki Mockett of an oriental magpie on Jeju Island, South Korea, and tried to make a postcard out of it with a brush-pen (+ a Micron 01 for talons/legs). The blacks are SO black in the photo that it was a challenge to give it some highlights. I decided to go with vague cross-hatching for the shading on the left breast of the magpie’s tank-top, which didn’t come out great. With this pen, it’s a real challenge to stay patient enough to keep a light touch for those little, slight lines, and not leave a big splotch of ink. But hey: I made something this week, just for you. (Actually, it’s for my New Paying Subscriber, as I figure that’s a nice thank-you. Pony up $50 for a year, and I’ll make you one, too.) You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, and Wednesday with a new episode, maybe some art, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something.
Fox the fox / Rat on the rat / You can ape the ape / I know about that,
—Gil Roth
Virtual Memories
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(I deactivated my Twitter acct., so don’t look for me there)