Indie v. Corporate Comics by the Numbers:

From the good folks at Publisher's Weekly. (Read first before proceeding)

Over the summer you might have stumbled onto Robert Kirkman’s plea for comics creators to leave DC and Marvel behind for independent publishing (or to come to Image, if you read it with a cynical view). You may also have heard that Brian Bendis attempted to call BS on Kirkman’s plea and debated him on the topic.

While the debate didn’t have a clear winner, the stances were clear: Kirkman wishes more creators at DC and Marvel realized how much money they could make by going independent. Bendis thinks Kirkman’s sales are too high to be a reasonable example, finds his Marvel deal (including a page rate, royalties and placing Powers at Icon) preferable and kept talking about the value of trade paperback reprints.

For those of us who've engaged in the healthy debate over webcomics and the like over at Kung Fu Monkey these numbers prove a lot of things:

1. It takes a lot of time and effort to make it in indie or corporate comics.

2. There are a ton of expenses charged back to the titles in order to make that meager amount. See charts in the article.

So the question becomes: How does the internet save you money, increase your profit margin and reduce the time it takes to get paid?

Important questions to be sure, because as we all know --- business grows or contracts with the economics of a situation.