FX was a fun read and that splash was absolutely gorgeous.

And, Greg, I actually did enjoy the coloring — it’s simpler and has more flats, which is actually a lot more visually pleasing than a lot of the stuff at Marvel and DC.

Being the colorist, I have gotten to see all the art and read much of the script. Give this series a chance and I promise that you will find an all ages comic that is pure FUN!

Now that I have gotten that off my chest, you may continue to talk about Wayne.

Wayne Osbourne is paying John Byrne $20,000 per issue.

Ouch! That is a big hole!

…err …I mean, oh wow! So John is making $120 grand for six months worth of work! Nice.

And they said the era of the Comic Book Artist as a Rock Star was dead!

In any case, I just wanted to mention that if Osborne is keeping the original artwork, then the $20 grand will have a “Work for Hire” component and a capital asset component. Assuming there is a loss, only the work for hire aspect of the equation will be available for the carry forward tax deduction I mentioned earlier. The remainder will be considered “the book value” of the artwork. If the artwork gets sold (after more than a year has passed); the difference between price and book value will be subject to the capital gains tax (which is considerably less than ordinary income tax).

ps: And just in case, I thought that IDW becoming “Diamond Exclusive” meant that they would get at least something better than 35%. I mean, I don’t see how Diamond is helping expand or fight the current “shrinking market”, so you would imagine that IDW had something to gain by going exclusive.

This should preemptively answer a few though. FX is pretty much a tribute to everything I loved as a kid. The main two characters are nerds/geeks who love comics and watching old TV shows and movies – hence the Six Million Dollar Man reference and, of course, the giant talking gorilla. There will be other tributes along the way and I left those to be inferred from the reading. Hopefully, that will shine through the story. But first and foremost, I wanted it to be fun every step of the way. So, ask away…….

WO

Your numbers are way off, red Ricky. Wayne Osbourne is paying John Byrne $20,000 per issue. The coloring and lettering is coming out of Wayne’s pocket, Byrne paid for John Workman to pay for the lettering on the first issue only. IDW is only paying for the printing and distributing and they get a percentage of the profits after those costs are taken care of.

For Wayne to make $15,920 in profit on six issues, every issue would have to sell over 28,000 to break even. Remember, Diamond takes a big cut and returns to IDW only about 35% of the cover price. It would be very difficult for Wayne to make any profit off the first run, he’s going to have to go the trade route to recoup his money and hopefully make some kind of profit.

You know for a fact the writer of this book donates no time, money, and effort to helping others? Following a dream doesn’t automatically mean all other worthy activities are excluded.

(1) a dream come true, in the sense of having one of his childhood heroes draw his own character

(2) a dream come true to get a comic book professionally published. Not sure, but it may (or may not) be his hope to get noticed . (Wayne owns his own business).

(3) He gets the original art, and he is a huge original art collector.

Wayne’s a good guy and I don’t begrudge him living a dream in the slightest. I hope it works out. At the worst, he has a six issue mini-series to cherish.

I thought it was a pretty inspired idea. and a fun, somewhat old fashioned but in a good way, read. Byrne was firing on all cylinders pretty good here.

As for how the money is spent, well, I’d rather see someone spending money to pursue a creative dream than buying a speedboat or sandrail or breast implants or a Picasso, so more power to Mr. Osborne. Every dollar anyone spends on discretionary stuff — like comic books or even computers and internet access — could be spent on charity instead.

I found the whole thing rather trite, really. Certainly not especially like the comics I grew up reading in the 70′s and 80′s, other than the most ham-fisted of cliched situations.

Whether he actually makes a return on his investment would only be determined if he chooses to actually sell all of his pages, right? Just like the only way a speculator actually cashes in on his comics is if he sells them.

It looks like Mr Osborne is working at two purposes: collecting original art AND creating an intellectual property. If nothing else, he looks to offset the cost of a MASSIVE commission by selling some funnybooks.

The cost per page of FX looks to be around $900. I wonder what Marvel or DC’s page rate would be if they were purchasing the physical artwork itself in addition to the reproduction rights..?