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Follow the money: how the Marvel Method worked (A "layout fee" comes out of an artist's pay, and goes to whoever plans the story.)
J David Spurlock 18 August 2016 Anyone have quotes from TOTH about Marvel? Patrick Ford: Here's what Mark Evanier reports : https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/marvelmasterworksfansite/ask-mark-evanier-t4954.html Patrick Ford: EVANIER: The way Toth told me the story, he heard that Stan Lee was giving artists a lot of freedom and a chance to be involved in the stories. He went to see Stan. Stan explained the way he worked and Toth said, "I can't work like that." Stan suggested Toth try finishing the pencils on an issue of X-Men over Kirby layouts. Toth said he also wanted to try writing so Stan let him write and pencil a short back-up for one of the western books. He did the western, then the X-Men. He hated working over someone else's layouts and didn't like the money that was paid for pencils after the layout fee was deducted so he quit and that was that. Michael Hill: "... the layout fee was deducted" looks like a missed quote for the Museum article. Maybe we should make it into a book. Patrick Ford: Michael, Sure. It's basically the same thing Wood and Kirby said. The layout money didn't come from the writer's page rate. Not even with Kirby whose layouts were barely functional as artwork. There was a guy who worked for Marvel who commented at the Arlen Schumer page who said that by the '80s the layout money came partly from the writer's share. And by the '80s the situation was completely different from what Kirby, Wood, and Ditko were doing. By the '80s it really was an artist working from a detailed synopsis. In the '80s the artists were no longer doing any plotting in most cases. They were getting a whole plot and breaking it down into panels. Patrick Ford: According to Mark Evanier layouts paid 25% to 33% of what was paid for pencils. Here's a simple math way of looking at it. Romita says he was paid $25 for pencils and inks in 1965. So pencils were probably $18 and inks $7 per page. When layouts are thrown in the breakdown becomes around $5 for layouts $13 for pencils and $7 for inks. According to Roy Thomas in 1965 DC and Charlton were paying writers around 2/3 of what was being paid for pencils and inks. That means Lee was being paid the same amount of money per page as Kirby was paid for pencils. These figures are not exact, but they are very close to being exact. That is unless Romita and Thomas gave bad information.
Editor's summary: this is the Marvel Method: Where possible, the artist wrote the story - called the layout. They did not get any extra money. But Lee still got paid as the writer.

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