The McElroy family host one of the biggest tabletop RPG podcasts in the world, The Adventure Zone — and in recent years their content creation empire has expanded to best-selling comic book adaptations. But they apparently did so under the auspices of requiring guest artists to work under terrible contracts.
Earlier today, artists Ioana Muresan and Jonah Baumann commented on social media revealing contract details given to guest artists on Macmillan and First Second’s graphic novel adaptations of The Adventure Zone podcast. Baumann — who provided guest art for the first in First Second’s series, The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins — did not initially name First Second as the publisher mentioned in his tweets, but reshared Muresan’s own comments about the situation at the publisher:
I-m spilling the beans The ADVENTURE ZONE, THE FREAKING MC ELROY BROTHERS, can’t be bothered to pay more than 100 dollars for an illustration of their IP, A NYC best seller, i can’t stress this enough, how upsetting this is when it comes to fair pay for art https://t.co/BHm7aAhu1l
— ioana Muresan✊????✊????✊???? (@IoanaMuresanArt) August 31, 2020
According to Baumann, freelance artists providing guest pieces for the graphic novels (which are written by the McElroy family and written/illustrated by Carey Pietsch) were paid just $US100 ($135) for their work to be included. But perhaps even more crucially, artists would not be able to share their work outside of the comic’s publishing for up to three years after its release.
A hundred bucks for professionally commissioned art on a major licensed IP like The Adventure Zone series — the podcast has been downloaded over 180 million times since it first began in 2014, and regularly sold out live sessions when, global pandemic be damned, those were things that were allowed to happen — is already pretty low from a significant publisher like Macmillan. But to deny artists the ability to include these pieces of art as samples on their websites or in their portfolio of work for so long is particularly heinous.
Here Be Gerblins, the first Adventure Zone adaptation, topped the New York Times bestseller list for trade fiction upon its release in 2018, the first ever graphic novel to do so. Its follow-ups, Murder on the Rockport Limited and Petals to the Metal, also topped the list upon release. The reach of the series, as a podcast and now as a graphic novel series, is massive — so denying artists the ability to share artwork that is part of these best-selling OGNs as professional samples for such an extended period of time prevents them from using it to acquire more work and commissions.
At least in this particular scenario, things might change. Baumann and Muresan’s tweets went viral among Adventure Zone fans, prompting a statement released by the McElroy family through the Adventure Zone social media accounts. They declared their intent to ask Macmillan to change guest artists’ contracts going forward to remove the exclusivity clause, as well as offering lump sums to artists who have been featured in all three Adventure Zone graphic novels so far an extra $US500 ($677) each — out of their own pockets, rather than First Second’s.
Today we were made aware of the terms of contracts between artists who have been featured in The Adventure Zone graphic novels and our publisher, First Second. These artists were not adequately paid for their work, and their art was put under excessively long exclusivity clauses.
— The Adventure Zone (@TheZoneCast) August 31, 2020
We apologize for not being aware of this situation earlier, and we are urging First Second to implement these changes as soon as possible.
— The Adventure Zone (@TheZoneCast) August 31, 2020
“We were recently made aware of the terms of contracts between artists who have been featured in The Adventure Zone graphic novels and our publisher, First Second,” the statement reads in part. “These artists were not adequately paid for their work, and their art was put under excessively long exclusivity clauses.”
“We apologise for not being aware of this situation earlier,” the statement concluded, “and we are urging First Second to implement these changes as soon as possible.”
Neither First Second or its parent company Macmillan have commented on either the situation or the McElroys’ statement. Gizmodo has reached out to ask for insight on how the publisher intends to incorporate the family’s request going forward, as well as for wider clarity on the contracts it offered to freelance artists. We’ll update this post when and if we get a response.