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Tiny little green screens in place of profile pictures have littered the internet since the Oscars as a show of solidarity for the unfair treatment of visual effects artists whose work made possible many of the award winners and top grossing films of the year.  Hell, VFX artists have made possible the top grossing films of all time! You would have to go very deep to find a top grossing film that has no visual effects.

In fact, almost all of the 150 top grossing films All rely on visual effects with few exceptions. Of those 150 films, over ten percent of them were based on comic books! Throw in The Incredibles and Hancock and there are a lot of superheroes making money for Hollywood.

Apparently VFX artists and comic creators have a lot in common when it comes to getting screwed. Both creative fields are labor intensive and require tedious, specialized skills that are capable of generating insanely lucrative product for major corporations who don’t want to pay much for the work or share any of the profits generated by the work.

Forget sympathy! For every comic creator or VFX artist there is an army of working class stiffs struggling to keep afloat in dead-end, hard-labor jobs that offer them no appreciation while they make some bastard at the top of the ladder richer than rich. At least these creative types are doing what they L-O-O-O-O-V-E and aren’t breaking their back like some underpaid migrant worker.

Welcome to the 99%!

Artists, in general, have a different kind of struggle that most people don’t understand. An artist’s job is to create and their relationship with their creations is uniquely personal. Their creation is part of them. It is their “baby.” A good artist, like a good parent, will gladly nurture their creation regardless of the cost. But when their creation is ripped away through a cheesy work-for-hire agreement and greedily exploited it is like they sold their child to the circus.

There is guilt, shame and embarrassment often amplified by the reality of  poverty and the inability to properly care for themselves and their family while the fruit of their work mocks them from every conceivable piece of merchandise and media on the market. It is depressing and maddening at the same time.

Creating that million dollar baby is a lot like hitting the lottery. Maybe those incredible odds are why so many creators will climb that treadmill and toil for peanuts just to get by. And yes, publishers and film producers do bear a huge burden of risk. Nobody is asking them not to profit from what they invested in but when the lottery is hit wouldn’t it be nice to share the winnings with those that made it possible to have the ticket in hand?

This issue of greed is not relegated just to movies and comic books. The flashes of green across social networks, though a sign of solidarity, is a symbolic microcosm of the overall greed that is threatening America and the world. We’ve heard a lot about the sequester agreement that never happened this last week as the divide between the “haves” and the “have nots” broadens. The rich refuse to share and the poor work harder for less.

We all turn towards our entertainment to take our minds away from these frustrations but now, because of the sea of little green screens, even our entertainment reminds us that it is time to come together and make a change. It is time to support each other!

Steve Bissette made a compelling post about the hypocrisy of VFX artists looking for support after they ignored the injustice bestowed upon the Kirby heirs. He argues that creators should support each other. I made a similar assessment in an earlier post when I asked What if the long list of prominent actors that portrayed characters from comic books in films took a stand to support those creators?

It’s not a hard concept. We were all taught to share in grade school. It’s time we start practicing what we were taught as kids and share our stuff and our responsibility. It does not have to be a dog-eat-dog world if we all have each other’s back.

You can practice sharing simply by sharing this blog. You can use the green graphic on your profile image. Maybe if  enough people see green (St. Patty’s Day is this month) the message will come across and maybe, just maybe, there will be a little less greed in the world.

Making Comics Because We Want to,

Gerry Giovinco