Bill Watterson drew Calvin and Hobbes for only 10 years. It was wildly popular–did he get fabulously NFL-quarterback wealthy from just those 10 years? Or is comic strips one of those things where if are at the top of the heap you can make a comfortable living without having to wait tables to make ends meet? Since he refused to license his characters or allow them to appear outside the strips, every dime he made was from syndication fees from the strips and from publishing books of collections. Is that enough to make you rich–or does the syndication firm grab it all?
$100 million?
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/authors/bill-watterson-net-worth/
Estimates vary, but even without merchandising C&H, Watterson seems to have done quite well financially:
https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celeb/bill-watterson-net-worth/
I loved Calvin and Hobbes, It was my favorite comic ever. It was also before the internet was a thing. I wonder if it would be nearly as financially successful if it came out now? There would be so much more free or low-cost access, and newspapers are not what they once were.
And don’t forget the book collections. Isn’t that where the real $$$ is for the “top end” guys like him, Trudeau, and Scott Adams?
He think he did alright, but I don’t trust any of those celebrity net worth sites for anything. I’ve known minor celebrities who were broke, as in can’t pay the rent on a 1 bedroom apt without a new job, who were supposedly worth millions. Then there are people it says who are only worth $500,000 or a million but have 7-8 figure guaranteed salaries with no known vices or financial issues. So who knows about all that.
That’d be my guess, as well (at least during that era; I don’t know if collections still sell as well as they used to).
Watterson was undoubtedly at or near the top end of the pay scale for syndicated cartoonists at that time; it was a wildly popular strip, and it was valuable enough for his syndicate (and, by extension, the papers that carried it) that he was able to exact contract points like not having his Sunday strips chopped up, as well as the famous lack of C&H licensed merchandise, animated cartoons, etc.
That said, I’m not sure that “at the top end of the pay scale” necessarily translated to “super rich.” Keep in mind that one of the cartoonists who was pretty rich – Jim Davis – was very deliberate in licensing his characters for just about anything and everything, and in designing strips that would specifically lend themselves to licensing; I believe that the vast majority of what he made came from licensing, rather than the strips themselves.
And, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that syndicated newspaper cartoonists don’t make what they used to in the 1980s and 1990s, as the newspaper industry continues to contract.
Ah, that’s what I thought this thread would be about… How much can a syndicated cartoonist make (nowadays)?
I’ve heard you need to get into 100 papers to make “real money” (enough to quit your day job?). But with a dwindling number of newspapers out there, is that tougher now?
And how much income do you make from comics websites? Can you “make it” with just a web comic? I’m sure PvP and xkcd do it… (Aha! Note to self: come up with initials for your strip!)
This might need to be a different thread, but I’ve gotta run…
xkcd doesn’t have any advertising on the site. How does he any money at all from that strip?
It ties right in with my OP. Even though I named Watterson, I would be interested in more generic answers, or answers for more up-to-date cartoonists.
I can speak to this from experience.
First of all, ‘number of papers’ is usually an inflated number because weekday and Sunday editions of the same paper are counted separately. If you’re in the St. Petersburg Times 7 days a week, you’re counted as being in two newspapers.
Having said that, the number of papers you’re in doesn’t matter as much as what papers you’re in. The top echelon papers (Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Boston Globe, etc.) pay a lot more than the Muncie Blazer or whatever. My comic was only ever in 30 papers at its peak, but the income from the bigger papers allowed me to not have a day job for a few years. The downside is that, when you lose one of the biggies (which I did), you lose a huge chunk of your income. You’re probably better off being in 100 smaller papers, where the hits aren’t quite as drastic. Because, yes, it is a shrinking industry and you’re more likely losing papers faster than you’re gaining.
He also publishes them under Creative Commons license. So he probably doesn’t make anything directly off the comics. But he has an online store and his “What if?” book did well.
In addition to his book, this might have something to do with it: https://store.xkcd.com/
The process is explained in this documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQEVgbMqq7o 
This made me curious. Let’s toss around some loose numbers.
Wikipedia says he peaked at 2400 newspapers. Say he averaged $100 per paper, which I think is reasonable for the top end. That’s $240,000 a week or $12.5 million a year. The strip appeared for about 8 years (10 years minus 2 years of hiatus). You can’t multiply those together to get $100 million because he started out small. Cut it in half and say $50 million. And the syndicate takes half, so we’re down to $25 million.
The same Wikipedia article said he sold 45 million copies of the books. They probably retailed for $10-15. He’d average maybe $2 a book in royalties. That’s $90 million. An agent takes 15%, so he gets $75 million.
It looks like both routes are good money, but bestselling books are better.
Now I’m curious what planetcory thinks of these estimates.
Then take that combined estimate of $100 million and pay taxes on it.
Yeah, they’re a joke.
When you look at, say, professional wrestlers, it’ll say something stupid like;
“Maniac Mike is paid $100,000 a year and has an estimated net worth of $2 million.”
Nooo…
Some wrestlers invested their money well. That doesn’t sound so off the wall.
Then take that after-tax income and invest it.
I was just looking at one question, which income stream was higher. That has no relationship to current net worth, as P-man already noted. Nobody can know that without digging into personal financial records. That my estimate happened to sum to $100 million was sheer coincidence.
Those celebrity worth sites seem to copy from one another freely and without attribution. GIGO.
Watterson lives in NE Ohio. I’m sure he can live comfortably there on his investments. He can probably even afford a sailboat to take out into Lake Erie and fish for perch.
also most of the web comics use partreon (cant spell it right0 and give bonuses for patrons ……
Though Gary Larson licensed his stuff out the wazoo, from what I can tell he retired from daily cartoons very wealthy indeed. The top tier, which is maybe a hundred people at any one time, can make quite a decent living.