Comics: The Call and the Cost
True Stories of Creators' Fight to Make Art and a Living with Comic Books

Discover the reason comic creators toil away over ink stained pages, even when circumstances don't reward that hard work.This is what happens when comics meet the real world, coming face to face with politics, war, and big business. Witness creators navigate their passion and careers when faced with the intersection between art and commerce.This stellar collection includes these essays:1) The Cost of Comics: A History of the Comic Book Labor Movement2) Marge Buell and Little Lulu: Women Warriors - America's Early Female Cartoonist Entrepreneur and Her Feminist Creation3) Hector Oesterheld: Comics Own Martyr4) David Mazzucchelli Walks Away from Superheroic Success for Indie Art5) Jeff Smith and Bone: A Little Help from My Friends6) A License to Cartoon: Art and Capitalism in the Works of Schulz, Davis, and Watterson7) Epilogue or Why I Write: A Justification of Rejection, Torture, and Bliss