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I did this a couple years ago, where I look at the number of comic pages written and brutally assess my own self-worth.  Two years ago, my last full year of writing for DC Comics, I churned out 880 pages of comics and declared that to be Good.  This year, 2012, I did 1198.  If I can write one more by the end of the day, which is what my editor is expecting of me, that’s 1220.

How it breaks down:

Marvel - 26 issues, 520 pages:
Wolverine & X-Men: Alpha, etc etc - 3 issues in 2012 - 60 pages
X-Men - all 8 issues - 160 pages
Ult X-Men - 14 issues (yikes) - 280 pages
Not Yet Announced - 1 issue - 20 pages

Mara - 3 issues - 62 pages
Anthem - 1 issue - 16 pages
Northlanders - last issue - 20 pages 

Dark Horse - 27 issues, 580 pages:
Conan The Barbarian - 11 issues - 242 pages
The Massive - 9 issues - 198 pages
Star Wars - 6 issues + FCBD story - 140 pages

That’s printed comic book pages, not script pages.  Generally my scripts tend to run between 25-30 pages in the Word doc, and these totals don’t include the Massive backmatter, the outlines and the pitches and the rewrites.  Also not included is the writing I’ve done for other media, but that wasn’t so much this year.

This is a lot of work, point blank.  It’s too much work and there’s a powerful downside to this level of output, most importantly being less time with the family and impact on my health.  2013 will likely be just as busy as none of these projects are ending anytime soon.  Most likely as Mara ends I’ll replace that with Anthem.  I have 6 issues left on my contracted Star Wars run but that was always open to be extended and depending on how things go I may re-up that.  I have 7 issues left to go on Conan The Barbarian.  The Massive will continue through 2013, and I’m assuming I’ll keep writing Ult X-Men for the foreseeable future.  ”Not Yet Announced” will be announced soonish.

The goal of this heavy workload was to build a “secondary backlist”, a somewhat panicked but justifiable reaction to my sudden departure from DC and the steady and substantial income I make off the trades of my Vertigo work.  Not knowing what my future was - I was literally ejected from DC with no warning - I overcompensated and needed to get as much work in print and earning money for my babies ASAP.  My next goal is to start to scale that back and settle into a roughly 880-page yearly output, giving me some breathing room and space to do more personal projects.

Back to writing The Massive.  Have a good New Year’s.

b