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EARNINGS/COMICS
It is impossible to over-estimate the massive influence Garé had on her husband, Carl's, comic book work! Not that she contributed with ideas, but she did, from the beginning in 1953, volunteer to carry out the tedious jobs that her husband hated so much - inking dialogue, panel backgrounds, and filling in the Ducks' black shirts and other large, black spots. When they first met, Garé had a brilliant career as a landscape painter, but this career was partly put on the backburner, until Carl retired from comic book work in 1966. Garé's outstanding and unselfish help has had an indisputably positive result; if Carl had had to make all the time-consuming inking himself, he would not have been able to make as many stories as he did!!! All us fans owe Garé a great thanks!
Carl was always very meticulate about monetary issues and he made precise lists of the couple's income and expenses. The presumably least known area is how he 'dealt' with Garé's invaluable help with inking. Of course, the couple upheld a common household account, but Carl also booked Garé's contributions in both manhours and salary! The latter was most probably done in order to officially register what Carl called 'deductible expenses' in order to inform the taxman. Still, it is very interesting to see just how much time Garé used at the inking board for each story (it varied greatly!), and how much money she earned on this parttime job. This page presents you to two examples from the early years.
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| 1953 This is an overall account of Garé's
earnings for inking throughout 1953. This listing is
rather detailed, because Carl added both story titles (his
own working titles because the stories never received
official titles) as well as the number of hours spent on
each story. It is remarkable to learn that Garé spent a
widely different number of manhours on the individual
stories, which, of course, is connected with how much or
how little inking the stories needed. Carl starts off with a lump sum covering January to March for the issue FC0495 which contains several stories (The Horse-radish Story is one of them). He books 20 hours at a total of 48 dollars. Then the list continues (you can expand on Carl's information by turning to The Payments 1953 and The Payments 1954 to see what his publisher paid him for the mentioned stories):
Carl also added a Christmas bonus of 45.95 bringing the year's earnings to more than 1,100 dollars. |
| 1954 Here is another type of booking that Carl made based on monthly earnings. It is an overall account of Garé's earnings for inking throughout 1954. As you can see the size of her monthly payments were erratic, because she was paid by page and Carl made a varying number of pages from month to month.
Again, this brings Garé's parttime
inking earnings for 1954 to more than 1,100 dollars. In
order to set the amount in a perspective understandable
today the average yearly income for a US citizen (high,
middle, and low wages) that year was 3,139 dollars, and the price
level for basic consumer's goods were: A pound of bread
16 cents, a dozen eggs 70 cents, and a pound of potatoes
54 cents. |
| OWN
WORK When it comes to Garé's earnings on her own work (spanning from sketches and book plates in her younger years to oil paintings and water colours later on) nothing much is known. It is presumed that her prices were fixed on a case-by-case basis, but you can see one of her early price lists HERE. |
