context: comics > how big?

Earning a living

There are people who get immensely rich from comics - Rumiko Takahashi became one of Japan's 10 richest people. On the other hand, there aren't so many people working full-time in the industry as you'd think. Despite around 300 anthology titles for instance, there are probably just a couple of thousand people making a living from comics in Japan. A lot of these are working as assistants, where the star employs a bunch of people to do much of the work, and takes all the credit. (The parallels with the master-pupil relationship in painting are obvious and extremely strong.)

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