“Stan [Lee]’s secretary would call me. She’d tell me that things weren’t going well and ask me if I’d take a $3 rate cut. Well, what could you say? I needed the work because I was raising a family. And the other companies weren’t doing much better. Places like EC had folded up.
“About three months later, she’d call again and ask if I’d accept another cut … I was up to $46 a page for pencils and inks and that was a good rate for 1956, when the decline started. I was down to $21 a page when Timely stopped hiring me. And they expected the same quality of work.

[Later on, in 1959 …]

“I got a call from Vinnie Colletta, who wanted to know if I was interested in penciling romance stories for [Charlton Publications]. I must have done hundreds of stories for Charlton. I could really knock them out … I got paid $8 a page, and then it went to $7 a page, which was like a dollar a panel.”

– Joe Sinnott
from and interview with Jim Amash
Alter Ego fanzine #26