First, some background info.
In June of 2000, I quit my job as a video game artist at Dynamix. It was a great job, but there wasn't much room for artistic input. The time had come to give comics a serious shot.
I had been working with the Eugene Comics Guild, a group of local artists who published a quarterly anthology and offered artistic feedback to each other. I was reading books about getting into the business of comics. I'd been keeping notes on several stories and characters for years. So I quit my job in June, and worked full time on my portfolio for the next few weeks, preparing for my first San Diego Comic Con.
I've always read comics, but my interest has waxed and waned over the years. When Frank Miller redifined Batman with The Dark Knight Returns in the late 80's, it was a revelation. The page that always sticks with me is in the first chapter, when Batman and Comissioner Gordon are on a rooftop, trying to decipher Two-Face's tantalizing threat: "Twice as big as the biggest thing you can imagine." Batman ponders, and looks up and to the left. His gaze directs the reader back to the first panel, down the length of the left side of the page: the establishing shot of Gotham's Twin Towers. The pieces fall into place with a visceral rush of dread. I'd never imagined that a sequence of panels could be such a powerful storytelling device.
There were plenty of high quality, groundbreaking comics at the time. Unfortunately there was also a huge glut of pure trash. I didn't know why I lost a lot of interest in comics until the situation was publicly analyzed in the late 90's. It was the great speculation bubble. Comics were being bought and sold purely as collector's items, because of foil covers and dying Supermen and resurrecting Lex Luthors and First Printings of First Issues of new Spider-Man re-hashes. Since the mid 80's there were stores devoted to comics, but when you went inside you were surrounded by wall-to-wall junk.
I've been drawing my own comics in one form or another almost as long as I've been reading them, but the early-mid 90's evaporated any serious desire for a career in comics. Two authors rekindled it. One was Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics, an analysis of comics in the form of a graphic novel. This book demonstrates categorically that comics is art, and comic authors are artists. The other author was Warren Ellis, who at the time was writing Planetary and The Authority: two superhero books that read like colossal blockbuster compelling cinema. I wanted to tell stories like that.
Marcie and I went to San Diego. We stayed with Nick and Lois, her Dad and Step-Mom. At the 2000 Comic Con, I saw two panel discussions about the future of comics that featured Scott McCloud. By then he had written the follow-up Reinventing Comics, which mostly focuses on the Web. I was inspired to start Icarus after that. I showed my portfolio to various artists and editors. People liked my story-telling style, my sense of pacing and panel layouts, but told me the art needed work. I brought proposals for 3 different stories, and 40 give-away portfolios bound in report covers. I gave some of that stuff out, but got no responses.
A couple months later, Marcie and I moved to Portland. I began a serious study of inking with the brush and figure drawing. I've gotten good inking tips from comic artists Mike Allred and Paul Chadwick. I went to comic conventions and exhibitions in Portland. San Diego is far away after all. But in 2003, practically all of my favorite people were going to be at the San Diego Con. Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Dave McKean, Brian Michael Bendis, and others. It was also a chance to visit Nick, Lois, and Marin, Marcie's sister who's getting her PhD in Irvine. Marcie didn't have the vacation time to come along, but I had to go!
In 2000, I was still stuck on the mainstream superhero genres, despite my aversion to most of the publications. Since then, I've slowly expanded into the more indy, underground, alternative type stuff. I'm addicted to several independent anthologies that seem to come out once a century. I've seen the magnificence of Tony Millionaire, Jim Woodring, James Kochalka, and various contributers to Drawn and Quarterly and Blab. For artful arrangements of panels, there is no beating Chris Ware, creator of the amazing Acme Novelty Library.
Now I'm in a strange space. I'm committed to Icarus, essentially a superhero story, but I'm thinking more and more about trying my hand at the indy stuff. I've always divided my efforts into cartoons (like Muddlemarch) one one hand, and comics (Icarus) on the other. But sometimes I find those two styles converging, leading to my most successful illustrations. I still believe that pulpy, fantastic adventure stories can be well-made, and powerful, and relevant. Maybe I can find my own voice somewhere between the mainstream pulp and the underground mulch.
Being unsure of my direction, my approach is a little different this time. I haven't done any work specifically for my portfolio, I'm just putting my best and most recent work in it. It's a mix of Icarus comic pages, Oregon Cycling illustrations, figure drawings and cartoon pages. I've made some mini-books of Muddlemarch cartoons and of Icarus episode 6 to give away. I'm working with Richard, a friend from my Aikido dojo, on a project called Dick's Brain. These are the cartoon pages in my portfolio. I have some written proposals of Dick's Brain to hand out. I don't really have any expectations of getting a job; my intention is just to meet people, get my name out there, and see what happens.
Thursday
I'm flying down to San Diego on the morning of the first day of the convention. Nick picks me up at the airport and drops me off at the convention center. We get there at about 10:30, half an hour after the doors opened. There's nowhere to stop, much less park, so I get out at the corner during a red light. We'll meet back there at 4:00 and drive to Irvine to see Marin.
The convention center is huge, and there's a line of people all the way along the front and wrapping around the side. I go looking for the end of this line, but it goes on forever! All the way down the side of the building, winding along a little path between walls and potted plants. There's a gap to let cars through a parking lot, and beyond that the line still extends out of sight. The thought of waiting in this line for what has to be several hours is almost enough to make me give up on the whole thing. But it turns out this is the line to buy tickets. I've pre-registered, so I can pretty much walk right in. I wait in line maybe 10 minutes to get my badge.
DC (either the biggest or second biggest comic publisher) is having a talent search orientation at 11:30. I'm not sure what that means, but I'm going. Meanwhile I decide to look for Keith Knight in Artists' Alley.
The exhibition floor is a massive collection of booths for publishers, retailers, film companies, toy companies, anime companies, porn stars and artists. Some booths are one or two tables in front of a floor-length banner, with merchandise on display. Booths for the larger publishers and film companies and toy companies are arranged like forts, with massive signs suspended above. You walk inside the fort and find display cases full of plastic robots, racks of books, monitor screens showing cartoons, people signing autographs, etc.
Artists' Alley is the end reserved for lower budget operations. The tables are arranged in long rows, and independent artists and publishers (often one and the same) sit side by side. At 11:00 am on Thursday it's still mostly empty. Keith Knight is easy to spot as the only black guy currently around. He's the creator of The K Chronicles, an alternative weekly strip, same genre as Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World or Matt Groening's Life in Hell. Also the same genre as Muddlemarch. The K Chronicles is hilarious. And it's featured in one of the same papers as Muddlemarch (Impact). When The K Chronicles showed up in Impact, I was thrilled. Sharing pages with Keith Knight feels like being a real live cartoonist! Even better: I handed him one of my Muddlemarch minibooks, and he recognized my work! We talked a little about putting out books. He has 3. Buy them.
DC's talent search goes like this: fill out a sheet with your name, address, etc. and drop it off at the DC booth, along with copies of your art. Check their reader board the next day to see if an editor wants to talk to you. There's no opportunity for a critique if you don't make the cut, but at least nobody has to wait in line for a hour just to find out the editor isn't interested. They are doing a complete convention circuit for the year and expect to hire 1 or 2 people out of the thousands they review. The comic market is brutal. It still hasn't recovered from the burst speculator's bubble. Last I heard, Marvel wasn't profiting from any of their books. The money is all in liscensing: movies, toys, video games. But the comics have to be published to drive the liscensing empire. It's a wacky set-up. My chances of getting hired by DC are small, but I fill out the sheet and drop it off with one of my Icarus minibooks.
After that I take some time to wander the floor. The French publisher Humanoids has a large booth. I find out Alejandro Jodorowsky will be there on Saturday, signing books. I have all 7 La Caste Des Meta-Barons books written by him, in the original French...at home! Curses! I decide to buy volume one of his Techno-Priests just so I'll have something for him to sign. The booth only has English translations of everything. He's so much cornier in English. In French he writes the toweringest of towering space-opera.
Humanoids also has a sign-up sheet for portfolio reviews. I've often thought my own comics have more in common with European than American comics, and wished for some way to get exposure in Europe. This is the best opportunity I'm likely to get. The sheet is full today, so I'll have to get here early tomorrow.
There are about 3 retailer booths that include rare, out-of-print comics. Browsing through one of them, I find the one book I most hoped to find--volume 1 of Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon! Several years ago I ordered volumes 2 through 6 from a catalog that offered them dirt cheap, probably because they didn't have any of volume 1. Now at last I can see how it all really started!
I wander back through Artist's Alley, and meet Devon Devereaux from Portland. He paints wierd and cool illustrations, reminiscent of Tim Burton, and has shows at Gallery Bink on the east side. My friend Amy Stoner is starting to show and sell her paintings; I'll have to pass this gallery on to her.
At 2:00 is a seminar on networking. I debate attending, since it's probably all stuff I've heard before, but I decide to go. And it is mostly stuff I've heard before, but it's actually very helpful in codifying and solidifying what I'm doing here. It's presented by Andrew Pepoy, a comic artist. Essentially he says you should show your work to everyone and talk to as many people as possible, because you never know who will wind up in a position to help you get work. So there's definitely value in coming to the comic con and showing my stuff to artists and small-timers as well as editors. Today is almost entirely taken up with programs I want to attend, but tomorrow I plan to show my portfolio around a lot.
At 3:00 is the one I've been waiting for. Editors from the five major smaller presses, publishers of indy/underground material, as well as gap-straddling ambiguously mainstreamy undergroundy material, all in one room discussing what they look for in submissions. This is a goldmine of information. They have their own preferences, but every last one says the thing they look for most is a strong personal vision. Eric Reynolds from Fantagraphics goes so far as to say, focus on your craft rather than on getting published, because good work will get published. Somewhere I got the idea that talent was incidental, that who you know and pure dumb luck were more important. Nice to hear an editor say otherwise. And it's a nice articulation of how I wanted to approach this convention. Focusing on becoming a better artist sounds like a good way to avoid self-defeating over-eager desperation.
Also, Jamie Rich from Oni Press announces that he will be doing portfolio reviews tomorrow afternoon, but you have to get a ticket. I'll be hitting Oni's booth early tomorrow too.
I run out of there at 4:00 to meet Nick and Lois on the corner. We drive for a couple hours to Irvine and have dinner with Marin. We have a good time, get home at midnight. I got up at 4:15 to catch my plane. It's been a long day.
Friday
I take the trolley to the convention center (See fig. 1). Arrive right about 10:00, when the doors open. I hit Oni's booth and get the first ticket. Hit the Humanoids booth, put myself down for a noon review. Then head for the portfolio review area upstairs, where Dark Horse is scheduled to see people at 11:00. Through some uncharacteristic aggressiveness I wind up 6th in line. I'm on fire! But today is downhill from there.
The line quickly grows to a good hundred people. The 5 people in front of me take 45 minutes or so. Taking the advice of Andrew Pepoy, I strike up a conversation with the guy next to me and we show each other our art. His stuff is pretty bad. But I see some other work ahead of me that blows us both out of the water. When it's my turn with the editor, he flips through my portfolio and quickly concludes that I'm not up to their standards. He tells me I should be down in Artist's Alley, making contacts and getting feedback, rather than approaching the big companies. Due to the long line he can't take the time for a detailed critique. Sure, that's fine. I'm out of there in just enough time to make my noon review at Humanoids, where I'm told pretty much the same thing in the same short amount of time.
After that I head to the Vertigo 10th Anniversary. Vertigo is an imprint of DC that publishes all the good stuff. They publish Sandman, in which Neil Gaiman invented a pantheon of not exactly gods, but mythical embodiments suitable for the modern age. And he did it with a series of stories that are really about being human, not superhuman. He's also written some novels. Read them. Other people are still writing comics about his Sandman characters, but I don't read them. Veritgo also published Grant Morrison's series The Invisibles. Imagine The X-Files with the wierdness factor of The Prisoner, told from the point of view of underground revolutionaries, with a lot of sex and drugs and extreme violence thrown in--that's more or less The Invisibles. It doesn't sound like sophisticated writing when I sum it up so reductively, but it is. Morrison's stuff is endlessly inventive and surprising and will out-postmodern anyone you care to name.
The 10th anniversary program turns out to be mostly a promotion for all the upcoming Vertigo books. Gaiman is there, Morrison is there, and artist Jill Thompson, and editor Karen Berger, and a host of others I'm not familiar with. I have to leave a half hour into it to make my review with Oni, but I get to hear Gaiman talking about Endless Nights, his first new Sandman book in many years.
The Oni review is better, although they aren't interested in my work either. The cool thing is Jamie Rich remembers me from the last time I talked to him, at the San Diego con 3 years ago. I talk to him a bit about how I've always tried to work in two different styles, but they sometimes converge and that seems to work pretty well. He can tell I'm much more comfortable with the cartoony style, and that seems to be where my strength lies. He offers some specific criticisms that are obvious when he points them out, but that I mentally glossed over when drawing.
So, here's a problem. I still have a tendancy toward denial in my drawing. I thought I had gotten over this when, surrounded by highly talented illustrators at Dynamix and in the Eugene Comics Guild, I suddenly understood that my own art is not perfect and I needed more practice and more study. And I've been practicing and studying hard ever since. But I still lapse into half-assedness, as if the reader won't notice a cheaply designed or poorly rendered panel. And clearly I'm still far from meeting the standards of most publishers. It's a hard pill to swallow. It's going to take many more years before I'm able to compete in professional comics. Even then, for most comic artists the work is unsteady and the pay is lousy. Not to mention the whole industry is in trouble. Seems like all the good industries are in trouble.
I have a theory, that 90% of people in America who read comics also draw comics. I can only think of one person I know who is a fan of comics but has never attempted to create any. That's what's so great about comics: it's a cinematic art form, but one creator can have complete control over the lighting, set design, costumes, dialog, acting, pacing, camera work, everything. But it makes for a rather incestuous industry. A large portion of the people supporting the comics market are busy trying to break into the business. Yet the publishers already produce more books than they can sell.
It's enough to make a guy ask, "What the hell am I doing here?"
I go to a couple other programs today. One is about comics in Europe. It features Jean-Marc Loficier, Phillipe Dupuy, and Charles Berberian from France, Fredrick Stromberg from Sweden, an Italian whose name I didn't write down (I was going to check all the names for all these programs in my convention literature, but I recycled it as soon as I got home. Sorry, Italian guy.) and an American editor from Fantagraphics, Kim Thompson. Comics in Europe are a very different affair than in America. Practically all comics in America are distributed through one company (Diamond). In Europe, comics move through the same distribution channels as other books, and so you find them on the shelves in bookstores next to perfectly respectable novels. Comics in Europe are less stigmatized as childish pulp, and rarely feature men in colorful tights beating each other up. Science fiction and fantasy stories are probably the most prevalent, but westerns, detective stories, humorous stories, historical fiction, and other genres are common. All the superhero comics come from America. And they all get translated into whatever language in Italy, at this Italian guy's publishing company. He gave some away at the end of the program. I got a Brazillian Fantastic Four (Quarteto Fantastico: Surge O Sentinela!)
Grant Morrison's own program starts an hour after that. In the meantime I head back down to the exhibition floor. At some point I remember to check DC's reader board for my name, but I'm not up there.
There's a booth devoted to a comic called Powers, written by Brian Michael Bendis. His name and the artist's name (Michael Avon Oeming) are prominently displayed but I haven't seen Bendis there, until now. Oeming is there too. Ever the glutton for punishment, I ask him to look at my portfolio. When he comes across my charcoal figure drawings he tells me to keep practicing in that vein, which will help the rest of it. And he says be patient. It can take ten years to really get up to speed.
I made a critical error with my portfolio. I'm using my latest Icarus pages as my main example of comic storytelling. But, I don't draw Icarus panels in sequence. As a web comic, it's not constrained by page dimensions the way comics on paper are. So I approach each panel seperately, decide how tall or wide each panel needs to be, and fit as many as I can on a sheet of paper. Then I scan the sheet, make each panel into it's own image file, and build the layout in Dreamweaver. But everyone who sees my portfolio says the same thing; the transitions are too abrupt, work on your storytelling. I explain that the panels are out of sequence, but that doesn't help anyone see my ability to tell a story. Even the books I printed out with the panels in sequence don't look like comic books. The panels don't fit together into nice rectangles. I can only fit 3 on most pages, and they float between vast white margins.
Powers is about being a cop in a world where superpowered vigilantes exist. It's very film noir, and very cool, very "now." Nobody writes dialog like Bendis; snappy, witty, often hilarious, and true to our fragmanted oral communication while flowing in a smooth and powerful current. Oeming's work is highly praised. It's very stripped down and stylized, with a similar feel to the new Batman cartoons. I was never especially impressed, but since the comic con I've begun to understand that some things look easy, only because the person doing it is highly trained and well practiced. Another treasure I picked up is Tintin: The Complete Companion, a behind the scenes look at all two dozen Tintin books, created by Belgian artist Herge between 1929 and 1976. Reading this book on the plane ride home, I learned how hard Herge had to struggle to complete each Tintin adventure, even the later ones which his studio of artists worked on. The art in Tintin is very simplified; a classic example of what Scott McCloud calls the iconic nature of cartooning. But simplified does not mean simple. It means judicious elimination of detail, finding the visual cues that instantly communicate the construction of an object, or the attitude of a character. It means mountainous archives of reference photos that enable accurate depictions of all types of aircraft, ancient and modern ships, landscapes, and costume and architecture from all over the world. The end result is a collection of lines that appear no more complicated than idle doodling, due to their perfect clarity. Oeming's art is something like that.
Anyway, I get to talk to Bendis briefly. He greets all his fans warmly, shaking hands and handing out free stuff. I give him one of my Icarus books, and he congratulates me for putting it together, and promises to read it when he's off the floor. He strikes me as having a deep appreciation for his job, and his fans.
He's also writing Ultimate Spider-Man. Marvel is doing "Ultimate" books for Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Avengers. The Ultimate line erases all the backstory of the characters, and restarts their stories from scratch set in our current year. Since most of these characters have been in monthly comics for 40 years, written by all sorts of people, they have long and self-contradictory and downright idiotic histories. The Ultimate line makes characters accessable to new readers who haven't studied the endless parade of secondary characters and connected backstory. But the Ultimate line also reinvents some of Marvel's characters very successfully. The Spider-Man and X-Men movies draw extensively from the Ultimate comics.
Ever since The Dark Knight Returns, DC has been able to reinvent characters and produce some excellent books. I always preferred Marvel comics as a kid, so I've been waiting for years for Marvel to update their characters for a sophisticated audience. Bendis is doing it, almost single-handedly. So Peter Parker is a 15 year old kid again, but he speaks in modern slang and does web-page work (ha ha) as well as photography for the Daily Bugle. And it's no longer a "radioactive" spider, it's now a "genetically altered" spider. But that's just trivia. Bendis writes Peter Parker like an authentic teenager, and reins in the cast of villains with a consistent logic.
Sometime today I meet an indy start-up group that publishes an anthology called Shooting Star. I talk to them awhile, get feedback on my art. I also get some books signed by Peter Kuper, an illustrator who also does comics.
At the 2000 convention I saw a presentation by Kevin Smith, who writes comics when he's not making movies. He is a hilarious speaker. This year his presentation is in the ballroom, the same place they hold the Eisner Awards and the Masquerade Ball. Today there are programs I'm interested in all day, in overlapping time slots. I thought I would catch the first part of Kevin Smith, but heading toward the ballroom I came upon a line reminiscent of the one outside for buying tickets. Apparently word has spread about how entertaining the guy is. I skip it.
Finally it's time to go see Grant Morrison. I had some difficulty identifying the line for this one (see fig. 2). He comes into the room and just opens it up for questions. He has a thick Scottish accent, except when he impersonates William Burroughs. Topics are all over the place; what's new in scientific journals, mythological aspects of comic characters, intelligence emerging from complex systems, who would win in a fight between the X-Men and the Justice League. Morrison's latest series is called The Filth. I read the first 5 of the 13 issues, but I wasn't finding a core group of characters like he had in The Invisibles and Doom Patrol, and issue 5, entitled Pornomancer, pushed things a little far for me. But after hearing the author talk about it, I'll have to go back and give it another chance. He describes The Filth as an ode to the immune system, and it's purpose is to heal, by wrestling with deeply uncomfortable subjects.
Any comic officionados who happen to be reading this will no doubt be appalled that I didn't attend the Eisner Awards. Well, I didn't. To be honest I'm not familiar with more than a tenth of the books or creators who get nominated for these Oscars of the comic world. So after Grant's thing I went home.
Saturday
Every day this thing gets more crowded. People keep lining up outside to buy tickets. The paper estimated 65,000 people a day. Why anyone would not pre-register is beyond me. I don't plan on staying too long today, but there a couple of panels on strip cartoons I want to catch.
The first one is called "How to Sell Your Comic Strip." It's put on by Lee Nordling, Gordon Kent and Stuart Rees. I didn't write down who's who, but one is a writer/producer of comic strips, one is an artist for comic strips, and the other is a lawyer who specializes in comic strip and copyright related law. As you may know, many of the daily strips we see in the papers are produced by teams of people. An old, entrenched strip may have multiple writers, artists, and editors.
This program was designed as a reality check for aspiring cartoonists, but we were a cynical bunch that day and I actually found the statistics highly encouraging. There are 5 major syndicates (Creators, King Features, Universal, Tribune Media, and United Media) and they get about 5000 submissions per year. They each release about 4 new strips a year, including a couple derived from existing material (Rug Rats, Simpsons, etc). Pretty steep odds, but 90% of those submissions lack the merest professionalism and are immediately thrown out. 10% of the remaining 10% get serious consideration. A really good strip, presented professionally, has a one in three chance of getting picked up. I can do a really good strip.
The panel offered some other insights into what syndicates look for. A small cast of characters, with readily apparent personalites. Consistency. Something that will entice the reader into buying tomorrow's paper. Something that a large number of readers can relate to.
I've always resisted rules like these. But I think the limitations imposed by the syndicates might be the key to producung something really special. Mainstream comics are driven to be highly conservative, because the editors don't want to offend their readers, and the syndicates don't want to approach the editors with something they won't buy. But there are some strips out there that break out of the "safe" and outdated cliches.
My problem has always been didacticism. I always gotta beat you over the head with what I'm saying. With Muddlemarch, I'm trying to emphasize funny more than righteous, but it's tough. And people seem to like the righteous indignation. Anyway I've been thinking about a concept for a daily syndicated strip for a few months now, with the goal of being funny and letting go of all the political stuff. But I know myself. The political stuff will creep in. But if I'm forced by a conservative culture to disguise it, to refrain from naming names but let a parallel situation unfold in my characters' goofy lives, it just might synthesize into something great. That would be cool.
The other panel was billed as simply The National Cartoonists Society. It turned out to be about controversy in newspaper dailies. The panelists included Dan Piraro, creator of Bizarro, Greg Evans, creator of Luann, Dik Brown, currently behind Hagar the Horrible, the writer of both Zits and Baby Blues whose name I didn't write down, and Vic Lee, who draws a gag panel called Pardon My Planet which I'd never heard of but it's pretty funny. Dan Piraro really stuck out in this crowd, looking like a punk hanging out in a country club. Also present was Jeff Keane, current contributor to Family Circus and original model for Jeffy. Trashing Family Circus is a favorite pasttime of us struggling cartoonists, and I couldn't resist taking a cheap shot (see fig. 3). The really shocking thing was, Mr. Keane showed several Family Circus strips that have angered religious conservatives!
This panel was highly entertaining, and also encouraging. During Q & A I mentioned that just 20 years ago, Bloom County was using gags and borderline language that the current editorial climate wouldn't touch with an 80 foot pole. Have the comics really gone so conservative so fast? Yes and no. Vic Lee brought up the double filter of syndicates and editors that drives everything toward "safe" material. But, to paraphrase Piraro, Bloom County was pitched as a particular type of strip. The furor arises when readers feel betrayed, when they find offense they weren't expecting in their trusted family strips. There are many strips today that are pitched less flinchingly (Boondocks comes to mind) that still acheive success. After the panel I gave Dan Piraro one of my Muddlemarch minibooks. He asked me to sign it. He always has artists sign what they give him.
I had one last piece of business to take care of; purchasing the recent trilogy of Gamera films on DVD. Then I'd had enough. I didn't come back on Sunday, but visited with the folks instead. On Monday I flew back to Oregon.
Today
I'm still sorting through what I'm going to do next. I will continue to do Icarus, because it's good practice. But it's going to be less of a priority and episodes may come out slower (as if it wasn't slow enough already). I'm going to give the syndicated daily strip a shot. Richard and I are going to flesh out Dick's Brain and mail it to a couple publishers. It's interesting going over my notes to type this up, and being reminded that I didn't go into the convention looking for a job. Didn't soften the disappointment in my portfolio's reception. But the truth is, stuff like Icarus is hard, hard work for me. Stuff like Muddlemarch and Dick's Brain comes much easier, and I think turns out better. Is there any point in trying to draw like these comic guys? Probably not, but I can't bring myself to give up on the idea.
At the same time....all my favorite comic people are writers. All the books and characters I follow, I follow because of the writer. The only artist I've ever been fanatical about is Moebius, and that's due more to the dreamlike quality of his narrative than what his drawings look like. So maybe I ought to try being a writer. I have more fun coming up with the story anyway--as I said, the drawing part is hard work. Trouble is, it's even harder to break into comics as a writer than as an artist. Or so they say. It's probably easier to become a writer with good writing than it is to become an artist with mediocre art.
Shifting my focus to strip cartoons feels like getting back to my roots (pardon the expression). Back in the Golden Age of Bloom County, The Far Side, and Calvin and Hobbes, all I wanted to do was daily strip cartoons. Since then, I learned about some of the restrictions imposed by syndicates, and figured I'd be better off self-syndicating to alternative weeklies. And somewhere along the line my fascination with comic books bubbled to the top. Maybe it's time to put the lid back on it.
Or maybe I should try putting my stories in novel form. Or try to sell some paintings and prints. Maybe go back to school for a Masters or a teaching certificate. Or concentrate on marketing the cartoons I'm already drawing. While continuing to get better at drawing. But above all, I need to FOCUS! ha ha ha.
8/4/03
