Broken Frontier

My debut book just hit the shelves of the direct market and was a moderate success - for an independent anthology, anyways.  I worked as a columnist here for over a year on the Guiding Lines column, writing about all of the books that I love that people don’t read.  Now, on the other side of the process, I write a book that I love that a lot of people don’t read.  So why am I here?  Why am I writing a weekly column on BF? 

The one thing that seems to tie together most of the fans of the comic book medium is an aspiration to be one of the select few creating those books.  Nearly every professional working today comes from a fanboy passion for comics, traveling the road from fan to connoisseur and then to professional.  Unlike film or TV, it’s an attainable goal.  Hell, the sheer difference in production cost makes it an attractive career path for all of us square pegs.  So, here we are.

Hopefully, over the course of the next weeks, months, and years, you’ll get an insight into my path as a creator, and glean some tips on how to do it yourself.  In fact, let’s start with one right now.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS TIP #1: JUST DO IT, DAMMIT!

The number one problem people have, from what I’ve seen anyhow, is they love to talk, but lack the ability to “do.”  Having a great idea is key, but, even if you have the next “30 Days of Night” or “Y: The Last Man,” it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t actually make it.  Plenty of guys come up to me at conventions, at signings, or when I’m just hanging out at my local shop, and say “I got this great book, but I’m waiting for Vertigo to pick it up before I write it,” or “Well, I drew a five page pitch for some guy and Image said ‘No,’ so I’m waiting on that.”  There is no reason to wait.  There is no reason for you to sit around waiting for your big break.  It doesn’t cost 10 million dollars to make a comic.  If you find a collaborator (which is actually much easier than everyone makes it out to be) and you’re both willing to work for free, and split cost, you can very easily create a self-sustaining comic for under $5,000.  Most of us have comic book collections easily worth that much, or hell, put it on a credit card! If you really, whole-heartedly believe in what you do, making an investment of $5,000 in your career will be by far one of the smallest “career investments” you can make. 

I have a confession to make at this point.  I quit comics.  Alright, most of us quit comics during the heyday of crapfests that was the Mid-90’s, but I stayed out for a long time.  I came back around two and half years ago now.  I’d stayed in touch with the industry via Trade Paperbacks, but for the most part, never a trip to a comic shop.  But, when I was handed a copy of Fables #1 and the 1st Ultimate Spiderman trade, I felt the flood gates open.  I was a frustrated screen writer with one too many “close but no cigar” situations.  I’d gone from selling a TV show to working a dead-end paper-pushing job.  And ultimately, despite literally years spent writing, pitching, and developing projects, I’d still have been better off staying in my old retail management job.  As I approached the age of 25, these things really started weighing heavily on me.  Comics were the solution:  a fully self-contained art form, financially feasible and most importantly, devoid of over-bearing outside forces to obstruct my goals.  So, I sat down and wrote my first comic. 

Then the first reality of making comics set in.  It’s not a solo act.  Unless you’re Dave Lapham, Craig Thompson (or of their ilk), finding a collaborator who “gets” what you’re doing is the real trick.  I placed literally dozens of ads all around the internet, had seen an infinite number of online portfolios and nobody’s work did it for me.  Or, let me rephrase that, nobody whose work I could caught my eye.  Whenever I’d see someone I liked, I’d send a query letter and script snippet, and, I exaggerate not, would always receive an “I love the script, and can’t wait to start. I’ll do it for $75 a page.”  Well, that dead-end paper-pushing job also happened to be pretty low-paying. And so, there I was, breaking the very first rule.  I sat and waited for something to happen.

I’m not known for my upbeat personality.  I’m generally the pessimistic squeaky wheel.  So, while complaining to a retailer friend of mine about the lack of quality affordable artists, I was told to “stop bitching and do something about it.”  As a joke, I made a 3 panel comic strip, emblazoned with the title “Poorly Drawn Animals.”  Friends and co-workers loved them.  Suddenly, I went from having nothing to having something.  I built a fancy website for the strips, and started out doing three strips a week.  Early on, I was getting twenty or so hits a day.  Which, well, sucks.  Then, I woke up one morning, with an e-mail from my hosting company telling me I’d exceeded my bandwidth for the month.  Scratching my head, I continued checking my e-mail, noticing I’d somehow gotten 300 e-mails since going to bed the night before.  It turned out, after much confusion and scrambling, my website had been one of Yahoo’s “Pick of the Day” sites.  I’d gotten nearly 8,000 hits in less than seven hours.   By day’s end we’d done 20,000 impressions, and then it slowly petered out over the next few weeks down to 200 or so a day.  We got another massive boost from another website, and suddenly, I had a demand for comics.  A friend and I sat about organizing mini-comic reprints of the strips, and I headed out to Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco.  The mini-comics were a hit, and we made some really great cash, and best of all, I made some connections. 

Now, doing small shows around California, and being more involved on the internet started to get my name out there, for people to recognize that I was a creator (in some small capacity anyhow), and I managed to befriend quite a few small press creators, and even a few big name creators who dug my comics.  And that’s how it all started.

Next week, we’ll talk about how I went from the comic I originally wanted to publish to the comic that’s sitting on store shelves right now!