A Decade Of Making Comics - Part IV
And you’d think I would have learnt something…here I talk about where I felt like I really broke in.
“I been in the game for ten years making rap tunes comics!”
Last time, I wrote about bringing HEADSPACE into the world, and now I’ll look at the books that came after.
I worked on NEGATIVE SPACE with Daniel Chabon and it was an insanely creative and productive experience. The title went from Down to Low to The Depression Agency, which I really liked because it sounded like a Philip K. Dick story. But the first two titles were taken by other comics, Remender and Tocchini launched their book Low as we were prepping, and the final was shot down as maybe too clunky, and then someone in DH Editorial came up with NEGATIVE SPACE. I dug it.
We brought on Owen Gieni after I suggested him, and no one else. The dream team was locked. This story became my focus and I wrote with everything I had. I wanted to make this book matter because the story mattered so much to me. I also cannot properly express how awesome an editor Daniel Chabon is. We worked this story so well together and I brought everything I had to his notes and questions.
It seemed to work and it paved the way for a real rollercoaster ahead.
NEGATIVE SPACE would get great reviews. It would win two National awards. It would even eventually get picked up by an agent from Paradigm while they were in San Diego Comic Con leading to me being in my brother-in-law’s house in France and receiving an email I thought was some low-key fraud, but was in fact the start of a long relationship with a great agent who would get a different comic of mine optioned for tv.
After this comic, I would get selected into the DC Writer’s Talent Development Program. I would make two minis with Sami Kivela - DEER EDITOR on Kickstarter and CHUM with ComixTribe; both would be really well received. All great things.
But I also got the chance to pitch for the Ninja Turtles at IDW, and I would repeatedly flub it, eventually completely missing the gig. This had me down, but then Vertigo asked if I wanted to pitch a short for their CMYK anthology and I would attack that opportunity with everything I could possibly muster. I thought the TMNT was proof I was a hack, but then Vertigo allowed me to tell a really awesome boxing crime story with Tommy Lee Edwards on art. This single thing probably staved off mental collapse, honestly.
It would all be a daily grind, but the wins added up. I really wanted to work with Black Mask Studios - the hot new publisher at the time - and a cold submission got me an email within a week. Seems they’d read and loved NEGATIVE SPACE and so they were ready to greenlight BEAUTIFUL CANVAS, another collaboration with Sami Kivela. One of my favourite mates and partners in all of comics. This felt like a huge win for me, another publisher believing in me.
As we prepped this comic, and I loved writing it, I managed to repeat my TMNT performance over at DC and completely drop the ball. It chipped away at my mental game, I will not lie. I’m constantly battling this idea that writing is a silly thing to pursue, or that I won’t make it very far. But then against that is the fact I’ve managed to tell some really personal and awesome stories and I can calm myself and realise it’s all pretty cool. It’s not a meteoric rise to writing some spandex hero, but perhaps it’s the story style and workload I can manage alongside the rest of my life. Maybe, who knows?
So BEAUTIFUL CANVAS leads me into the second half of this decade of making comics. The first half was a formative blast, and I feel like the second half has just been a blur, but perhaps upon reflection I’ll see that it’s added up.