A Decade Of Making Comics - Part VI
And you’d think I would have learnt something…here I talk about this weird limbo that led me into a global pandemic.
“I been in the game for ten years making rap tunes comics!”
Last time, I wrote about landing two books with Black Mask and waiting, waiting, Kickstarting, and collapsing.
After ETERNAL, I felt like I dropped off the map of comics. It didn’t stop me writing comics, though. Thinking about that, I realise how stubborn and stupid I was, in equally swirling measures. I never really planned to give up, and I credit that with why I’m still here.
It probably comes down to identity - and I maybe even knew this at the time.
I’m a writer. And I’m a comic writer. I’ve been writing scripts most of my adult, post-uni life and I enjoy it. How could I give that away? What would I even do with the hours a day that would free up?
Nope. I kept writing pitches and dreaming up ideas and staying up to midnight, and beyond, just continuing to be a comics writer despite it seeming like no comics would actually come out.
As that year rolled on, ETERNAL faded into the rearview. It hit a whole mess of Best of 2018 lists, which was awesome, but they just showed me that in that year not much else had happened. At least not publicly.
EVERFROST was still trucking along. I landed another graphic novel, SHE at ComixTribe, and as we prepped that towards Kickstarter in my heart I planned out a trilogy of books for it.
Things were not as prolific as I wanted them to be, or hoped them to be, or thought they should be if I were any kind of success at doing this core aspect of myself. What kind of comics writer doesn’t just exponentially write more and more comics?
I thought I’d go from one major gig a year, or two, to more, to some bigger publishers, eventually landing some kind of Big Two gig - and with both feet in the door at DC, it seemed like it could happen, would happen, and dare I say should happen. But happen it did not.
Looking back, I can see the unrealistic aspects of my vision board. I never once slowed down at the day job. In fact, in those years I worked harder, elevating my game in ICT leadership and knowledge, and really enjoying my class and things I was teaching. How I expected to do more and be more at work and also at writing baffles me. How unrealistic? But I was certain I could do it.
So I had a two year dry spell after ETERNAL. DC dried up for me because, honestly, I just wasn’t there for it. I pitched a few things, I had some great chats with really awesome people, and then I just stopped pushing. Honestly. I think I told myself I was waiting for my next thing to drop - I don’t like emailing editors unless it’s with a new pdf of something coming out, and suddenly I had a long time between drops, so I just let myself fade away a bit.
If this were a film script, we’d be at the Dark Night of the Soul moment. Even though I had EVERFROST and SHE slated to come up, it was getting harder to justify staying up late to write comics if it didn’t feel like writing comics, it felt like writing ideas and scripts and then nothing happening.
At this time, I started to slowly unravel. Not in any huge way, but definitely in *a* way. Then a global pandemic hit.
Strangely, I can’t even blame the pandemic for any of my time spent in The Doldrums [shout out to my Phantom Tollbooth fans]. I built my hut and sat in it through the summer right before Covid-19 existed. In fact, I’d almost wager that Covid and the first resulting lockdown here did as much to save me as did the fact I sought professional help.
Lockdown gave me a pretty strong purpose. As someone who was questioning his purpose in life, to be in charge of ICT at a school suddenly dropped into line-wide remote teaching, I had a purpose. I was working ~80 hour weeks through that first lockdown, and I genuinely loved a lot of it because I could see the results instantly. That kind of necessity/result loop works for my brain. I was doing meaningful work, that I enjoyed on a process and puzzle box level, and I could see teachers and students instantly benefitting from it.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want 80 hour weeks ever again. But I think maybe I needed such a focus at that time.
Then there was the fact of being locked in at home with my family. I recognise how lucky I am to have enjoyed that. My kids worked well through their school work, we got to play together in the backyard a lot, I could spend more time with my wife. It was a crazy time, I was busy, but I still look back at it fondly and recognise what a privilege that is to have gotten that time.
I don’t think I wrote many comic pages while I tried to do my best work at work and with family, but I think that was okay. Lockdown also provided two comics opportunities: Tyler James at ComixTribe decided to see if people would be maybe more likely to be shopping online while locked down so we launched the Kickstarter for SHE Vol. 1 and it went gangbusters. And Sami found himself with a decent pause in his work, and being the absolute gentleman he is he jumped straight back into EVERFROST.
SHE would become ComixTribe’s most funded comic launch to date, and EVERFROST would land later in 2021. Behind those two things, I lined up my next two gigs - neither of which were my pitches.
SPEED REPUBLIC was brought to me by some awesome people at Mad Cave Studios, and they let me cut loose with the idea and make it something personal and fun. And Sebastian Piriz had brought an idea to me and he landed us at Heavy Metal Magazine. Suddenly, I hadn’t fought for my next shot so much as prior stuff had put me into a place to be approached and I could take a swing.
I worked on my brain, I rebalanced my writing with my teaching, and suddenly the decade of making comics was looking like it might close out in an interesting way. Which it has, though not in any way I had envisioned it 5 years prior.