Comic book inspiration.
I went to Comic-Con as the biggest loser on the planet. For days, i was in a complete state of panic, not because of the stress that comes along with the biggest convention in the country, but because I had already made plans to go to this thing and I shouldn’t even be there. I hadn’t finished the projects I wanted to have on hand at the event. I’ve been working harder than I ever thought I could on freelance stuff just so that I could have the money to go to this and do more work that may end up lost in the glut of other Comic-Con reporting. On the eve of my fourth year at San Diego Comic-Con, I was still a virtual unknown completely incapable of making any kind of waves in a scene so large.
It’s hard to admit online that you suck. It opens you up to trolls, probably makes you look bad to potential employers, etc. Since caring about those sorts of things has only made my life more miserable, I’m taking the opposite approach today.
Everybody feels like a failure at times, or at least they should. That’s how you know that you aren’t a raging, egomaniacal fool. I don’t think what I’ve been going through is any different from what others have experienced. A year or two filled with pretty intense rejections will do that to you. For me, that manifests in not being able to write the things that I really want to write. It means second-guessing everything I type. It means feeling like a reject at Comic-Con.
I got to the convention center fairly early on Wednesday. It was Preview Night, when some badge holders can check out the exhibit hall before an even bigger crowd arrives on the first official day of the con. I got into my first Comic-Con line, the one for my press badge, and it moved with shocking speed. To the convention’s credit, they’re efficient when it comes to badges.
First stop for me is always Small Press. I love independent comics and have gotten to know a few of the people who show in the section of the exhibit hall, so I wanted to get some new reading material and say my hellos. Before I got there, a physics group handed me a stack of comics. Cool!
Inside Small Press, I saw Shing Yin Khor, whose work I recently covered for Los Angeles Magazine. She had a great booth set up with her art and books. She was handing out preview copies of Swimming in Sake, a forthcoming travel comic by Pinguino that will be released through Shing’s Sawdust Press imprint. Then I visited Jenn of Just Jenn Designs, who had a great variety of stationary along with her comics at the booth. Jenn kindly gave me a Mighty Fine mustache pin, which I placed on my denim jacket, right above my Underground “I love Johnny Marr” button.
I stopped to say hi to Paul Horn as well, and bought a copy one of his 24 Hour Comic books. He wrote and drew an entire 24 page comic in 24 hours. That’s one page an hour. Ugh, sometimes it takes me 24 hours to write one page that I inevitably trash. Then I stumbled onto the booth of a comic creator named Josh Shalek. I really liked his book covers, so I bought one called Dancing with Jack Ketch: The Life of Jackson Donfaire, Notorious Pirate. I haven’t read it yet, but it looks great. At some point, I ventured outside of Small Press to say hi to Eric Nakamura at the Giant Robot booth. They had tons of cool, independently made toys and books too.
All these people were doing stuff. Awesome stuff. And they’re working indie. So, why am I so afraid of going it alone? Why am I so convinced that I’m going to fail? More importantly, how can I learn from them?
It’s Comic-Con and, this year, I’m not just here for work. I’m here to figure out what I’m doing wrong.
People who aren’t afraid of failing are either lying or too stupid to know better. Both kinds succeed so it’s kind of hard to know the difference. Yet, here I am, a total stranger and reading your stuff. Each time you post. Reading your stuff. Not because I know you, or grew up next door or went to your school, but because I read and enjoyed your style.
Comic-Con is not the place for soul searching, it’s Entertainment Tonight for geeks. Flashy and with little substance (okay, the Firefly reunion was pretty damn cool) but forgotten quickly. What I don’t get out of any reports or videos or news stories is what you’ve written about here: the people. It’s why I prefer Dragon*Con actually and I think it’s probably what you really want to talk about with us. God knows all those people you mentioned probably love anyone writing anything about them.
Or I am totally off base and reading it wrong. In which case you failed.
Miserably.
I’m guessing that wasn’t too painful.
BTW, From Atlanta I didn’t even know there was anything to Comic Con except star-studded panels and huge product announcements (maybe that’s E3.) What I found most depressing about Comic Con pics were the empty hallways at night. You’d never see that here in August and I think it speaks volumes. So thanks, at least, for showing us there were actual people there too.
And now, what I always do, exiting with someone smarter than me. Good luck and keep writing, damnit.
“Humanity has been passing through a gray and desolate time of confusion. My great predecessor, William Faulkner, speaking here, referred to it as a tragedy of universal fear so long sustained that there were no longer problems of the spirit, so that only the human heart in conflict with itself seemed worth writing about.”
- Steinbeck’s Nobel acceptance speech.
Michael,
Thanks, I really appreciate your comment. Yes, I think you’re reading this right.
The thing about the empty hallways at night is partially because of the way it’s structured. Save for a few panels, pretty much everything moves to the Gaslamp Quarter after dark. There’s no drinking in the convention center (to my knowledge) and no music (we had to go offsite for Dethklok and Andrew W.K.). That said, where you can party and see panels inside the same venues at Dragon*Con (and other hotel conventions), you can’t really do that at SDCC. By nightfall, we’re all bar crawling. I do, however, think it’s a shame there isn’t more nighttime programming. That’s one of the things I like best about Dragon*Con.
However, I should also point out that the lack of people in the halls at night is kind of a testament to the fact that a lot of the attendees are there primarily for the exhibit hall, Hall H and Ballroom 20 programming.
Hi Liz!!
I understand how you feel. I spent an hour on Saturday at the Portfolio Review area and I got to sit down for two interviews. They were rather pointless and I ended up feeling really pissed off on my entire 2 hour drive home. But it was good kind of pissed off? It hit me that I was mad at myself for making the crucial mistake of putting my artistic integrity and my fate in the hands of condescending schmucks who will never know what it’s like to lose sleep in order to create something from your soul and never put a drop a ink on paper in their lives. I probably sound butt hurt, but you probably had to be there. They didn’t know anything.
I realized I am done waiting around and I’m going to create even more comics for myself and keep posting them online because I’ve come to damn far to quit on myself. It is time to set the standard and not be it!
I did get a lot of encouragement and positive feedback from a lot of creators at the Image Comics tables. That left me with a lot of positive vibes inside. Now I can’t wait to unleash everything inside me, haha.
Anyway, so I turned 27 in May and lately I was feeling like I was at the point in my life where my “window” was starting to close and if I STILL couldn’t get this comics dream going I would just give up and get a job or something. BUT after that experience I felt that pissed off, punk rock fire inside again and was telling myself in the car “You f*ckers don’t know what you started.”
That wasn’t aimed directly at those puppets at Portfolio Review, but it felt good to scream it into the ether. Time to make noise!
-chris graves
All creative people at some point in time feel the same way, so you are not alone. You’ve been writing for the second largest Alt. Weekly in the nation! You’ve gotten a lot farther than most. If you weren’t good at what you do you would never have gotten this far.
I know it can feel hopeless and overwhelming when your little indi blog is going up against huge mulit national media outlets but that’s o.k. You’re writing about the little guys! Would you feel better if you only wrote about all the major movie releases and wrote the same thing that can be found on Entertainment Tonight’s web site? Sure it would be easier to go that route. Just follow the mainstream and maybe get a few more casual readers of your blog. But you don’t strike me as that sort of person. You write the stories no one else dose and us little guys greatly appreciate all you do for us!
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