Good gravy, it feels good to be making comics again. Is it just me, or has there been an unusually high number of good comics on hiatus lately? I thought I could avoid whatever pressures, constraints, or evil presence that has claimed so many of my peers, but it found me in the end.
So, where have I been, what have I been up to, and what’s been keeping me from my beloved comics? They say never to make excuses unless you can make them entertaining. I’ll give it a shot.
Drawing Chapter 10 was hard. I’ve made that clear. it’s common sense that drawing anything with detailed architecture and crowd scenes will take a little longer to make than your average comic. For the most part, I was keeping up with my deadlines, but that left little time to work ahead on the next chapter. I needed a little time for layout and concept sketches. Plus, the script needed some work. It lagged at the beginning and I had some new ideas I wanted to incorporate.
I expected to be back in action after two or three weeks. But I made a miscalculation – one that is all too familiar to any adult or almost-adult who tries to balance any kind of life and work. I decided to clean out my studio a bit. It was supposed to be simple. Move a few small pieces of furniture around and, maybe get some of my books out of boxes. Instead, one task led to another and another until I had fallen into a chore chain of “Give a Mouse a Cookie” proportions.
First, I wanted to replace my old TV table, but the new shelf didn’t come with enough parts to fit together, so I had to go to the hardware store for some bracers and wood screws. Then, on moving the old table, I discovered an overheating adapter had caused some paint to blister, so I had to sand and paint part of the wall. While painting the wall, I discovered moisture damage on my media cabinet, to I had to drag it outside for rust removal and a new coat of paint. But, if my cabinet was water damaged, where did the water come from? Noko’s turtle terrarium has sprung a small leak and it needed to be cleaned and patched. And all of these chores needed to be finished as soon as possible before the weather turned bad and I wouldn’t have the luxury of painting outdoors or opening windows.
“So,” I thought, “when all of these emergency repairs are finished, I’ll have time to resume comics, right?” Not exactly. Because urgent problems didn’t just require me to stop comics, they required me to stop everything I could possibly put down. Which means that once the repairs were finished, every person, task, or obligation I had to postpone was suddenly back with a vengeance. Finding time for comics was like digging a hole in water. The instant you make that hole, it fills itself in.
But work never fully stopped. I redrew the Fabelore interactive map and upgraded it to HTML5. (The new map should work on most computers and devices now, with none of the awkwardness of the old Flash design.) I also worked slowly but steadily on the concept sketches, script, and even some storyboards.
It was the script that gave me the most trouble. It’s easier to write in a big block of time than in several little blocks, but big blocks just didn’t seem to exist anymore. To remedy this, I made myself an organized To-Do list. I figured that when I checked off enough items, it would be safe to buckle down on finalizing that script. At first, the list worked beautifully. I was knocking off big obligations everyday. But, before long, the list became a trap. New items kept getting added, and now there was this expectation that everything had to be finished before I could get back to comics.
I wanted to concentrate on that script, but I was afraid that if I didn’t get enough of my schedule cleared, I would just have to stop the comic again later. I figured one long break was better than a series of starts and stops. But cold starts are hard. It never seems like the right time to begin and it can feel selfish to make your passion project a priority, even when so many people want you to do just that. My mindset changed abruptly last Monday. It was the middle of the day, and I was checking in on Facebook. A friend of mine posted that Stan Lee had died. In minutes my Facebook and Twitter became flooded with tributes to the late writer. So many comments praised not just Stan the Man, but the gift of comics and storytelling. A million little reminders of the importance of my craft were strewn before me, along with a reminder of how brief our time is and how important it is to put it to use. The evening, I cleared my desk, closed my list and worked on the chapter script. Within 24 hours, the rewrite was finished. I don’t think any feeling of grief or lost effected the script. Chapter Eleven was always going to be a little dark and maybe a bit deep, so don’t worry, I didn’t turn up the demo dial just because I was feeling blue.
So, that was my last six weeks in a nutshell. Not my most entertaining story, but maybe it will be a comfort to someone else who’s stuck in the wrong rut and trying to get back to what they want to do. If not, well, at least there are comics again.
