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Something came to my attention yesterday that put the whole topic of this discussion into very stark resolution for me. I wrote a blog entry on it, which I repost below.
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Comic Industry or Bust
I got a real good lesson in perseverance, focus, effort and even humility today, and all from a single press release-type article in this week’s Comic Shop News. As it turns out, a script that I’ve been working on over the past 18 months on and off (more off than on), to date only producing ten comic pages’ worth of script (which is something like 25 pages on paper), for a revival of my favorite comic series of my childhood, will now need to either be placed on the backburner or tossed out entirely. This is because said series is being brought back, which ordinarily I might greet with great joy, but now only sorrow and self-recrimination for not committing myself to finishing and pitching said script long before now. It’s not exactly like I’ve been too busy; I’ve been either unemployed or minimally employed for something like 8 months now.
This was to be, in my mind, the series in which I would prove my mettle as a comic writer, elevating a discarded and oft disparaged relic of the ’80’s into something that could be enjoyed by a wide audience including longtime fans and new readers. It would discuss things in ways uncommon in popular culture, especially not kid-friendly culture (ie, history, law, sexual orientation, body image, depression, drugs, abuse, faith vs. spirituality, race, self-empowerment, media, urban gentrification, materialism, parenting and even education reform, among others), would have an adjunct website which would serve as a community hub and add dimensionality to the stories and characters, would mature as its readers did like the Harry Potter books, would market itself in ways in which the comics industry rarely if ever tries, and would serve as a personal exorcism of the baggage of my unpleasant youth. It was conceived with full knowledge that the comic market is fickle, thus able to end or transition to a new creative team at a number of points, but I hoped to prove myself worthy enough within short time that I could wield leverage on what was the redheaded stepchild of their stable in such a way that I could run on it for up to 100 issues, intended to end sometime in latter 2012. Alas, it would seem none of this is to be, at least not in the way in which I conceived it.
This is not, sad to say, the first time I’ve had this experience, and the other time which comes to mind involved a project that was all my own creation which I’d been developing since the age of 15 for a dozen years. That idea, a CGI film predating all such successes in the field of the past decade, centered around a sort of treasure hunt race involving an all robot cast, with a protagonist I considered my avatar, the strong female love interest, the looming criminal antagonist (based in large part on a presence in my life who contributed greatly to what made my youth unpleasant), and cast of characters that were offbeat and unique. Imagine my horror upon learning last summer that a movie with altogether too many similarities to my own concept was underway at the studio that produced Ice Age, centered around a contest involving an all robot cast, many of which were ringers for my own cast, in some cases down to their very NAMES. This had been up to that point my dearest and most personal project, and it felt as though I’d been given a forcible and rough abortion.
You would think the trauma of losing the opportunity to gift the world with something so undeniably a piece of myself would have slapped some sense into me to the extent that I would make sure never to be asleep at the switch again. You would think, wouldn’t you? A goalie who gets a puck to his unprotected balls would be a fucking idiot to ever not wear a cup again, right? Surely this profound disappointment, in no one other than myself, would impel me toward some sort of active pursuit of my goals so as never to be able to beat myself up for lack of effort on one of my precious dreams, yes?
No. Because over a year later, it’s happened again, goddammit. This time, while not an original concept at the start, it was going to become mine. I was going to make that stupid little book the most important book that publisher put out. I was going to make it worth every penny anyone could spend on it, and make it the sort of book people recommended to one another without hesitation. It would launch the rest of my comic career, which I’ve always hoped would be almost entirely of my own original ideas, and I even had network connections lined up so that once the script and the proposal were done I could make a couple calls and get it onto the desk of one of the most senior editors with good reasons to give it a shot. I knew what I was doing with it. I knew.
But I didn’t do it. At least not enough to make it happen. And some other anonymous guy snagged the gig and has his own ideas about where to take these characters, and the imprint under which it’s due to be released suggests it will not aspire to the heights to which I would and should have taken the book. Whether or not it prospers, it changes the story as it stands enough that where I’d intended to start the story may no longer be applicable. It could be adapted, but I’ll probably never get the opportunity: if the series is unproductive the company is more likely to outright cancel it, further stigmatizing the title, than hand it over for a complete overhaul, while if it does do well, so much for injecting my specific idiosyncrasies into the story.
I do not lack for story ideas. I have something in the ballpark of 25 individual, original comic ideas, many of them crystal clear in my mind’s eye, most of which I’d rather write AND draw myself, and which I’d want published by a company less interested in sustaining a property than putting out books of worth to as many readers as possible. But I’m afraid at this point that my lack of motivation makes the likelihood of any of these seeing the light of day increasingly improbable. Over and over these stories and characters who are so precious to me have failed to make the transition to actuality, and I begin to fear that I don’t have it within me to reverse this trend. Which is a very frightening thought to someone who has spent the past 8-9 years wanting to work in a field in which he cannot move himself to work, yet cannot imagine himself doing much of anything else with his life. When I was 24 I half-seriously said that if I wasn’t working in comics by the time I turned 30 I ought to blow my head off. On days such as these, less than 16 months from that deadline, I feel that self-destructive urge keenly, because I don’t think there’s much worse of a feeling than suspecting that you cannot do what you most love.
I’m trying to harness that feeling, that sick in the pit of my stomach when I realize that I have no one to blame but myself for not accomplishing something completely within my abilities while the window of opportunity was open. I’m trying to hold onto that which ordinarily I’d be trying to forget as soon as possible thereafter. I want to own it, call it up at will, make it work for me as an impetus for not accepting my own entropy. I began to chant a mantra: “It’s never fucking enough, it’s never fucking enough, it’s never fucking enough…” I remonstrated myself in the bathroom mirror. I did sit-ups and pushups to the point that I collapsed, then meditated. I bought a cheap pendant from a vending machine at the supermarket so there would always be some icon of this particular failure to reference. (The universe, always a source of cryptic humor, spat out a pendant in the shape of a lock at me.) I was ready to have my roommate punch me in the face when I got home, except by the time he got home himself the moment and the potential to make an imprint via that method had long passed.
Thirty stares at me hard, unblinking, waiting to see what I will bring to the table at that moment when so many people have progressed into some form of adulthood that will serve as the template, or at very least a basis, for much of the rest of their lives. I want to believe that if I am doing this silly craft that I love for a living, no matter how the fruit of those labors are received, then I will be able to carry through the best part of youth through the rest of my days. If not, then more likely I am just an immature mess, unwilling to grow up into someone of worth but clinging to a past that grows more distant and irrelevant to the present all the time. My lack of a choice in these matters seems all the more petulant every day, and continues to discredit me not only as a creative individual, which is in the end equation the best thing I’ve got going for me, but also as an individual of any value to the world whatsoever.
To quote Billy Corgan, “I’m afraid to die, but I think I’m more afraid to live.” More and more, my choices seem to be boil down to one or the other, and if I don’t start making better choices, I will soon discover that I have none left but those made for me.
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