I have to say, this change in my posting habits is really affecting what I can put in here. I stand by my decision to be more careful about what art I post, but I also don’t currently have the resources necessary to use the protective measures I’m looking towards, at least not in a sustainable manner. I’ll include some doodles, so there’s something to look at.
This week, I have been in planning mode for a comic strip I’m excited about. I have a rough outline for how the story will go, so now I’m working on specific chapters, events I want to include, and finer details. My goal is to have the whole story outlined before I get big into production, because I want to be putting out a new strip every week or two (once I see how sustainable a schedule one week is). I’m also contemplating a collected print format for this, but the details there are very hazy for me. I don’t know how to go about that sort of thing at the moment, from finding printers to doing a crowdfund. I have drawn the first strip already, because I already knew how the basic introduction should look, and I have a draft of a title card.
Getting into all of this is making me think more about what kind of art I want to make. I’m not interested in being a “serious artist” with “important work” out in the world. I want to make fun, cool comics, like the stuff I read. But much like the stuff I read, I don’t think “fun” is empty, insubstantial bits for a whole book; that’s fun as snacks, but not meals. Comics are stories, after all, and stories mean something. I’ve been getting better at identifying how I connect with the stories I think up and what I want to get out of making them. As long as I know that stuff’s in there, I’m free to have as much fun as I like. I’m at the starting line, finally.
In other thoughts, it occurred to me that American comics are made with a similarly sized art team as manga. The main difference is in how the work is divided. Despite comics being a visual art medium, we think of writers as the lead authors of comics in America. In Japan, artists are the lead authors of the books they draw, because of course. I’ve always wondered how a shonen manga series can have so many fun, organic scenes of eating and having fun outside of any direct narrative role, while American superhero comics often feel like they’re barely getting in everything they need and have no room for fun character bits or a sense of life. After all, manga is typically printed on a smaller page and has fewer pages per chapter than an American comic. It’s clearly a difference in how the work is divided and conceived of, right? A writer is going to be obsessive over the plot, themes, dialogue, and clarity, while an artist will want to have fun moments drawing their characters being silly or flirty, generally themselves, and include various “unconventional” layouts for all sorts of dramatic effects. Like, the big spiderweb word balloons skipping around each other and crisscrossing the page? That’s an American thing, because only a writer would put that much dialogue onto a page and script the scene to be a single large panel.
All this to say, I think more American books should be made with an artist as lead author, like in Japan. Not everything about the model over there is great, but that placement of authority makes sense. We can normalize artists having assistant artists (that we credit and pay properly), so as to take workload off the lead artist and speed up production without dropping quality. It’d be the same size as the current creative team, you just replace the writer with a second artist or two. Mentorship opportunities! Community building! Even if it never becomes the norm over here, because this is America and we always prefer the “idea man” over the worker (not shading writers, just pointing out a pattern), it’s still something we should try. There are so many artists like me making comics on their own that it’s silly pro comics are still defined by a “primary author” writer and a “the talent” artist pair. Why don’t we see more artist-led comics?
Life in the Gutters 