Post date: May 23, 2011 3:12:40 AM
Why am I publishing the first comics I created? What do I have to prove? Do I really need to say, "Look at me, world!? Aren't I clever?" Why do I have to make everything commercial? Why are you rushing to get this out?
These are the tough questions the inner (and outer) critic ask. Here is my answer:
Shut up!
I'm putting these works together for the same reason I made a book out of my panel cartoons: because they're a nice collection of quality drawings and stories and explorations of my imagination and represent a lot of hard work that has heretofore been barely seen by people outside my inner circle. And I love them. yes, I really love them, each and every one.
I have to prove I'm somebody. Okay, that seems stupid, since obviously I am a somebody. But I want to be somebody who can get a book published someday by someone other than myself. I have a vast set of gifts that I may never be able to sort out and direct and use for Good, and I think this is a fine way to put some of them in a box. A box with a front and back cover. A package, if you will, that I can hand to someone and say, "read 'In God's Country for my feelings about identity." Or better yet, someone else might hand it to someone else and say, "Read the PoMo Love story... and let's talk about it." But most importantly, I need to prove something to myself: that the work I do is worth sharing. I have had the hardest time believing that, yes, I have. I'm really not sure it is. But I will never know unless I try.
Yes. I'm a Leo with Leo rising and have an enormous capacity for flattery and praise. I don't neeeed it but it sure feels good. And I like feeling good. Don't you?
Because that's how the world works. Commerce provides a river for art to flow out and be seen. Commerce provides a platform, a value system, and a venue for books and readers. What, do you want me to give it away? I have to buy that sweater. I have to pay for piano lessons for my son. I need a tank of gas. It's fine for you to be unambitious, to not want people who don't know you to read your stuff, it's fine for you to opt out of pursuing the carer you've always dreamed of because it's too hard. But I'm trying. also, I've learned in my 20 years being self-employed that if it doesn't have a price tag on it, people don't want it. Go figure.
I'm hardly 'rushing this out.' It's been in a drawer for twenty years. I was told back then that it was 'ahead of its time.' Is it it's time yet? I don't know. the world has changed. Comics are changing. Girls are reading. And, alas, girls are still as messed up as I was.
I want to put this juvenilia out in the world because every writer needs a starting place. And it's too late for me to walk any sort of pre-determined path.