I'll start this with a simple statement: NEVER LET ANYONE TAKE YOUR PASSION AWAY. Now what does this mean to you personally? Well I can't say for sure, I can tell you how it applies to me and comics. See, this is one of those up and down businesses, one that can have plenty of rewards for you and one that'll give you it's share of disappointments. I mean even the greatest of "stars" have had their moments of scraping bottom, but what made them stars is simple. Enough passion for what they did to rise up above and move on.
Progress is the name of the game here for sure, but it's not always easy for all of us. Some of us have to work long and hard and fail and learn and fail and learn before we can achieve any sort of modicum of success. Of course success is subjectable to individual situations and achievements. For me, putting out my first "real" comic all those years back certainly felt like an achievement. Subsequently any release of any kind whether it be self published, part of anthology, getting a web comic going, or actually getting a book published is, to me, a success.
People say that this is a hard business to break into, and while in alot of aspects they are right, I say they need to try even harder then. Like I just said in the last paragraph there are many ways to succeed, or as I like to call it "getting out there" because believe me that's a win all onto itself. For alot of people though its all or nothing, meaning a Marvel or DC or Image or Dark Horse gig or nothing. Well that's kind of silly when there are so many companies out there to show your work to, right?
I'm not exactly sure where I'm even going with this post as the subject title came to be on the train before and I wanted to get it down in some form, but I guess in my life I've encountered a few people who have been discouraged and soured and have even tried to sour me! Don't get me wrong, I get depressed sometimes and have to try to figure out my place in all of this, but comics is such an ever changing animal that one day you can wake up and things just start going radically in the opposite direction. Of course, just as that happens, you might get turned back, and that's always hard. To those people that have been soured I say there's always a better day in comics. Just go see all the new books coming out on Wednesday, or go to Newsarama and read some articles or go to Comic Space where our community is thriving and growing in an extraordinary rate! These are all good ways to start turning you around and getting you on the right footing again.
My head is starting to hurt, and I'm afraid to read this back and sound like a generic broken record. So really though, no matter what happens remember why you were here in the first place reading this, because some time long ago (or yesterday maybe?) you fell in love with comics and that passion started to burn inside you. You wanted to make comics to. Well go for it! Never let anyone take that away from you, because let's face it, there's no blog here talking about my love for working on comics if you start letting "them" win.
And with that, I'm gonna go eat some soup!
