Behind the Comic – Misusing TIME and Being STUBBORN

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Making comics is a tough business. Maybe the big companies have all the little things figure out, but when you are one of the little guys there are a lot of bumps in the road. And I have come to the conclusion that there are three assets that will serve someone who aspires to create comic books (well there are more… a lot more, but these are the three I’m focusing on).

The first is to be realistic about TIME.

Dragon Clock

What does that mean? Well, what it really means is that you need to get a decent idea of your own abilities and not oversell what you can or cannot do. When someone asks you how long it is going to take to do a script or to draw your pages or to ink those pages or to color those pages or to letter those pages… well, for the sake of everyone else on your team, just be realistic about the amount of time it is going to take.

Back in the prehistoric age (about 8 years ago) Terminus Media (an Atlanta based comics company) decided to dip their toes in the comic book world. It made perfect sense, we had artists and writings sitting mere feet from each other on a weekly basis. None of us had any real credits to our comic resume, so it was a win-win situation. Plus we were meeting in a COMIC BOOK STORE for Heaven’s sake. If that wasn’t a sign to get to work, I don’t know what would be. So we got together and made a black and white anthology comic book. It worked so well we ended up doing another one, and then we did a color one, and then we did one more color one.

So what’s the problem? What does this has to do with TIME?

It took almost 7 months for that first anthology to get done. Four stories of 8 pages each took 7 months. This wasn’t 1 writer and 1 artist, this was 4 artists and 4 writers, teamed up.

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So why did it take so long? Honestly? Because people have lives that they were trying to live. School or work and everything between and when you are doing something for free, deadlines go out the window for many people. But mostly it was because these creators didn’t know how long it was supposed to take. And so they said that they could deliver their script or pages or whatever by X date… and then not do it. It is hard to make something work when you have no idea if someone is going to be true to their word. It sucks to have to hound and probe and needle and stand behind someone with a wooden spoon to whack them on the back of the head yelling “Work faster!” (Why a spoon? Because its dull, it’ll hurt more!).

With the second anthology we had learned all these lessons from the past. We knew what the big mistakes were, we knew that when someone said it would only take X time to do a task we would secretly (mentally) assume 2X to do it. “Oh, it’ll take you 3 weeks to draw those pages?” (writes down 6 weeks). We were going to streamline things… no 7 months for us!

It took 9-10 months to put out the second issue.

Why? Well the TIME thing was a big one. People said 3 weeks and we figured on 6 and it took 12 (if we were lucky). But the other thing we learned was that some people liked the idea of being in comics more than the actual “creating” of comics. They talked a big game, but when push came to shove, nothing ever materialized. And they left some of their co-creators in a huge lurch searching for a replacement.

Be PROFESSIONAL.

I’m not talking about whether you get a page rate (though that is nice), but I’m talking about how you treat the people you are creating with. Don’t waste their TIME. If you aren’t serious about the project, if you don’t care about the story or the art or whatever, and are just doing it as a goof… and are always just minutes away from disappearing from the face of the Earth, then don’t bother. All you are doing is pissing people off and showing that you cannot be trusted with deadlines.

It wouldn’t be a problem if I could just chalk it up to the idea that these guys and gals weren’t getting paid, and sometimes life gets in the way, but I’ve seen it time and time again over the last decade. I’ve seen people with talent, REAL TALENT, just not give a damn. These are writers who seem to have no problem talking about a story that is amazing, but never putting fingers to the keyboard to actually write the damn thing (Just Finish It!). These are artists who I would swear should be drawing Spiderman and Batman right now, but just won’t spend the TIME in front of their artist’s tables doing the work.

When you get a team together that cares about the project and act like they are professional, it is a glorious sight to behold. And suddenly TIME doesn’t seem like quite as big a deal.

The other piece of the puzzle, at least as far as I am personally concerned, is being STUBBORN. I’m the guy that can’t give up. When it was taking 7 months to get that first comic out, I fought and emailed and sometimes just showed up to give my support, and eventually the planets aligned and the comic happened.

Of course, being STUBBORN means that as a writer you are going to get to have a lot of scripts on your hard drive that never get off the ground. You’ll have an idea, but no artist. You’ll have an artist and struggle for an idea. You’ll have the artist and the story, but then he/she decides that they cannot do the project. Or they fall off the face of the Earth and you have to start completely over with a new team.

Over and over again until you feel like you could scream.

But I won’t give up on people. Had I given up The Gilded Age wouldn’t exist. Had I given up I wouldn’t have done Tiger Style. I wouldn’t have multiple shorts in a handful of anthologies. I wouldn’t have completed The Dark That Follows. STUBBORN. Too damn stupid to know any better apparently. INSANE, because I keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result… and yet, while there are many failures or aborted projects or things that just don’t get off the ground, I’ll continue to agree to doing these things. I’ll continue writing outlines and full scripts and 8-pagers and whatever else someone wants me to do if I think there is a chance it will work out. How could I not?

Shark Fishing

Because I never know when that next thing might be the one that hits. So I put as many lines in the water and wait for that fish to come.

***

John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the Beyond the Gate anthology, which is free on most platforms!

And has two shorts in the Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows anthology! Check it out!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

Why Can’t I Be Rod Tidwell?

In the movie Jerry Maguire, Rod Tidwell is an athlete who has confidence in himself (some might say too much), in his abilities, and in his skill. But he’s hit the wall. No one seems to know about him and no one seems to care about him (in the football world at least).

Until… finally, at the end of the movie he shows up and on a national stage does something to capture everyone’s attention.

That’s what I want.

No, not the money, I certainly don’t write to make tons of money. I just want the opportunity to show that I have some talent. To tell a story and to have others see it.

To have others enjoy it.

The most maddening thing about being a writer who is on the outside looking in is that moment when you read something “professional” and know, 1000%, that you could do it better. That your ability to string words together in a sentence was better than that particular writer. If only you had the chance.

If only someone with power knew you existed.

I’ve been at this writing thing for almost a decade now. I say a decade because the stuff before it doesn’t count for me. It was playtime in a notebook. I cringe to think about those stories I wrote back in school. The terrible poetry (maybe it is good – with that certain teenage angst running through it, but I cannot bring myself to look) sitting on my hard drive. The one problem with being a pack rat is that old stuff is still around. Everything is kept because to not keep it would be disastrous.

So, ten years ago I became involved in a writing group. We met in the back of a comic book shop. Artists flowed in and out of the place and someone had the idea “let’s make a comic book”. That first day I saw a page of something I’d written drawn was a moment akin to magic.

That was the first step.

But with every little step forward it was followed by at least two steps backward. A cliche, to be sure, but beyond true. Flaky people who promised one thing and then never delivered. They all seemed to fall right off the face of the Earth. And yet, stubbornly, I continued on. The first anthology comic came out. A year and some later another one came out. Then the first color book about a year after that.

When Do I Get To See The Sailboat?

When Do I Get To See The Sailboat?

And still the frustrations grew. Projects thought up and then abandoned for all sorts of reasons. And still I wondered what it was going to take.

“I should be further along…

If only the artists would stop being so slack and finish something…

If I had more free time…

If…”

Almost three years ago I got laid off from my day job.  For the first time since college, I was out of work for almost four months. That time might have been eaten up before I knew it, if not for my wife. She was the one who suggested that I just write a book.

“You have these stories, and you never have the time normally, but now…”

So I went home that night and started to write what would become The Dark That Follows. Every night after my wife went to bed I stayed up into the early hours writing on that draft. Stumbling over words, but doing the deed.  Butt in chair every night.

I finished the first draft the night before I started my new job.

Since then I’ve written another novel, worked on a bunch of comic projects (both of which I’ll be talking about as time goes on), and slowly feel like the tide is turning. The old 10-year success… maybe. I’m certainly hoping that someone notices.

That someone enjoys it.Rod Tidwell Touchdown

I’ve got my celebration dance ready for that day.

John McGuire

PS – You can find that very first comic here: http://www.terminusmedia.com/new-retro-the-god-that-failed/#more-1063

Welcome to Tessera – a Creative Guild

Hello. Welcome to Tessera – A Creative Guild. My name is J Edward Neill. You can call me J. It’s great to meet you. I’m glad you stopped by.

A few months ago, three fellow artists and I opened a door together. We’d been friends of a sort, long ago, but we’d been flung apart by life, circumstance, and the pursuit of our separate dreams. But…on one unremarkable day in the summer of 2013, something unexpected happened. The four of us were involved in a slow-speed, four-car collision at the intersection of ‘We want to spend our lives creating’ and ‘How in the hell do we do it?’ We’ve always been that type, they and I. We want to live, breath, and die in what we create. We want our art to define us. And so here we are.

In case you wondered, we are:

Amanda Makepeace: Painter, Photographer, Web-Warrior Princess, Blogger, Writer, and Lover of Wilderness. I wish I were half as web-savvy as Amanda. Were it not for her, I’d have drowned in the internet long before Tessera saw the light of day

Chad J Shonk: Movie-Maker, Author, Blogger, and Brave Escapee to the Wild, Wild West. I envy Chad his escape from the Southeast, but less so his status as a new father

John McGuire: Comic Book Crafter, Author, Serial Novelist, and general badass neighbor. John is one of few folk alive who can thank himself for inspiring me to write, though I’ll never tell him the why or how of it

J Edward Neill: That’s me.

I still remember my first encounters with John, Chad, and Amanda. We were different people in the dark ages of our youths, but somehow we were the same. Even then, long before we reconnected for Tessera, we existed in a guild of sort. We used to meet in the school library well before the bell rang to announce first period. We were the Breakfast Club, the Goonies, and the White Council all wrapped into one juicy, creative enchilada. If you’ve ever been a part of a group like this, you know exactly what I mean. It’s sacred. No matter what happens when we grow up, it never leaves us.

And so, in the dead of summer 2013, the four of us e-bumped into each other and decided, after very little angst, to crack a door open. It was a musty old portal. Its hinges squealed. Its planks were dry and warped, but as sturdy as stone. The sunlight slipped in through the crack we made, along with a few shadows. Many years had passed us by since last we convened like this. Our individual works were so vastly different than each other’s. Across the eons, we’d scripted movies, painted haunting works of art, created edgy comics, and written novels. We knew we wanted to present a unified front, but not how.

Enter Tessera. If you’re wondering what Tessera means, look it up. It’s Greek. Old Greek. The name fits, and so we stole it away into the night. After we pilfered ourselves the name, we went to work. In a very non-literal sense, the four of us hunkered in a room with a lamp, plucked our pens and paintbrushes from their hiding places behind our ears, and started to write…and draw…and paint…and write some more. We’re not kidding. We take our work seriously. That’s why we’re here.

So…what can you expect from Tessera? Content. Lots of it. We’re driven, we are. I like to think we’d all gladly move to a cabin on the side of some lonely mountain, and create from now until the end of time. Instead of that, we’ll be here every weekday, blogging our wee hearts out. We have downloadable content, including free art, excerpts from novels, short stories, and more. We have stuff for you to buy: books, art, comics…delve deep enough and you’ll find something for everyone. We’d like to connect with you, our readers. If there’s something you want to see on Tessera, we want you to tell us. We’re also receptive to guest bloggers and new guild members. Pour water on us. Let the sunshine in. We want to grow.

There you have it. Tessera…the four of us in a nutshell. In the coming days, you’ll read introductions from the other members of the guild. I hope you’ll get to know them. They’re good people, and damn fine artists in their chosen mediums. In the coming weeks, you’ll see us flood Tessera with ideas, images, stories, thoughts, hopes, fears, light, darkness, and everything in-between. We hope you’ll visit us every day. We’d relish that. We’re a guild, and every guild needs loyal patrons.

J Edward Neill – Author of the Tyrants of the Dead trilogy, Co-author of the Hollow Empire web series, writer of innumerable  short stories, and lover of everything beneath the clouds

Check out my personal corner of Tessera here

Follow me on Facebook here

Contact me here