Letter To A Cartoonist (Patreon)

As I mentioned in a recent post, I find writing book introductions incredibly difficult to deal with, even short quotes are super stressful to come up with. I'm not asked all that often, so, it isn't a huge problem, to be honest. But it pops up here and there. Recently I spent months trying to cobble together a halfway decent foreword for J. Gonzo's collection of La Mano del Destino (a sweet Lucha Libre comic he self-published, the book is out now from Top Cow/Image, the Kickstarter bilingual flipbook version is due out soon). Gonzo's a friend, and I'm a fan of the book, so I especially wanted to turn in a good job. Gonzo said he loved it, so, whew, yay, a service rendered and a bullet dodged. 

Recently, I was asked to provide an introduction for a comic I wasn't familiar with, by a creator I hadn't heard of. I assumed the cartoonist was younger, and in the early stages of making comics for an audience. I told them that I'd consider it, that it all came down to whether or not I liked the work. I'm aware that my name isn't worth much in the overall scheme of things  (I can barely sell my own comics these days, let alone anyone else's), but if my opinion is seen as having even a smidgen of value, I have to be honest about things to keep it that way. And it's important to me how I let my name get on the few things I have promoted. I don't want to disappoint anyone, especially a fan, but I don't want to promote work that I wouldn't buy myself. I also don't like to blow people off or lie to them, even if the wisest thing would probably have been to tell them a flat "no" or make up an excuse (like the big-time famous writer who  told Jill he couldn't give us a quote for Beasts of Burden because he had done too many and needed to stop. Of course, his name was attached to a lot of cover blurbs that year, the year after, and to this day). 

Anyway, I read the comics. I didn't think the work was at a level that I could praise honestly. If I'm asked to look at someone's work, I let them know I'll give them an honest opinion. If they're good with that, I will write them back with a rundown of my issues with the work and some hopefully helpful advice. Or something along those lines. I always cross my fingers when I send one of these replies out -- am I being a dick? Is this too much? Is this helpful? Do I even know what I'm talking about? Am I dashing dreams or giving food for thought? 

I can say I've never had anyone blow up at me or react in a negative way after I've written them with my thoughts. Everyone's been very kind and understood where I was coming from, sometimes they agreed with what I said, sometimes they even found it helpful. Most folks appreciate the fact that someone actually read their work and gave it some thought and took the time to respond. That's the hope. I would guess if you're a fan of mine you know what to expect from me, I try not to bullshit my readers. And ultimately, if you ask for an opinion, I guess you should do so with the idea that you'll get one. 

I can't do this sort of thing as much as I used to -- and, truth to tell -- fewer and fewer folks are interested in my opinion on their work. I considered setting up a Patreon level where I'd go over people's work, but I decided that would be opening a can of worms, anxious worms at that. And time-consuming worms, to further stretch the metaphor. I once mentored a student from a cartooning class (Sarah and I wrote a story that they drew for the Spitball anthology) and it was tough, I spent a lot of time with them and was open and honest in regards to my opinions on their work. I heard a few pros practically took the money and ghosted or even argued with their students. At least I tried to be of help and of service. I take this shit pretty seriously, and I'm sure I would have profited from some real advice back in my bumfuck amateur days (rather than derision from a few pros, but that's another post, maybe). 

Below is the response I sent. Obviously I won't name the creator involved. Posted in case anything in this rambling crit/pep talk is of interest to anyone out there still finding their way around a comics page. Feel free to ask any questions below. 

Hey, apologies for the reply delay, and also, unfortunately, apologies for my having to turn you down for an introduction.

The only thing harder to write than a PR quote or introduction for someone's book is to tell someone you're not able to write one for them, believe me, I know from experience on both sides of the equation.

I'd rather be honest and up front with you than dodge around the situation and just say my schedule won't allow it or something like that. No one likes to be rejected or have their work criticized, myself included, but I've found after doing this for 30 + years that while it's a fucking bummer to be on the receiving end it's better than being ghosted or lied to. I tell people I won't write a forward or quote if the work doesn't work for me, which I know sucks, but whatever small affair my name might mean in comics, I only lend it to projects I can honestly praise and promote.

If I can say this in a nice way despite it not sounding "nice", your comics are still in an early stage -- your writing needs work to raise it above the same kind of stuff I've seen over the decades as a reader and professional in minis and webcomics. And you need to work and improve on your basic storytelling -- for the most part your layouts, pacing and presentation are scattershot and often leads the eye astray across the page. Some pages are messy and look like a map more than a comics page, it's an easy, early mistake to make -- the cartoonist (or filmmaker, for that matter) knows what they're putting down and how it's supposed to read and what it all means, but the reader coming in cold can be lost at sea. You have to consider yourself and your audience/reader when putting a comic together, at least, if you want an audience to connect the dots better and get the point, the sequences right. Pacing, panel shapes, page and panel design helps ease or clog up the mental flow. Not using a panel gutter on many pages is a choice that helps flatten the page and confuse the eye. Not using a variety of inking lines can also flatten images, foreground and background elements. Every choice adds or subtracts from the reading experience, the ability to communicate with images. Where dialogue and captions are placed also creates visual maps that hinder or help. Not every "rule" needs to be followed all the time, or at all, but you should know what helps and hinders a sequence or page before going wild on the page.

I really like your color work. Sometimes I think you work against it by butting panels up against one another without gutters, the colors and lines meld together, creating tangents and a muddying effect (something I took years to shake in my own work).I think your illustrations worked better art-wise than most of the panel-to-panel comics work, and I hope those images are examples of progression/newer work. Not every panel needs to be illustration-quality, but they should read and express the information clearly (unless you're choosing to be obscuring something). It shouldn't take several beats for me to parse that someone's opening a door to the record shop, my eye wandered around that panel like a kid lost at the mall. It sounds stupid, but seconds count for the reader. Getting lost in panels or in sequences, losing track of information or missing details, that's like a typo in a book, a record skipping, a loud soundtrack pop during a movie, it takes you out of the experience. If it happens once, no problem. More than that and it becomes a hindrance. No one wants to play Where's Waldo when trying to figure out a page layout when it directs their eye in the wrong direction, flows in away that's confusing and/or has word balloons that break panels borders below or away from the next panel. The main thing is clarity when telling a story, even a trippy one. You work on clarity and then fuck with it for whatever effect or mood or style you are looking for once you know how to hold and control the reader's eye. The more work you make the reader do, the more of a chance you're risking that they'll dump out on you.  That doesn't mean hack out boring layouts or whatever, it just means that what we're looking for is making sure our decisions work towards our purpose on the page and not against.

Please keep in mind that I say this as someone who was a shit artist for the first fifteen years of my career, saved only by okay writing, energy and attitude. Also, the industry was a lot smaller, so slobs like me managed to get a foot in the door in 1986 and make some ugly comics that I'm embarrassed to look at (and ripped up all the art for). I worked and did what I could to get better and sharpen my "voice" and style. It took a long time. I am still working to improve. I know I'll never be a great artist from any technical standpoint, but that's not what counts in comics (for the most part, superhero fetishists really tend to go for a level of technical drawing that still will never have the general mass appeal of Peanuts, One Piece or The Simpsons, etc).

Counter to technical excellence is style and approach and individual voice -- the things that make you "you" are what you need to bring to the page to make the page different from what others are doing, honesty of emotion, level of observation, view of life, sense of humor, all that "you" stuff can trump any deficiencies on the page that might pop up. I've never dumped a comic because someone drew two left feet or muffed a cat or kitchen sink, but I beat myself up over the same thing. Don't worry about that, as long as the story and the storytelling are solid, the rest gets pulled along. If you give the reader more reasons to stay with you than to jump ship, they'll work past an iffy drawing or a weird sequence or confusing page or whatever. I still can't draw decent anatomy, I'm flummoxed by legs and feet, profiles make me sweat, inking hair makes me grab the anxiety meds, I still suck at buildings, cars, and animals. But I have worked hard to make sure my pages read, the layouts flow, the compositions reveal the information that's important in each panel, panels are placed/paced out for maximum effect and everything more or less supports the comic. Inside the panels you have to consider body language, expression, setting, background, details and whatever else you want in there. It all gets assembled so it reads without a struggle. This goes for a four-panel gag, a story, an entire series. It's a lot of fucking work, obviously. You don't need to micro-manage everything, but you do need to know what's going on, what you're looking to achieve and how your choices affect or detract from your goals. If a reader isn't sure what's happening in a panel, or where to go next on a page, that's usually on the cartoonist.

Work creates work, better work. I'd suggest you try doing some boring standard layouts for an experiment, and concentrate more on what happens in the panels than how they look or don't look as a page unit. Ask people who aren't your mom or sig other if they can tell what's going on in panels you are having issues with. Get feedback when possible from people who aren't afraid to be honest. It hurts but it helps. My mom thought I drew better than Jaime Hernandez, and I said to her, "You are out of your fucking mind". It slipped out, and I caught hell. But she was out of her fucking mind. Loved ones love us (well, supposedly) and we get generally shitty feedback from them because they don't want to hurt our feelings. Cartoonists don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or get into awkward social situations (unless they're bastards who enjoy shitting on younger artists), so they offer a few platitudes like "nice work" or "keep on drawing" or they just flat-out refuse to look at portfolios or comics. Which I understand.

I hope this is taken as it was meant. At least you understand that I did look through the comics and read them and took your request seriously, I also took being open with you seriously in offering my advice on things I feel you can improve. Apologies if I overstepped my bounds. But in all seriousness, stay with it, think harder about your choices, let the work breathe, consider why you think people should pay for your work rather than someone else's, punch up the material and study other cartoonists, other graphic artists, other communicators. Look at why their pages and images read and communicate, why they succeed (or fail), why a comic loses your attention or rivets you, what makes you laugh or doesn't, and why these things work. See what you can learn from their work. Pick things apart, approach your work with the same process of problem solving. That doesn't mean you shouldn't fuck around and make comics for fun or for the hell of it, or overthink everything you put on the page. These are all suggestions, ways to get you to think about your art, what I'm laying out here sure as shit isn't some law. But if you want people to buy your work, to spend time with it, you're competing with a lot of people and media and projects out there, more than ever before, and you need to consider these things and, in my opinion, step up your game if you're going to make comics more than a hobby.

Any questions, feel free. Any death threats, I'd understand.

best,

evan