“Make Your Own, Then”
Been thinking about this a lot lately, pardon me if it’s a bit scattered, I have to jot this down between deadlines and may mess it up a little.
I have seen, a million times, people with complaints about art or comics or film or music, dismissed online with the simple comment, “Make your own, then.”
The idea of course being that, if you didn’t like this issue of Spider-man, that you, the average reader and message board poster, can somehow make your own Spider-man comic that is comparable to that which is professionally produced with the whole backing of a major corporation. It’s nonsense, it’s just meant to diminish someone’s complaints about a given work. It’s a way of making an argument more juvenile, really.
Sometimes, pros say it, even though they should know better. You may hate a comic by Artist X, but the odds of you ever being in a position to take that book from that creator, no matter how dedicated or talented you are, are almost nil.
There’s fanfic, of course. You can write your own version of the characters you like, and that’s fine. But not quite the same, for a lot of reasons.
It’s always struck me as a bit sad, that in a community like Tumblr, you have thousands of artists and thousands of writers, many of whom are very witty and very talented. And many have aspirations to be comic creators. But few make that leap.
What I would like to see is this…why can’t some of those artists and some of those writers get together and build their own little rocketships?
Seriously. You have the internet. The tools are there, most of them are free or very low cost. There are artists with talent going across my dashboard every hour. Writers who have all the skills and wit required post all day long. There’s resources like deviantart. There are fanfic circles.
Why isn’t the peanut butter getting in the chocolate?
A comic doesn’t have to look like Alex Ross painted it. It doesn’t have to have Geoff Johns and Batman or Bendis and Wolverine. A comic can be a mini comic, a gag strip, a weekly webcomic. It can be something like the Gutters, or PvP, or Penny Arcade, or Shortpacked, all web phenomenon that have become hugely popular ON THE WEB FIRST.
You may really, really want to write Spider-man. But why not talk to that artist whose work you like, and see about creating something together?
I mean it, this time. MAKE YOUR OWN, THEN.
If you are spending hours writing or reading fanfic, you COULD be making comics. If you are spending hours doing fanart, you COULD be making comics.
Listen, it is NOT impossible. And if you really want to break into the majors, there is no faster way. Cassandra James, Amanda Gould and Nicola Scott were all artists I discovered on the internet and that’s just me, to say nothing of the other artists found that way. Kate Beaton has a national bestselling book of work she did on the web, for free.
You will never, ever get a pro writing gig because of your fanfic. It just won’t happen. Give up that idea right now.
But take a bit of that energy and do up a strip, an illustrated prose piece, a mini comic, a short story for an anthology, a webcomic, a gag panel, whatever…understand that you aren’t doing it for money at this time, you are doing it for exposure and to learn.
There are PLENTY of artists on Tumblr I would be delighted to work with. If you know them, talk to them, see what they really want to draw and accomplish.
Tumblr is weirdly custom made for this. It COULD be the greatest promotional tool a beginning comics creator ever had. YOU actually have an advantage over DC and Marvel here. YOU know Tumblr better than they do.
Make Your Own, Then.
Give it a thought. Instead of doing fanfic and reblogging artists whose work you like, it’s a very, very short leap to making your own. It takes some courage and some willingness to cooperate. But it can be done.
I’d like to see a tumblr for this purpose, for artists and writers to mate up, and to show their works in progress, and to share their product as it develops, as well as to exchange tips and knowledge.
It could even be called Make Your Own, Then. :)
Not everyone can get a job at the majors. It’s not purely about talent, or who you know, and it’s HARD to break in. Not everyone can be James Brown, but nearly everyone can dance in SOME manner, and everyone can make SOME kind of comics if they really want to try.
I can’t get over how Tumblr seems to be waiting for this, how it almost seems created for it. I see pieces of fan art get seen thousands of times. Do you know how hard that would have been to accomplish before Tumblr? I see big groups of fanficcers doing complex, organized and disciplined projects. That stuff was virtually impossible to share with a large audience in the past. And here’s the big thing, the audience WANTS TO SEE THIS STUFF. They’ve signed up for it already.
I was reading about the Arkh Project today, a video game grassroots effort to create a game that focuses on poc/lgbt/ and non-cis characters. They looked around, NO ONE was producing what they wanted to see, so they are making it themselves.
This can be done. You don’t need Kickstarter, you don’t need funding, or printers, yet. You don’t need to stand in line at cons. You don’t need to face an editor who has no interest in what you have to say.
If you have a burning desire and a Tumblr account, you have a nuclear powered set of tools right in front of you.
If you really, REALLY want to make something happen…use your dashboard as a motorboat, and not as a television. Go somewhere, go fast, have an adventure. Be a comics creator.
Make Tumblr be your workbench and your want ads and your pulpit. There is a TON of talent out there and the only crime is NOT taking a shot when you have the opportunity.
Try.
(This post, by the way, obviously assumes the people involved have the DESIRE to make comics, many are happy simply to enjoy them, which is also perfectly fine, of course!)
