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,…I must respectfully disagree. While I am a comic book artist and writer who loves ”making my own then,” not everyone… can. Or wants to. Not everyone can be a producer. Consumers are important, and while they may not always understand why things in comics are one way or another, there’s a lot of legitimate opinions coming from people who can’t/won’t make them themselves.
I guess an analogy would be… say you’re not a chef. Most people aren’t. You still have taste buds and you may still love to eat. You may not know how to cook a steak, but you do know what it’s supposed to taste like, or at least you know it shouldn’t taste like shoes. You know the difference between “I dislike eating green beans but recognize that this is my opinion and they’re still food that other people enjoy” and “Shoes are not food. Why do you keep serving me plates with shoes on them? This isn’t about opinion, that ain’t fit to eat!”
The chef can’t run a restaurant and tell every customer who doesn’t like the food to get in the back and cook it themselves. They came to this restaurant for food. When the chef needs their house painted, they hire a house painter. And if that house painter unevenly coats the house in the wrong color, the chef can get mad without being told to paint it himself. We can’t all be good at everything, but we can demand quality from those who make something their profession.
Is that enough metaphor? :P
Comics are a lot of work to make! Fun work, but still so much work. We can’t ask everyone to do this kind of work when they’re dissatisfied with what they’re being offered to consume. “Make your own then” is the worst kind of dismissive, not only to critiques of the comic industry, but to the comic creators themselves! These four words make it sound like it’s so easy, dismissing the hard work we do, and we should cut it out saying them.
Now, people who want to do this work absolutely should. More avenues are open to us than ever before, and if you have the ability, don’t let anything stand in your way. (Which I’m pretty sure is the main thing you meant to say, but it wasn’t too clear.)
Hmmm.
Well, listen, there are a few things here to address.
First, doing professional quality comics requires a certain set of talents, disciplines, and motivations.
But I disagree that having those things are 100% requisite.
First, I think it’s a bit precious (forgive me, but that’s how it strikes me) to say that what we do is so rarefied that only a small group of people can do it. The truth is, LOTS of people do it who aren’t actually very GOOD at it. I read terrible, professionally produced comics all the time. Who is to say that a bunch of people reading this right now can’t do better?
Second, everyone needs a starting point. You have to learn, you have to get exposure. I am not saying someone is going to do a webcomic and that gets them Spider-man. It’s not impossible, but it’s unlikely.
But they COULD produce something of quality and find an audience. I spoke about talent a bit, but to further elaborate, yes, the more talented you are, the better.
However, I still believe there are ways in that don’t include high levels of skill in the traditional categories. Many people have broken into comics, particularly web comics, with shaky writing and art skills. But they had something, either an idea or a concept, or they had a voice, they had something people liked, and they learned on the job.
I liken it to stand up comics. Not everyone is Patton Oswalt. There are more, far more terrible comedians than brilliant ones. But even Patton wasn’t Patton when he started. He started somewhere. If Spider-Man, or some major indie book is your own HBO comedy special, that means doing a lot of crap gigs in crappy clubs to get good enough to GET there.
If you don’t have the key to open the door, then you have to grab a chainsaw and make your own.
What I see on Tumblr EVERY DAY is a ton of people with good writing skills, apparently, and a lot of artists who can really draw. What I am suggesting is taking THOSE two groups, and gluing them together. It certainly doesn’t diminish what pro creators are doing, it’s just suggesting a doorway for others to try.
