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Posted by:

jmanley

Date:

February 25th, 2009 12:12 PM

Header:

Why Do You Make Comics, If You Do?

Bulletin:

A lot of people who read comics also make them. Maybe even most people.

This isn't true of other forms of art. I mean, when I was a teenager, I used to daydream about being a cool New Wave singer (I know, I'm old, I'm old) like that guy from A Flock of Seagulls, but I never bothered putting together a band or even learning how to read music. And there are definitely people who get hooked on, say, movies at an early age, and then dedicate their lives to learning that craft -- but they're a tiny percentage of the overall movie-going audience. Every novelist was a reader first, and so on. I guess every art form draws its next generation of creators from its current generation of fans. But this phenomenon seems to be more concentrated in the comics world. Am I right? What does your experience tell you? Almost everybody I've ever met who reads comics has, at some point or another, actually made one, even if he or she never showed it to anybody. I don't know why, but have a lot of thoughts.

On my more cynical days, I decide that comics has a higher concentration of budding creators in its audience because the only people who bother to read comics anymore are the ones who want to make them. You know, like contemporary poetry. Ha! But my cynical days are few.

On my optimistic days, I am convinced that comics is leading the way for all forms of media, where the audience and the creator are one and the same, and that anybody with a voice and some talent can reach for the stars, or can be a star. Historically, comics has been the breeding ground for some amazing self-published successes: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Penny-Arcade, American Splendor, and so on. This isn't to say that every self-published comic is successful -- god no. There are way more failures than successes (there are also way more failed corporate comics than successful ones, way more failed big-budget movies than successful ones, way more failed television series than successful ones, etc). But here's what counts, at least to me: no other entertainment form I can think of allows people to scale the ladder from complete obscurity to fame and fortune, all by themselves, without a corporate paycheck. Or to put it another way: no other entertainment form is as open as comics to the self-published and the creator-owned. The web has accelerated this dynamic, but in comics, the self-publishing trend predates the web by a couple of decades. Now the rest of media is catching on.

And then there are also people who make comics just for fun. Which is also valid. Comics are fun to make. Maybe that's the reason so many people make them.

Yeah, probably. That's probably all it is.

What do you think?

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