Why Do You Make Comics, If You Do?
by Joey Manley
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?
February 25th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
[...] Why Do You Make Comics, If You Do? [...]
February 25th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I think there is something to the idea that the barrier to entry on comics is pretty low, especially right now, but I also think it’s pretty likely that nowhere near ‘most’ comic readers are comic creators. I mean a lot of people have doodled an image and put a caption under it, but if that counts, then singing along to a Flock of Seagulls song makes you a musician. And I would guess that the vast majority of regular comic readers (people whose main exposure is the daily newspaper, say) probably haven’t even done that much.
It seems more likely that you are just going to be talking to the kind of comic fans who want to create comics too.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I guess I meant ‘People who think of themselves as comics fans,’ and wasn’t counting people who just happen to enjoy Dilbert because it happens to be in the paper. But maybe I should count them … that’s a good point.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
For me:
All the stories I tell have a certain format they fit into. The ones that are novels, I do as novels–I even managed to get Tor to publish one of them a decade or so ago. The ones that are short stories, I do as short stories–my most recent one of those came out last November in volume 23 of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthology. And the ones that are comics, I do as comics. Unfortuntely, I’ve never found anyone who’ll draw the comics for me, so I’ve had to do ‘em myself.
Of course, I don’t draw that well, so I’ve made more money writing reviews of other people’s webcomics than I ever expect to make off my own comics. But I’ve enjoyed putting together the stories I’ve told in the format, so I keep doing them. Well, that and the Daily Grind Competition, I guess…
Mike
February 26th, 2009 at 5:05 am
[...] [Analysis] Why do people make comics? Link: Joey Manley [...]
February 26th, 2009 at 11:28 am
While I would like to say I chose comics purely for love of the form, the truth is I love almost all the literary arts, and was never that fussy about which one I ended up in, so long as I was writing. There are definitely some practical reasons why I’ve chosen to focus on making comics over other kinds of writing (and I’ve been serious about writing since long before I started reading comics):
* Prose fiction is an overcrowded field–even if you’re talented it’s hard to make a mark.
* There’s no market at all for poetry, and in any case, it doesn’t interest me as much as it did when I was younger.
* Getting a play produced is nearly impossible, and getting harder everyday. (Though it’s an immensely satisfying experience when it happens.)
* Filmmaking, at the time when I was making my decisions about what kind of writing to do, was too hostile an industry to the kinds of writing I like to do, and too expensive to do on your own. Of course, that’s changing–passable equipment and software is starting to become affordable, and there are digital distribution channels now, so we might actually be on our way toward a self-made movie revolution. Still, it doesn’t excite me as much as the live experience of theatre, and it will still be far more complicated than other forms.
Comics, as compared to those others, was a small enough market where talented people usually get noticed, but not so small that they can’t sell any books (even if it’s only a few). I still get the same pleasure of collaboration that theatre and film offer, but only have to convince one person to draw my comic, as opposed to convincing a dozen or so to work on my play.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:58 am
The reason: Comics people -from readers, to creators, to editors- are all madder than hatters.
My hat still fits, so I still make them sometimes.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
[...] Manley thinks that maybe most of the people who like comics also make them, which he ponders in this short, interesting piece. He says, “Almost everybody I’ve ever met who reads comics has, at some point or another, [...]
March 13th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Apparently it didn’t get the pingpack, but I responded to your post over at my blog, here: http://www.emaki.net/blog/2009/02/why-do-you-make-comics-write-in-visual.html