Color in Practice

I've been corresponding with a student doing a master's dissertation who asked me about the use of color in Mom's Cancer. Honestly and immodestly, this isn't the first time an academic has asked about that. I liked my reply enough I thought it would make a good post about how I approach making comics.

The question was basically: why is so much of the story black-and-white, and how did I decide where and how to use color? I said: 

I have a lot of respect for black-and-white art as a medium, in the same way that critics respect black-and-white photography or movies. It’s a different medium with a long tradition, with its own rules of visual storytelling that are different than those of color.

Honestly, it was also faster and easier to not color all the pages. Back then, trying to document my Mom’s illness and treatment as it happened, I was in a hurry. 

Color has a very specific meaning and purpose in Mom’s Cancer. It is similar to the way color is used in the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” where Dorothy famously walks out of the black-and-white ordinary world of Kansas into the Technicolor fantasy world of Oz. In my book, color indicates that something out of the ordinary, subjective, or unreal is happening. It is first seen during Mom’s transient ischemic attack (TIA) as light blue spots that are meant to suggest the phenomenon is happening inside her head rather than actual blue bubbles floating through the room. Fantasy sequences, like the superhero fight, are likewise in full color. 

I also used golden-brown sepia color in the sequences that looked back at Mom’s past, to instantly signal to readers that this flashback was different from the regular storyline. My favorite use of color in the book is a very subtle example toward the end, when my grandmother’s casket is colored sepia, indicating that the past is being literally and metaphorically buried, and the flashbacks are done.

In general, color is an often ignored and underutilized tool in graphic storytelling. If you’re just coloring the sky blue and grass green, you’re missing half the fun! Different palettes can set a mood, establish character and place, convey emotion, and guide a reader’s attention and feelings in ways they don’t even realize. More cartoonists should think harder about color and do more with it!

250 Words on Art Supplies

Some artists are very particular about their art materials. I’d call myself mildly particular. In my experience, your paper, paint, ink, brush, pen, etc. can work for or against you. At best, they can feel less like lifeless tools and more like collaborators that make you better. 

I remember working on my graphic novel Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow when I seriously wondered if I’d forgotten how to draw. Nothing came out of my brush or pen right. It all looked like garbage. 

Trying to diagnose how I’d completely lost my mojo, I realized that the trouble began when I switched from one brand of art paper to another. I don’t know if it was smoother, rougher, or more or less absorbent, but when I switched back to the old stuff I immediately fell back in the groove.

More recently, I painted a watercolor for my wife, Karen, for which I’d bought a sheet of premium 300-pound cold-press paper. It was literally the finest paper I’ve ever worked with. Laying down paint felt like gliding a knife through velvet butter. 

I swear that paper could read my mind. We communed. It was beautiful.

You’ll notice I haven’t offered a shopping list of my ideal art supplies. That’s because mine wouldn’t necessarily be yours, and vice versa. I know professional cartoonists having very nice careers using printer paper and ballpoint pens (or digital devices). Try everything once and see what speaks to you. The right tools might be telepathic. 

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My Origin Story

Me around age 14, holding a tempera painting I did of Dr. Strange. I didn't have much juvenilia even before my 2017 wildfire; now I don't have anything but a few photos and scans that survived on my computer backup drive.

I've just discovered a thing going around where artists and cartoonists talk about how they got their start. I don't usually bite at "things going around" but this one intrigued me, so:

"My whole life as far back as I can remember."

That's the short, best, honest answer. Always loved to draw. Always loved comics, or any text combined with visuals in general. I remember being very young and transfixed by rotating neon signs and animated logos on TV. If words were colorful or moved, they had my rapt attention. 

I began submitting comics strips to syndicates when I was about 13. Was sure I'd be the world's first 14-year-old syndicated cartoonist. I wasn't.

I also submitted pages of superhero art to DC and Marvel in my late teens and early 20s. (For a long time, my drawing style was "realistic"; I didn't develop the more "cartoony" style I've used in all my graphic novels until I was 25 or so.) At one point, DC asked to see more samples to decide if I was worth hiring. I wasn't.

Did cartoons and graphics for my college paper. After graduation, when I got my first job as a newspaper reporter, I also did cartoons and graphics for my small daily paper. Learned a ton about photostats, paste-up, color separations, and the nuts and bolts of printing that still serves me well. Tried to get work at bigger papers. I didn't.

An illustration I did when I was a newspaper reporter. This isn't my best artwork, even for the time, but I did it very fast on deadline so I'm inordinately proud of it. Graphic journalism. And yes, there is a street in Woodland, Calif. called "Dead Cat Alley."

Spent my 20s and 30s submitting comic strips to syndicates. Caught the eye of King Features editor Jay Kennedy, who worked with me for more than a year to see if one of my strips was worth signing. It wasn't.

Me trying to be Gary Larson. I wasn't.

Tried to see if I could be a single-panel gag cartoonist, like Charles Addams or Roz Chast. I couldn't.  

Created and tried to sell a children's picture book. Didn't. 

One picture book idea: a girl is drawn through a telescope and explores the universe. Kind of a Magic School Bus thing. All watercolor, I liked this one.

During those years, I also picked up whatever freelance cartooning and illustrating work I could. I illustrated a lightbulb catalog once. They come in a surprising assortment of shapes and sizes.

A lightbulb in its package. I drew about a hundred of them for a catalog once.

When I was in my early 40s, my mother was diagnosed and treated for metastatic lung cancer, and I decided to tell my family's story in the form of a webcomic. Although I had scant professional cartooning credits, I had sufficient experience and skill to pull it off. 

Went viral. Won some awards. Got a book deal. Instant 30-year success story. Now enjoying a half-assed career and working on my fifth graphic novel. 

I use my story as an example of perseverance. I didn't "make it" in my teens, 20s or 30s as I'd hoped, but I kept trying. I wasn't single-mindedly obsessive about it--I had other careers and a marriage and kids and a life. But I plugged away as I could. 

I also use my story to explain how nobody has the Magic Answer or Secret Recipe. This is why I have no advice for anyone starting out; what worked for me won't work for you. Everybody I know who made it has a different origin story. 

All I can suggest is this: do a lot of work and cast it out into the world however you can. Someday, if you're skilled and lucky, one of those seeds you plant will bloom, but you'll have no idea which one until you look back years later, when it will seem like it was inevitable.

Behind the Story: The Last Mechanical Monster

Until this morning, my publisher Abrams and I were working with an overseas publisher to print a foreign-language edition of The Last Mechanical Monster. (I'm being deliberately cagey about the country and language.) It would have been a good book. In addition to reprinting the translated story, they wanted to include a ton of extra material in the back: sketches, early drafts, an interview, etc. Although most of the original artwork for The Last Mechanical Monster was lost when my house burned down in 2017, many digital scans and photos were on my computer back-up, which I grabbed on the way out. More survived than I'd thought.

Through no fault of mine or Abrams's--in fact, despite quite a bit of time and effort on our parts--the deal just fell apart. Frustrating and disappointing. However, since I had all this extra stuff pulled together, I thought I'd share it here. Lemons, meet lemonade.

First Draft

My very earliest draft of The Last Mechanical Monster goes back to about 2009, right after Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? I had always loved the Fleischer Superman cartoon, “The Mechanical Monsters,” and thought to create a sequel to it. Since the copyright to the cartoon expired in the 1960s, and I had no intention of using the characters of Superman or Lois Lane, I thought it was a story ripe to be continued. Whatever happened to the Inventor and his robots?

These are two preliminary animation drawings done by the Fleischer studios in 1941, in preparation for producing the “The Mechanical Monsters.” They show Superman fighting a group of loosely sketched robots in a scene that was never included in the final cartoon. I was lucky and grateful to acquire these pieces in a recent auction, and I am proud to hang them on my wall to inspire me.

My first draft of the story was very different from the published version. That draft featured a young journalist writing an article about the mechanical monsters. She had managed to find several robots that avoided destruction because they were absent from the inventor’s lair when Superman attacked. I made a list of every robot whose number appeared in the cartoon, and figured there were seven unaccounted for. 

In my story, one was later used during atomic bomb testing in the 1950s. One was turned into a carnival ride. Another was lost at sea while working on an oil rig. And one was in the barn of a retired engineer named Lillian, who was almost killed by the robot when she was a child and was now trying to restore it. The journalist interviewed the Inventor in prison. When she revealed that at least one of his robots had survived, he escaped and made his way to Lillian’s barn, where the three characters worked to bring the robot back to life.

I wrote and made rough-draft drawings (“thumbnails”) for the entire story, and had drawn about 100 pages of it, when I decided I needed to start over. I realized that the story I was telling was not actually the story I wanted to tell! I wanted to see the old Inventor back in his cavern lair, wearing his old tuxedo. I wanted him, not the journalist, to drive the story. I also wanted the story to be more fun! So I turned over those 100 pages and began drawing a new story on their backs. That became a webcomic that became the first draft of the book.  

These are some of the preliminary thumbnail drawings of the abandoned earliest draft.

Some of the nearly 200 pages I thumbnailed before realizing the story wanted to take me in a different direction.

In this draft, one of the surviving robots was used by the U.S. government during atomic bomb tests, leaving only the stubs of its legs fused to the desert floor. I would've worked in the poem "Ozymandias" somehow, because of course I would.

A two-page spread of the Robot doing training drills in the skies over Proto-Lillian's farmhouse.

The earliest draft of the story ended with Lillian's robot heroically destroyed, but another found rusting at the bottom of the ocean. The LAST Last Mechanical Monster?

Finished First-Draft Art

When working on the first-draft thumbnails, I did more-finished versions of some pages to see how they might look when done. At this point I thought they might be published in grayscale—shades of black, white and gray—and so prepared some pages that looked like this. This is still from the first abandoned draft featuring the journalist character that I later dropped.

Preparation

In preparation for doing The Last Mechanical Monster, I made a wood model of the robot so I could draw its proportions consistently and correctly. 

I also used a simple 3D rendering program (SketchUp) to make a digital model of the robot that I could pose and turn around in space. Here I used it to make an image of the robot that looks three dimensional when viewed through red-blue 3D glasses. I originally hoped to use a lot of 3D images in the story but later decided to tone it down to a couple of spots where it would have narrative impact.

 

Also, as part of my drawing and coloring process, I made up detailed color palettes for each character and location in the story. Each has a distinct feel and personality that is partly expressed through color. I try to be very thoughtful about how I use color. It is a tool that can convey meaning or evoke emotions without a reader even realizing it. My challenge is understanding how to use that tool most effectively for the good of the story. I wrote quite a bit more about my approach to color in The Last Mechanical Monster in an earlier post.

Process

I make comics the old-fashioned way. Although many of my friends and colleagues have gone to digital art, I still take great joy in putting ink on paper. That’s the fun part for me. I don’t expect to ever stop. However, for The Last Mechanical Monster, I did letter and color the story using Photoshop and a typeface made from my own hand lettering. 

After I write and edit a script, and typically draw some very rough thumbnails, I pencil the artwork using light blue pencil on Bristol board paper. I use blue pencil because in the old days it did not photostat or photocopy, rendering it effectively invisible. It is still very easy to delete after scanning, which means I never have to erase the lines.

After penciling, I then go over the blue lines in black ink. I use a variety of brushes, nibs, pens, and brushpens. The small “X” marks are areas I plan to fill in with black.

After that, I scan the art at a high resolution (at least 600 dpi), delete the blue pencil lines, and color and letter it. Preparing art for press is technically complicated, but at this point the page is essentially ready to publish. 

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Back to me in the present: Wouldn't that have been neat material to include with the book? I was looking forward to what might have been the definitive "artist's edition" of The Last Mechanical Monster (albeit it in a language I don't understand).

Alas.

The Last Mechanical Monster taught me a couple of lessons that maybe others can learn from. First, the many months of work I did on the aborted first draft weren't wasted. I had to do that preliminary work, and draw those 100 pages, to get to the story that I really wanted to tell. It was kind of a sucky process and I wish I'd figured it out sooner, but it worked. 

So Lesson One: Don't fall for the Sunk Cost Fallacy: "Oh, I already put so much time and work into it, I can't start over." If you have a better idea, start over. I didn't regret it for a second.

Lesson Two: From initial idea to earliest draft to self-published webcomic to GoComics.com webcomic to published graphic novel took something like 14 years, constantly evolving as it went. I was doing other work at the same time (including A Fire Story, another book idea that it turns out is never gonna happen, and yet another book idea that might still happen), but The Last Mechanical Monster was always percolating on a back burner. 

I think there's a fine line: don't waste your whole life banging your head on the brick wall of one fruitless project, but if you think you've got a nugget of something good, grind and hone and polish and shine it for as long as it feels like you're making progress toward something better. There's a chance you'll end up with a pile of sand, but also a fair chance you'll produce a fine little gem. 

Rocketeering

My friends at the Cartoon Art Museum are holding an art auction this spring to celebrate the wonderful comic book (and Disney film but we're not talking about that) The Rocketeer and its creator, Dave Stevens. You may recall a similar auction three years ago featuring many cartoonists' tributes to Calvin & Hobbes. CAM is doing the auction in concert with an exhibition of Stevens's artwork this summer, and proceeds will go to both CAM and research on hairy-cell leukemia, from which Stevens died at the age of 52. 

And I get to contribute!

It occurred to me that this might make a good "process post" about how I make a comic, keeping in mind that this project is different from how I usually work. I'll point out how as I go.

The Rocketeer is an action-adventure story set in the Art Deco 1930s. Stevens mixed real-life people and places with his tales of barnstorming pilot Cliff Secord, who zips through the sky with a rocket on his back righting wrongs. Cliff is a young, dashing but reluctant hero, perfectly played in the movie by Billy Campbell. I joked about the 1991 Disney movie earlier; CAM told me that we had the Stevens family's blessing but not Disney's, so we could use material from the comics but not the film. Luckily, the film is such a close copy of the comics that almost everything in it showed up in the comics first.

As the guy who wrote two graphic novels called Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? and The Last Mechanical Monster, I thought this was right up my alley.

My first idea was to draw something tall and skinny, so I could show the Rocketeer blasting into the sky. I did this VERY small thumbnail on a sticky note just to check the proportions and composition. That's the only preliminary sketch I did.

It ain't much, but it did the job.

I drew on a piece of watercolor paper 1 foot wide and 3 feet tall. I don't have a drawing board that big, but I do have scrap pieces of wood left over from a bookshelf project, so I taped the paper onto that and began penciling, to be followed by inking over the pencil lines.

Watercolor paper taped to a melamine board, with the border lightly penciled.

In most of my comics work, I pencil with light "non-photo" blue pencil that readily disappears when it's scanned. That way I don't have to erase and risk dulling or smearing the ink. But since this is meant to be a finished piece of art that someone might want to hang on a wall, I penciled with a regular ol' Number 2 that I would erase once I inked over it.

Using reference to pencil the Bulldog Cafe, which was a real place in Los Angeles that Dave Stevens used in his Rocketeer comic book, as on the page at top left. I added palm trees because that says "L.A." to me.

The little man in the drawing is Cliff's mechanic buddy Peevy. The woman--well, that's a digression. In the comics, Stevens used the real-life pin-up model Bettie Page as the direct inspiration for Cliff's girlfriend, Betty, but that wasn't going to fly in a Disney film for more than one reason. In the movie her name is Jenny and she's played more demurely by Jennifer Connelly. My heroine isn't dressed like Betty, Bettie, or Jenny--I googled "1930s fashion" and picked a pretty dress--but she has Betty/Bettie's trademark bangs and jet-black hair.

After penciling the whole thing, I inked it using a brush and India ink, brush pens, and Micron pens, then gently erased my pencil lines with a soft kneaded eraser.

Inked.

I don't like making comics on watercolor paper. In fact, I recently had a bad and time-wasting experience with it. It's just not the right medium for fine ink lines. The standard paper for cartooning is Bristol board, which is like a real nice cardstock. But I went with it on this project because I planned to watercolor the picture, and Bristol board is lousy for watercolors. 

Watercoloring in progress. At top is a sheet I made showing what many of my watercolors actually look like on paper, which is important to know! The black plastic tray is to contain the paint and water in case I knock over the cup. (For the same reason, I keep my bottle of India ink in a ceramic potted-plant saucer. You don't make that mistake twice!) 

After I finished watercoloring, I let it dry a bit and then scanned it so CAM could see what I was burdening them with. Since this is the scan that'll also advertise the eventual auction on eBay, I hardly fiddled with it at all, as I might with something meant for publication. What you see is what you'll get.

Peevy, Betty (?), and the Bulldog. I don't know why "Tamale" is singular, but it was like that on the actual cafe. Maybe they only had one.

Cliff and a wingman. BTW, the airplane is also historically accurate, a whimsical design called a "Gee Bee" that Stevens loved and used in his comic.

Done! Now I'll just give it a while to thoroughly dry before getting it to CAM. Somehow.

And that's pretty much it! Start to finish, the whole thing might have taken me six or seven hours spread over two days, though some of that time was spent literally watching paint dry.

I'm gratified that I can do something unique to support a great museum and pay tribute to a comics creator who did terrific work and died far too young. There's also something satisfying in starting with a blank sheet of paper and in a few hours creating something that never existed before and nobody but me could have done in quite the same way. I always like that.

I'll be sure to shout out when the CAM auctions begin, and shout louder when mine goes on the block. Happy to answer any questions in the comments.

Shocking Secrets Revealed!

Comics friend Tom Heintjes reminds us that "The Mechanical Monsters," the Superman cartoon on which my new book The Last Mechanical Monster is based, premiered on this date in 1941. To mark the anniversary, I'm sharing A SECRET I DIDN'T TELL MY EDITOR!

As Editor Charlie and I gave our presentation at the Miami Book Fair, there were a couple of times he said, "I didn't know that," or "You never told me that." One example: even though our book couldn't mention Superman, I gave considerable thought to what a world that had had Superman in it would be like. For instance, I figured he, and whatever other superheroes existed, would influence fashion. People would dress like their heroes.

There's a convention in comics that heroes wear primary colors--blue, red, yellow--while villains wear secondary colors--green, purple, orange. There are exceptions--Green Lantern springs to mind--but it's a guide. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four: primaries. The Joker, Lex Luthor, Galactus, Doctor Doom: secondaries. One of the smart things Jack Kirby and Stan Lee did to define the Hulk as an anti-hero was make him green and purple, a hero in the colors of a villain. [Edited to add: In a comment on Facebook, Editor Charlie attributed the Hulk's palette to Stan Goldberg and offered more insight into Marvel's creative process in the early '60s.]

In my book, the inventor Sparky's tuxedo has purple highlights and his cavern lair is green and purple (as it was in the cartoon). Lillian wears Superman's colors: blue jeans, yellow t-shirt, red shirt. (Superman Blue isn't 100% cyan ink, by the way; it has a bit of magenta in it, which leans it toward purple). Helen the librarian wears Batman's colors: blue, gray, yellow. The boy in the library, who was unnamed in the webcomic but whom I called Dwayne in the book after the late African-American comic book writer Dwayne McDuffie, wears Green Lantern's green, gray and white.

So near the end of the book, when Sparky trades his tattered purple tuxedo for a blue (with a bit of magenta), red, and yellow sweatsuit, it's a subtle signal that a change is afoot. Similarly at the end, Lillian adopts a version of Sparky's purple suit--not meant to hint that she's turned evil, but maybe a little of him has rubbed off on her.

I try to be thoughtful about how I use color. Every book I've done has a different "color philosophy." Honestly, I don't know if it makes a difference, but I have to believe these choices have a cumulative effect on the reader, even if they're not aware of it. Color is a tool that can convey meaning or evoke emotions subtextually. My challenge is to understand that subtext and use it with purpose.

From Fan to Pro

The talk I gave at CarrierCon pulled together bits of insights I've gleaned about what it takes to be a creative professional. How do you jump the chasm between fan and pro? What do pros know that fans don't?

I figured it'd be a good topic because conventions like that draw young people who write their own stories, do their own art, make their own songs and videos and plays, and have ambitions to make their creativity more than a hobby. It turns out that I have some thoughts, and I wanted to share them here as well.

I introduced myself not just as a graphic novelist with three published books and another on the way, but as someone who's done many different types of writing, from newspaper reporting to science writing, for more than 30 years. The version below began as a PowerPoint presentation, intended to be delivered in bite-sized bits, so it may read a little choppy. I hope it's useful.

First, everything I'm about to say is just my humble opinion (JMHO). Everybody's fan-turned-pro story is unique. Every pro I know made it in some different, weird way. This may not apply to you. Take and use what works for you and forget the rest.

All pros began as fans! To prove it, here's an embarrassing photo of me posing with a tempera painting of Doctor Strange that I did around age 13.

Pros know what you're going through because they've been you. They probably still are. 

First Important Advice

DO THE WORK.

DO MORE WORK.

DO EVEN MORE WORK.

I can't tell you how many people call themselves writers but never write, or call themselves artists but never create art. Just doing anything at all already puts you way ahead of the posers. 

Then the hard part: show it to strangers. Push it out into the world however you can. It needs to be seen by people other than your friends and mom--people who aren't obliged to love it. Online, publishers, zines. Pass it out on street corners. 

Start small. Make content for a blog or Instagram account, an article for your school paper, a photo for a work newsletter, a drawing for a softball team.

Turn many small things into a big thing.

Turn many big things into a bigger thing.

Build a PORTFOLIO. This is how you show people what you can do. It'll have examples of your very best stuff. A portfolio should be a changing, living document that improves as your skills and work improve.

I love Mark Twain's advice for aspiring writers:

I think Twain's right, although that puts Mark and me at odds with those who say creative people should never work for free--that they should value their time and effort as much as any professional. "Work for exposure?" goes the meme. "People die from exposure!" I understand but am also practical. You're not a pro yet, and volunteering may be necessary to start building a portfolio and get a foot in the door. The distinction I'd make: do gratis work if it serves YOU. Don't let yourself be exploited, but if you see it as part of a professional growth strategy, I say do what you've gotta do.

Others may disagree.

Learn How to Take Criticism

I'll now embarrass myself with another photo to make a point.

My first job out of college, I was a reporter for a small daily newspaper. You can tell how long ago that was by my brown hair and the green cathode ray tubes. That job gave me a thicker skin. I remember one day when an editor and I were slashing and reassembling a story I'd written, and I didn't get defensive about it. It wasn't personal, we were just working together to make my story better. I felt like a professional.

Here are some things NOT to say in the face of criticism:

"I meant to do that."

"You're not reading it right."

"It's not done yet."

"This isn't my best stuff."

I understand the impulse; I may have said some of those things myself. But if a reader doesn't understand you, that's your fault, not theirs. If it's not done or not your best stuff, why are you wasting their time with it? Stand behind your work! Say, "Yes, this is my best stuff!" It may not be what they like or need, but be proud of what you've done.

If someone is doing you the great favor of giving feedback on your work, SHUT UP AND LISTEN! Don't argue with them!

My personal experience: 19 out of 20 people who ask my opinion of their work really want me to tell them it's wonderful--perfect!--and they don't need to change a thing. That other 1 out of 20 has the attitude of a pro.

My experience matches Mr. Gaiman's. If one person identifies a problem, well, consider it, but maybe they just missed something. If two people identify the same problem, then you've got to fix it. The actual fix is up to you to figure out, not them.

It took me a while to realize why I consider my book editor, Charlie Kochman at Abrams, one of the best editors I've worked with. He'll find something that doesn't feel right or brings him up short or just doesn't work, but he always leaves the solution up to me. Then he either says "Yep, that does it" or "Nope, not there yet" and we move on. There are parts in all my books where I genuinely couldn't tell you which of us did what. Charlie makes me better without leaving fingerprints. It's a gift that good editors have.

Fanfic

Not a fan.

I want to differentiate between fan fiction and derivative works. 

People create original work derived from the Bible, King Arthur, Shakespeare, Frankenstein, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes . . . for example, Dante's Inferno, Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, a thousand riffs on Romeo and Juliet such as West Side Story. Derivative works that build on legally available inspiration can be great pieces of art. I don't consider that fanfic.

Fanfic, by which I mean a story set in other creators' intellectual property, is fine for fun, friends, self-expression, and appreciation for stories and characters you love.

It's an OK way to get a feel for how storytelling and structure work.

BUT it's a poor shortcut past learning how to build worlds and develop characters yourself.

If you write Naruto fanfic, you don't have to explain how these characters, their relationships, and their abilities work. You just plug into a universe that already exists. 

If you write Star Trek fanfic, you don't have to explain how a starship works. You say "Warp 5" and it goes. But what if you write a spaceship story that isn't Star Trek? Then you have to ask and answer some questions that have storytelling implications. Does your spaceship go faster than the speed of light? How? Maybe it doesn't, which means your spaceship has to operate within a solar system or maybe takes centuries to travel between stars. Or maybe your characters project their minds across the galaxy or communicate via quantum telegraphs. Now instead of leaning on someone else's universe, you're building something new and entirely yours.

I only realized when I put these images of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter together that both universes have wizards and elves. But Gandalf is different from Dumbledore, and Legolas is very different from Dobby. Your wizard-and-elf story in one universe will be different than in the other, but the point is that neither universe is yours. You're building on someone else's foundation as a framework for your story.

Instead, take those inspirations and create your worlds. Put your twist on them.

One of my favorite examples is ElfQuest by Wendy and Richard Pini, which for 40 years has been telling stories about a world of elves. These aren't Tolkien elves and they certainly aren't Rowling elves (which they predate by decades). The Pinis created completely new characters living in a rich, deeply detailed world with their own societies, cultures, languages, spirituality, and relationships with each other and nature. It's a tremendous body of work built up over many years and books.

The critical point is that it's theirs. The Pinis don't have to ask permission of the Tolkien estate or J.K. Rowling to tell new stories. They don't have to send Tolkien or Rowling a check when they do. It's their world, their characters, their intellectual property to do with as they please.

A big problem with fanfic: with very, very few exceptions, you'll never be able to legally publish it.

(This is where someone points out that Fifty Shades of Grey began as Twilight fanfic. It's an exception that proves the rule, and also supports the point that E.L. James couldn't publish Fifty Shades until stripping out everything that smacked of Twilight.)

Fanfic is not (generally) the way to a professional career.

Instead, draw inspiration from LIFE: history, science, politics, travel. Your own lived experiences. Not other people's stories.

That will make your work stand out.

The cliche advice is "Write what you know!" I always amend that to add, "As long as what you know is interesting!" I think it's incumbent on writers, and creative people in general, to have broad curiosity. Take in everything you can about the world then filter it through yourself so that nobody could have written the same thing in the same way.

Ideas

Ideas are great, but are not as rare and special as you think.

I occasionally get an email that goes like: "I have a great idea for a book! You only need to do all the writing and drawing and find someone to publish it! I'll cut you in for half!"

The idea is the easy part. All that other work is the hard part.

I got an inkling of that when I had a chance to pitch stories to the producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. I pitched maybe 40 or 50 stories and never sold one, never got my name on screen, but I learned a lot. I can't tell you how many times I got two sentences into my most outlandish science-fictiony plotline when the producer raised his hand and said, "I've gotta stop you. We started filming that last week." And they were right! Six months later I'd see episodes that were so similar to my ideas I'd have been sure they'd ripped me off if they'd ever heard them in the first place. 

Ideas are common. What matters is what you do with them . . . how you execute them.

Ways Pros Differ from Fans

1. Pros can take criticism from people they respect, or who are in a position to pay them.

The first point is important: bad criticism from an idiot can be very harmful, but good constructive criticism is gold if you're mature enough to accept it. The second point is also important: sometimes you've got to give the client what they want even if they're an idiot. 

2. Pros treat it like a job. They don't wait around for inspiration to strike. Don't be precious about it, just put your butt in the seat and do it. 

3. Pros know that being reliable, responsive, and a good collaborator is just as important--and maybe MORE important--than being talented. 

When you're mystified how people you consider pretty mediocre keep getting jobs, the reason may be that they hit their deadlines, meet their commitments, and are easy to work with. Not being a jerk can get you a long way in whatever profession you're in.

4. Pros are not afraid of imperfection. They know their work won't be perfect but they do it anyway.

In my opinion, a lot of "writer's block" is fear of imperfection. As long as you don't start, the thing in your head is perfect. When you pull it out of your head and make it real, it won't be perfect anymore. I think it's very important for creative people to give themselves permission to be imperfect. To even suck once in a while. You can always improve it later, and nobody needs to see your failures but you. Start something, even if it stinks.

I was struck by that watching Peter Jackson's Beatles documentary, Get Back. It shows the Beatles putting together an entire album in a month. The Beatles didn't worry about perfection. Oh, they worked a song over and over until they got it good enough--and because they were the Beatles, "good enough" was better than pretty much anybody else--but then they recorded it and moved on. 

Don't waste 20 years trying to make it perfect. You may know someone with a novel in the drawer or a song on their computer that they work and rework and rework for literally years. Those people will never achieve the perfect creation they seek. In fact, they're more likely to beat all the life out of it. 

Do your best. Finish. Learn from it. Move on.

The Bravest Creative Acts I Know

1. Beginning a new project knowing you have months or years to go.

When I start a new graphic novel, making the first ink mark at the top left of Page One, I heave a little sigh because I know I've taken the first step on a thousand-mile journey. It's daunting. My advice: break it into pieces. Authoring a 300-page book may seem impossible, but anybody can write eight pages. Or four. So do that. Then do it again. Then keep doing it. Manageable bite sizes. Or, as Anne Lamott wrote, bird by bird. 

2. Showing your work to someone who might rip it apart. It's the best you can do but what if it's not good enough? You're wearing your heart on your sleeve, inviting a stranger to stomp on it. That's why it's brave.

3. Sending your work into the world beyond your control. Your work is your child, your heart. The world can be cruel and scary, and when your work is out there it can go in directions and end up in places you never anticipated--or worse, be completely ignored. You have to let it go.

Sometimes I hear about places my books have been and feel a little envious. They're out there having adventures I never will! Occasionally they send back a little postcard, which I appreciate.

4. 

DO THE WORK.

DO MORE WORK.

DO EVEN MORE WORK.

Can't overstate the importance of that.

So You're Ready!

You have the discipline, you're producing work, you're getting good feedback from readers, online fans, TikTok or YouTube viewers, whomever.

NOW WHAT?

One option: Do it yourself.

Self-publish, eBooks, print on demand. You're responsible for distribution, marketing, accounting . . . all the business side. Not everybody's cup of tea. You do all the work but keep all the money. 

Or: You may be able to submit directly to a publisher or outlet. List a dozen that put out work that's kind of like yours. Check their online submission guidelines. FOLLOW THEM.

Or: Depending on your medium, you may want or need an agent.

An agent represents you to publishers, studios, etc. for a percentage of the income they bring in for you.

An ethical agent will not charge you a fee up front! They don't make money until you make money! Don't fall for crooks!

How to find an agent? I don't know. I don't have one.

But I know people who've gotten agents via referrals from friends. There are trade and professional organizations you can look up. Author's acknowledgments. Or you can do your own Google research.

Agents specialize. Find the ones who represent your kind of work.

Check their online submission guidelines. FOLLOW THEM. (Sound familiar?)

Here's one thing not to do: Don't bug your favorite pros to help you. Honestly, there's very little they can do.

Even if I think your work is great, I don't know you. I don't know if you hit deadlines, play well with others, are a sane and functional human being.

I can only think of maybe three times I've contacted an editor to vouch for and try to open a door for a friend. The number of book deals that resulted in: zero.

YOUR WORK HAS TO SPEAK FOR ITSELF.

You won't believe me, but I promise: editors, publishers, producers are hungry for good, new content. They need you even more than you need them.

You Get an Offer

Holy Moley! Congratulations!

Don't sign a contract right away.

If you have an agent, they should watch your back. If you don't, hire an attorney.

You are expected to negotiate! They won't be offended or rescind their offer. If they do, you didn't want to work with them anyway.

Notice I said "work with" instead of "work for." They're not your boss and you're not their employee. You're eyeing each other to decide if you want to be business partners.

Unless . . . 

Understand "work for hire." That means the person or company you're working for keeps all the rights. If you're hired to write or draw Batman, it doesn't matter how good you are or how long you do it, you'll never own Batman, or get to write and draw your own Batman stories after you leave DC Comics. You're work for hire; they pay you to do a job and that's the end of it. That's fine as long as you know what you signed up for.

In general, keep all the rights you can.

What a lot of non-pros don't understand is that, at the moment you create something, you own all the rights to it. You hold the copyright, the North American publishing rights, the worldwide publishing rights, the digital rights, the TV and movie rights, the plush toy rights, the cereal box rights. They're all yours.

A contract is a tool for someone else to pay you for those rights. You have something they want. You can let them have whichever rights you want and keep whichever you want. There will be some they'll insist upon, and you'll have to decide if you're OK with that (you probably will be). Others they won't care so much about. 

But unless you're doing work for hire, always--always always--retain the copyright to your creations.

I have friends who signed away their copyright, then had to watch as strangers elbowed them out and took over the characters they created. It's heartbreaking.

Trust me: A bad deal is worse than no deal at all. Walk away from a bad deal, even if it's the only deal on the table.

Don't let yourself be exploited!

Summing Up

1. Do the work. No excuses.

2. Put it out into the world any way you can.

3. Take criticism and rejection gracefully.

4. Act like a professional even if you aren't one yet. Build a good reputation. People remember.

Most Important

Be authentic and honest in your work. I deeply believe that audiences crave authenticity. They want to feel like they're in a conversation with you, like they're getting a glimpse into your heart and mind.

An audience can detect bullshit. Don't peddle it to them.

Trying to strategize what's "hot" and what "the market wants" rarely works. By the time you figure it out, everyone's moved on to something else. Follow your own peculiar passions to create something that people didn't even know they needed.

Figure out what makes you unique and lean into that. Harness your "weird."

I feel this very strongly. Being weird can be a social handicap when you're young but an invaluable tool as you grow. If you've got a passion for collecting bottle caps, if you love bottle caps with all your heart and you know all there is to know about them, and if you can explain to me what's cool about bottle caps and why I should care about them, too, I'll be your fan for life (this is Malcolm Gladwell's career). I'd much rather read your bottle cap book than the thousandth Lord of the Rings pastiche about a gang of kooky characters bumbling through a magical quest. 

Tell the stories only you can tell.

Stand on your little island and plant your flag. Especially in the Internet Age, people will find you.

Even More Important

As I said at the start, all of this is JMHO. Take and use what works for you and forget the rest.

Also, I'm always open to the possibility I'm wrong. Happy to reconsider. Let me know.

And good luck!

A Matter of Perspective

"Beats Digging Ditches" Work in Progress: Some of my "Sixty-Second Sticky Doodles" that got the most feedback were on Perspective. Here's an example of two-point perspective that I did this morning. It'll be a nighttime cityscape in stark black and white.

The photo below shows the page on my drawing board with the two vanishing points, the dots on the pieces of white tape to the left and the right. Except for the lines that go straight up and down, every line in the drawing leads to one of those two vanishing points.

This is the pencil drawing. Next I'll ink it in black ink. I pencil in light blue pencil so I don't have to bother erasing; when I scan the art after inking, it's easy to make the blue color disappear, leaving only the clean black lines.

I really enjoy drawing perspective like this. It's a pretty mechanical--almost meditative--process, but it looks cool when done.

Here it is inked. This isn't finished: I'll add color (mostly shades of yellow in the windows), I plan to blacken many windows in a "crossword puzzle" look, and there's something in the sky I can't show you.

I wanted every building's structure and window pattern to be slightly different, like they were designed by different architects. I also wasn't too particular about every line being perfect. If you scrutinize, you'll find a lot of wonky lines. That's OK! I don't go out of my way to mess up, but I do think art should look like it was done by a human and not a CAD program. Little imperfections give art subliminal warmth.

Book Mapping

"The dirty secret of comics is that a lot of it involves copy fitting."--Justin Green

Book maps are on my mind these days. They're production tools that publishers, and some authors, use when plotting out how a book will go together. Maybe you could adapt the idea to your own projects.

As with all my process posts, this is only one way to make the sausage. It's not the only or best way; it's just mine.

You'd think the graphic novelist's responsibility would be writing the words, drawing the pictures, and telling the best story they could. But in fact, the form shapes the content (only in print; online, none of these rules apply, which is one of the liberating things about it). Other things the graphic novelist needs to consider:

--Chapters should begin on right (odd-numbered) pages and end on left (even-numbered) pages, which means all chapters have an even number of pages.

--Two-page spreads need to span an even- and odd-numbered pair of pages.

--The number of pages in a book should ideally be divisible by 16, or at least 8, because those are the number of pages in a signature or half-signature (a "signature" being a bundle of sheets of paper used in the book-binding process). Mom's Cancer is 128 pages (16 x 8); Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow is 208 pages (16 x 13). The page count of any book you've ever read is some multiple of 4 because that's how they're made.

Mom's Cancer was a publishing production challenge because I created it as a webcomic with no regard for any of this stuff. Different pages are in black-and-white (b&w) or color depending on whether I thought it was right for the story. However, for print, it would have been really nice if the b&w and color portions had broken down neatly into signatures or half-signatures--for example, if the first 8 pages were color, the next 16 were b&w, the following 16 were color, etc. Being able to print a signature in b&w instead of full color drops its printing costs by about three-fourths. That's why, in a lot of books, you'll see a bunch of color illustrations all gathered together in the middle while the rest of the book is b&w. Those color pages are their own signature printed separately from the others. Spreading them throughout the book would have cost a lot more money.

Editor Charlie and I wrestled with recoloring or reorganizing Mom's Cancer to make the signatures work out. We couldn't; my use of color was too scattered and integral to the storytelling. Charlie finally made the tough, expensive call to print the whole book in full color even though most of it was b&w! He could have insisted that Mom's Cancer be entirely b&w and I probably would have agreed, but he was a mensch who did the right thing and that's one of the reasons I love him.

World of Tomorrow was a different challenge. If you've read it, you'll recall that I created fake "old comic books" inserted into the book to show the comics my character Buddy read in different decades. They were printed on different paper stock (the cheapest pulp we could find) than the rest of the book. Three of the inserts were 8 pages and one was 16 pages, and now you know why.

In addition to being half or full signatures themselves, they had to fall between other signatures. That meant that, for example, the first fake comic book had to follow Page 32 (16 x 2). No matter what else was happening in the story, the action had to break on Page 32.

That's hard to keep track of. You'd almost need some sort of  . . . map.

Here's what my book map looked like. In addition to tallying signatures and page counts, I also used it to manage my work flow.

My book map in an Excel spreadsheet. The left column is the signature count, where I kept track of  how many pages were in each half- or full-signature. The colored bars indicate chapters: blue is the front matter, orange/tan is Chapter 1, yellow is the first fake comic book insert (note that it follows Page 32, after which I restarted my signature count), followed by the remainder of Chapter 1 then the beginning of Chapter 2 in gray. Other columns provided a brief description to remind me what's on the page and check boxes to track my progress on each page. The final four columns tell me which pages I assigned to my Photoshop coloring assistants.

At the same time, unknown to me, Editor Charlie had made his own book map. It's laid out differently to give him information he needs, and it's interesting to compare and contrast.

Charlie's book map, also in Excel. The gray pages are front matter, followed by Chapter 1 in yellow, the comic book insert in orange, and Chapter 2 in blue. Again, notice that the orange insert falls after Page 32. One nice feature of Charlie's map is it clearly shows Chapters 1 and 2 beginning on right-hand pages (pp. 7 and 47). Charlie also called out the front and back covers of the fake comic book (pp. 31, 32, 41, 42) but, in fact, they were printed on the same paper as the signatures before and after the inserts so no special attention was required. 

I think book maps are particularly useful for graphic novelists because each page is a discrete unit that has to fit with all the others. In a regular text novel, a writer or editor can add or subtract words, paragraphs or even chapters without doing much damage; in a graphic novel, adding or deleting one page tips over a chain of dominoes that clatters through the entire book.

Book maps are on my mind because I'm making a new one for a new book I'm not talking about until contracts are signed. If all goes as planned, it'll be full color throughout (so that won't be a problem) and will also have a few "special features" that'll need to go between signatures. With a first draft almost done, it's time to see how it fits into the mold while it's still flexible enough to reshape.

. . .

Cartoonist Justin Green delivered the quip at the top of this post during his lecture at the 2015 Comics & Medicine Conference in Riverside, Calif. I think I was the only person in the audience who guffawed because I found it very funny and true.

Readers think writers and artists draw their words and images from the deepest wells of artistic self-expression. Well . . . ideally. But, at least in comics, more often than you'd think, I replace one word with another just because I'm out of space and it's shorter. I'll add or delete panels so the next chapter begins on an odd-numbered page. I'll tear up a story and reorganize it to put a signature break where I need it. Sometimes all you're trying to do is make the copy fit.

There's a nuts-and-bolts craftsmanship to publishing that I imagine some creators find frustrating but I really enjoy. It's like haiku: do whatever you want as long as it fits the structure. I like the constraints, especially the part where if you handle them right the reader never realizes they were there.

Research vs. Writing

I liked this thought-provoking essay, "Mistaking Researching for Writing," by comic book writer Ron Marz. I'd recommend it for anyone working on a creative project and wondering whether they're doing so much research they'll never get around to writing, or so little research their writing will sound false and lack conviction.

Some money quotes:

"How much research is enough? After two decades of writing fiction, I've come to believe the answer is 'Enough to fool the audience into thinking you did a lot more research.'"

And:

"No one wants a book report. They want a story."

And:

"Depending too heavily upon research can be the death of imagination, or at least the submersion of it. One of the gifts of writing fiction is making it up. Revel in it."

You all know a writer who's spent months or years building a fictional world--drawing maps, diagramming family trees, classifying exotic flora and fauna--but never quite getting around to setting a story there. Maybe that writer is you. Research can become a bottomless pit if you let it.

It's an issue I've faced on all my projects to different extents.

On Mom's Cancer, most of the story was taken from my family's real lives. However, I also took a lot of notes as events happened, and researched a lot about cancers, treatments, prognoses, etc. (which of course I was doing anyway).

On Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow, I researched my butt off. The book covers four decades of Space Age history that I was determined to get right. For each decade I pulled together facts, figures, reference images, and original source material totaling about 3000 pages worth for a 208-page book.

Always uppermost in my mind was the fact that (as Marz said) "nobody wants a book report." If I drew a lamp post in 1939 or a fallout shelter in 1955, you can be certain I had references for it. But I tried to never rub the reader's nose in it. Instead, I hoped the cumulative effect of a thousand unconscious correct details would lend the whole book some credibility and verisimilitude. A few folks have told me that's what they like about it.

I learned to resist the urge to include material just because I'd done a lot of research on it. Yeah, it took me three days to dig up that nugget, but if it doesn't contribute to the story it has to go.

I'm working on some new projects now that also demand pretty deep research, both historical and scientific. Again, my goal is to fold all of that in so it helps the story without drawing attention to itself. I badly want to get it right. I also want to get it done.

Sometimes I think that's where Melville went wrong with Moby-Dick. Dedicating three chapters to how sailors tie knots is just showing off. More seriously and recently, I've read a couple of epically long graphic novels that I think could have profitably been cut in half if their authors had been less interested in telling us all they'd learned and more interested in their stories.

In my experience, writing and research go together. Often, you don't realize what you need to know until you begin to write. In turn, research sometimes suggests directions you could take your story you may never have considered.

In the course of writing Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow, it amazed me how often I needed some bit of information only to have it miraculously appear days later. Like, I'm writing about the most obscure incident or factoid imaginable, and BOOM the New York Times or NASA prints an article about it. I didn't even have to hunt for it; it found me! The same thing is happening on my new projects. The universe provides. It's almost eerie.

Do your research. Do your world building. Keep it in mind as you craft your story, but don't let it become the story. And if you story gets to a point that requires contradicting your research, and you think you can get away with it, err on the side of telling a good story. That doesn't mean you can say the first Moon landing happened in 1944 (unless you're doing a sci-fi Moon Nazi tale, then go for it!), but if you always thought your Realm of the Dragons was in the North and it suddenly makes more sense for your hero to find it in the South, make the change. It's not supposed to be a straitjacket.

"One of the gifts of writing fiction is making it up. Revel in it."