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Comics and Graphic Novels

(A lo-fi pastel web-log by Emma Lesur)

INTERVIEWS

>INTRODUCTION

>WHAT IS A COMIC?

>HISTORY OF COMICS

> THE ANATOMY
OF COMICS

>HOW A COMIC IS MADE

>A LOOK AT COMICS

>MODERN PRACTICE

>SUCCEEDING AS A COMIC ARTIST

>DISCIPLINES OF AN ILLUSTRATOR

{INTERVIEWS}

Comics and Graphic Novels

INTERVIEWS

From X - X

Will Powers

please please please let me scrape a passing grade i'm literally having a meltdown i'm trying my best PLEASE

I couldn't delete this heading without spending 30 hours redoing each page because hotglue is the spawn of satan I am sorryyyyy

Matt Madden

Their website can be found

Author of 99 Ways to Tell a Story, Ex Libris, and co-author of Drawing Words & Writing Pictures (among others), Matt Madden is a little more cautionary with their advice about a career in comics, however as a published author, he offers some very valuable thoughts.

From X - X

Ok, I’m going to answer these together. I describe myself as an animator/illustrator but sometimes I feel like I’m closer to a graphic designer and I think that most of the ‘illustration jobs’ I’ve done are really more like graphic design jobs and the illustration work I don’t get commissioned to do is maybe a bit closer to a fine art practice.

To me ‘professional’ translates to ‘reasonably paid’ (like, over £100), so my first professional arts job was in 2013 to make an animation for a theatre company - watch here if you're interested - which I did in collaboration with a friend from Uni. It’s not an illustration job but of course animation and illustration feel very closely linked. I don’t think I’ve ever done a ‘pure’ illustration job, like for example an editorial illustration, and I struggle to pinpoint a single job that could be the first, but my good friend Siân Docksey commissioned me to do her Edinburgh Fringe poster in 2018 and that was one of the first I had to take really seriously.

Almost all the income I make from illustration comes from me making and selling my own work.
The most pro-active thing I do apart from making the work itself is applying for fairs and doing social media. I’ve actually fallen off the wagon with social media recently but I can see the effect it has on my online sales so I know I need to get back on it. Fortunately I get a fairly steady stream of animation commissions which I don’t have to go hunting down, which is mostly the result of having been doing it long enough. I guess you become a name in people’s rolodexes and if you’re nice and reliable and good then they ask you back. Similarly I’ve been selling on Etsy long enough now that I just get a steady stream of traffic to my page and a resulting average amount of sales per month.

In my animation work I was in a partnership for many years. We still technically have a website and a shared email address so we haven’t exactly split, but we haven’t worked on anything together for quite a while. I mostly prefer working alone and these days I almost never work with anyone.

As mentioned earlier I do the social media thing - mainly instagram with a bit of twitter. It’s almost impossible to avoid. I see it as just a simple way for someone to bookmark you, and while the ‘social’ side can of course be great I don’t think it’s worth the amount of time it takes away from you. I’ve recently been looking into those websites that will schedule and post things for you, they sound like a great way to do it at arm's length. I do also technically have an email newsletter but I haven’t quite figured out how to make it work for me in a good way. Promotion is good obviously but it’s hard not to find it too cringey. Figuring out how to do it well is a huge skill in itself. All I really do is photograph my work nicely and let people know it exists.

The skills you need are so dependent on which area you work in. I sell at fairs quite a lot so I guess I need the skills of a salesman to some extent, but when you’re selling your own art it’s hard to approach it with that mindset. I worked in a supermarket for four years after leaving Uni so I feel like I learnt how to interact with customers, which for me just meant learning not to be shy about talking to strangers. I guess the other skills are boring, obvious things like photoshop.

I self published a comic in 2015 called Space Wolf and my friend Joe took it along to Gosh comics in Soho and they agreed to stock it. I was shocked! I didn’t think it was nearly good enough, but that pretty directly led to me the life I live today of making and selling my own work. I truly didn’t believe in what I had made but I was lucky enough to know someone who took the step I was too embarrassed to take myself. Another big milestone was when I got accepted by ELCAF in 2019. I had applied of course but I was again completely shocked that they accepted me. It pushed me to make a lot of new work and massively grew my following and perhaps most importantly made me feel like I really was an illustrator rather than just a hobbyist.

Success is being able to pay the bills. Everything else is subjective. If you can pay your way and you enjoy what you do then I’d call that success.

Aim high. If you’re like me then you perpetually see yourself as not good enough to apply to things you should be applying for or going for opportunities you should be going for. I feel so ashamed applying for things when I think I’m not good enough, and of course if you get rejected it seems to just confirm that you were right, but then other times you’re accepted and everything goes great. Just ignore that voice that’s telling you you’re a total idiot and go for gold.
You should also aim high in terms of your work - you are capable of things that you wouldn’t believe you could do.

I think something that it’s easy to gloss over for any artist is how much support they receive and how that helps them to get through the ‘slow years’. I worked at a supermarket as I mentioned earlier but I also lived with my family for a long time and right now I’m only able to live in London thanks to having a partner with whom I can split rent and bills. I don’t know if there’s a lesson here, except to try and not feel guilty about being supported and know that for many people it’s the ‘secret’ to success. The only really unifying characteristic of successful artists, as far as I can tell, is persistence, and often that persistence is only possible thanks to the help of others.

~Q U E S T I O N S~

1. What was your first professional work/job as an illustrator? (‘professional’ defined as whatever it means to you)

2. Do you typically work in illustration or do you work in jobs outside of that field?

3. How do you go about finding work / opportunities and ways to earn money as an illustrator?

~Q U E S T I O N S~

1. What was your first professional work/job as an illustrator? (‘professional’ defined as whatever it means to you)

2. Do you typically work in illustration or do you work in jobs outside of that field?

3. How do you go about finding work / opportunities and ways to earn money as an illustrator?

4. In your career, do you typically have to work with or alongside other people? If so, how has that worked?

5. Do you promote your own work? If so, how?

7. Are there any particular milestones you’ve found important in your career/life as an artist?

6. What skills other than illustration are needed to work in the field?

8. How do you define success?

9. What is/are the most important lesson(s) you’ve learnt as an independent artist/illustrator?

10. Free space (in case you want to add anything here that feels relevant to the interview)

I started photocopying my own minicomics in 1989 without any plans to do it for a living. In 1994 I got my first invitation to do a paid comic, a half-page for Pulse! Magazine, which used to be the free in-house magazine at Tower Records. Within a year that led to a regular illustration gig doing small portraits of classical composers.

I'm a cartoonist by vocation. Illustration has always been a means to an end for me because it pays better than comics (which often don't pay at all).

I don't make a living as an illustrator and certainly not as a cartoonist. For about five years (1999-2004) I would say illustration was a significant source of income for me and that happened largely because I was living in New York City and I could go show my portfolio to art directors at magazines, meet fellow illustrators at events and social gatherings and attend illustration-related cultural functions. I printed up and sent out promotional postcards but I don't feel like that ever got me much work.
I got into the New Yorker by printing and binding a small comic book and sending it to all the art directors there.

As a cartoonist I work alone except for occasional feedback from my wife (also a cartoonist) and a few peers. The editing process for most comic book/graphic novel projects is pretty low key and centers more on design decisions: paper stock, book size, cover design, and so on.

I have a mailing list that I try to keep active. I use social media (Instagram and Twitter mainly, a bit of Facebook), I go to comics conventions and book fairs, I actively seek out opportunities to appear on podcasts, do print interviews, or be on panels at cultural events.

Again, speaking of comics specifically, it's a lot more than illustration: good writing, a sense of design, an understanding of the technical and logistical aspects of book design and printing, self-promotion skills…

Getting my first paid comics gig (Pulse! magazine, above), having my first "real" comic published (Black Candy, 1998), having my first comic published by a "real" publisher (99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, published in 2005 by Penguin Random House), being named "foreign correspondent" of Oubapo, The Workshop for Potential Comics around that same time, and finally publishing a second full-length comic (Ex Libris) after a long period of working on other types of projects. I've never won a major award and though it's not a particular goal of mine I'll admit it would be a nice feather in my cap if I were to finally win one

I define success in a number of ways. I consider a comic successful if I finish it and know that I've done my best effort on it. I also consider success having a comic recognized by readers, my peers, and critics. Finally, though I fight against it, part of me defines success as selling enough books or at least making enough money from comics-related activities (teaching, public speaking, etc) to make a good living.

I've learned that though as artists we want to be able to devote ourselves exclusively to creativity, it's a pursuit that requires a high degree of entrepreneurialism and some financial/business savvy if you want your work to be seen, much less to make some money doing it. These are qualities that are an anathema to many of us. Yet we need to take control of our careers because no one is out there looking out for us—especially in a highly capitalist country like the USA that has no nationalized health care, poor social services, a high cost of living, and a lack of cultural funding.

4. In your career, do you typically have to work with or alongside other people? If so, how has that worked?

5. Do you promote your own work? If so, how?

6. What skills other than illustration are needed to work in the field?

7. Are there any particular milestones you’ve found important in your career/life as an artist?

8. How do you define success?

9. What is/are the most important lesson(s) you’ve learnt as an independent artist/illustrator?

Author of the independently produced
zine-comic series Space Wolf, though primarily an animator, Will Power's interview gives thoughtful and encouraging responses from the perspective who's career is a spectrum of different artistic practices.