#ComicsSchool: Reflecting after a year
On March 13, 2020, the whole world was in various states of panic and disarray. I don’t need to recap it. We were all there.
I had just lost my job, but all things considered, I was safe and secure. Unemployment benefits were good and I had future prospects. So for the first time in my life in my life, I just kind of had some time off. I had also stopped drinking recently and had been trying to figure out how to start writing comics but wasn’t really getting anywhere.
And then I saw a tweet. Specifically, I saw this tweet:
Comics writer Gail Simone (with some help from Jim Zub and some others) opted to run a weeklong comics writing seminar for free through Twitter. Gail clearly put some thought into it, and walked participants (I’ve read that there were over 10,000) through the process of coming up with something to write about, outlining, pitching, editing, and writing. She also created a whole community of writers who still work together in various capacities on Discord, Twitter, and other online forums.
We were tasked with pitching to each other loglines based on a theme determined by a dice roll. I rolled “slice of life” and “crime.” By the end of the program, I had written this script, which eventually became this short comic.
Since then, I counted this morning and I’ve written over 150 comic pages. Of those, over 50 of them are now available as fully illustrated comics, including 36 pages that are in print. I’m in the process of finishing a pitch packet for a six-issue series with Matt Rowe, one of my favorite collaborators to date, I have 2 shorts in various stages of illustration, one short that will be appearing in an anthology later this year, and have had the opportunity to pitch to publishers with international distribution multiple times–twice by their request (jury’s still out on what’s happening there, but it’s exciting nonetheless). I expect to have at least 2 more full comic issues out by the end of the year.
And I’m not the only one. I have talked to dozens of people over the past year who are making comics at an admirable clip, contributing interesting and new perspectives in the medium. On top of that, a lot of #ComicsSchool graduates have taken to proofreading and editing for other writers (what Gail called being a “Fred”). Others are writing outside the medium but got a jumpstart from it. Others are just part of the communities now, finding connections with people all over the world based on a shared experience and during a shared slow-moving trauma.
It’s been very, very cool.
I would love to write comics for a living. I’ve wanted to make comics for a living since as long as I’ve known that I’d have to get a job. Who knows if I’ll ever get to, but I can say that I do make comics now. That is largely in part because a professional comics person decided it would be a nice thing to do to cultivate and support other writers and aspiring writers.
This is a huge lesson. Creators don’t owe their fans or people who want to do what they do anything, but it is a very cool thing to do, offering to mentor people in even a decentralized way. Boosting people and giving them structure like Gail and Jim did didn’t just give people focus during a very difficult time–it legitimately changed some people’s whole lives.
This isn’t just to gush about Gail or Jim, or to brag about my accomplishments (though they should be gushed upon and I have been known to brag). I want to see the momentum keep going and hear what other people have done. We started on Twitter and so I hope others share their experiences there. I am thankful to everyone who has read my work this year, and I’d love to read more of yours.
If you want to share what you’ve done in the year since #ComicsSchool, don’t forget to use the #ComicsSchool hashtag.