This should have been a while ago.

When I was young, probably fourteen, I went to a ropes course at a local YMCA. Ropes courses are, if you’re not familiar, a kind of team building exercise to encourage trust in a group of people who don’t necessarily have any reason or incentive to trust each other. There are trust falls, climbing on high ropes, lowering yourself down from up there with someone else also handling the mechanism that speeds and slows you.

I was doing this as part of a public school field trip. It was not what I’d describe as “my thing.” I didn’t really go for outdoor activities or sports, and I certainly didn’t love the idea of the football team being in a position of determining whether or not I’d hit the ground when I fell backwards off of a picnic table.

What I initially perceived as worse was that the whole operation was run by this cartoonish man in a polo shirt and a mile-wide, perpetual smile. He even had a ridiculous name: He insisted we call him “Awesome Dave from the Y.” Awesome Dave from the Y emoted a kind of positivity that I associated with inauthenticity. I did not like him. I did not like this. None of it mattered though, because in a few minutes, the jocks were going to drop my rope when I was lowering from a million feet off of the ground, and I was going to die.

It turned out they didn’t. Some of them were still kind of dicks about it, but I was lowered to the ground safely. Awesome Dave from the Y might have been hokey (I later learned that he was over-the-top hokey on purpose because it was so disarming), but his cheer was infectious. Everyone, even a semi-depressed lonely weirdo who just wanted to get back to his notebooks, was taken into his “you can do whatever you can dream” utopia for a few hours.

At the end of the program, we all sat in a room with Awesome Dave from the Y, and he asked us what our dreams were. I don’t know why I volunteered to answer. It was not like me (I wasn’t shy—I was “too cool” to participate [read: I was an asshole]).

I raised my hand, and when Awesome Dave asked "what’s your dream? What do you want to do when you grow up?” I said “I want to make comics.”

Some people snickered, though if I’m honest, not many, and nobody who I thought mattered. Awesome Dave from the Y didn’t snicker. He just smiled his impossible smile and he said “Great. Now, everyone: Let’s believe in Matt! He’s going to make comic books!”

He asked me who my big influences were. At the time, I was obsessed with Andy Kubert. I’d tried to redraw X-Men #20 about a billion times. He explained that I could do it. I could make comics just like Andy Kubert. Maybe better? Then he got a bunch of kids who mostly didn’t like me to affirm that they believed that someday I would make comics.

And then, a few years later, I gave up.

I couldn’t quite get drawing down. I struggled with perspective and shading. Years later I realized it was because I’d never bothered to try using ink. I fell out of drawing all the time. I started going to shows, wanting to hang out with girls. Eventually I got wrapped up into a kind of bullshit romanticism about “literature.” I grew up and took myself very seriously. And comics weren’t serious.

I kicked the tires on writing comics a few times, but I didn’t know where to start. It all seemed so daunting. I have always been bad about asking for help, and so I didn’t, and I ended up doing nothing for a long time.

And then, a few months ago, in the midst of a lot of conscious decisions about myself and my life, I decided I’d write a comic. And then I did. And then I wrote another one. And then I reached out to an old friend who wrote comics, and he was like “you’re writing comics that are way too long for a beginner—write something short.”

So then I did that. It’s called Little Things, and I put it out a few weeks ago on this website. After I wrote that, I started on a single full-length comic called Nightmare Man. I’m working on putting it out now.

Then quarantine happened, and I wrote a script prompted by a Twitter exercise. The story is called Nothing Left to Give. A young artist volunteered to illustrate it, and I published it on this website earlier this week.

It is very easy to give up on a dream you have because it’s hard, or because it’s childish, or because you’ve convinced yourself that nobody will like it. Don’t do that. Make the thing. The most surprising thing about going forward with these comics is that people have liked them. Even people who didn’t like them gave me useful feedback. Even people who didn’t give me useful feedback read the damn things.

So all these years later, I owe Awesome Dave from the Y a round of thanks. He was right, I would make comics. Maybe not better than Andy Kubert, but I made some comics and I’m going to make more. Thanks for checking them out.