I make comics just for myself?

Recently I was listening to The Awesome Comics Podcast and Tony Esmond asked his amazing fellow creators a deep and thought provoking question.

On a scale of [Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree] answer the following question.

‘I make comics just for myself?’

Now this might seem like a simple question to answer but when when you are challenged to justify your answer you start to have a real introspective reflection on your own motivations on why you do things, and In my eyes. Should you?

I thought about this question for a bit and came to the choice; Disagree. But how did I get to this?

Firstly I thought to myself Why did I first start making comics?

Comics was a big part of my healing journey while I was in the hospital with Cancer back in 2013, I retreated to an old safe comic series I would read over and over again as a child. The Silver Surfer. As a child I did not have a lot of money so I had very few comics, reading what I could when I found them in the library at school but I had one that sat on the shelf for years. Silver Surfer Issue 7

I have always related to the character of feeling alone in the worlds he finds himself visiting and trying to make sure those around him are happy and safe, undoing the wrongs he believes he has been responsible for all while hiding the pain of loss he has for his home-world and Love Shalla Bal. Well that’s my interpretation of the character, I will fight you on it :)

While in hospital and then during my recovery I managed to troll through ebay and start the now obsession of owning every Silver Surfer comic / appearance that has ever been lol.

Once I was better I wanted to give back to the hospital that helped me in my journey and help the kids that where fighting the good fight in the rooms just down the hall from me. I decided to bring my love of comics to them and created a charity called Little Heroes Comics which in turn ended with me creating a children’s comic publishing company Fair Spark Books in the hopes of making more comics that I could sell but also give away to these kids.

Long story short that has now ended and my love for the industry was shaken a lot by some of the people I met along the way that made me feel crap.

One creator I met when I was at my first con obliterated the charities Anthology comic (which is ok) but totally did not even acknowledge that it was for a charity and the work had been done for free by volunteers and of course when asked if they would be apart of the next anthology they just said I could not afford it.

That does not take away from the amazing group of people I have also met. Just throw a dart in The Awesome Comics Slack group and you will be hard to hit anyone that is not just a great human being, but my mental health means I tend to focus on the negative of life instead of the positive and these mini interactions just kept eating away at me.

Why did I want to write when I stated the charity and anthologies?

I did not enjoy school. I was bullied for a long time and a lot of other negative stuff happened growing up in a south east London public school that just meant I did not engage in the system.

There was just a few times in my secondary school I can remember really enjoying something. One of which was a year 7 short story exercise. For homework we were tasked with writing a short story, 6 pages of the workbook in length. I went home and filled the workbook lol. Building worlds and populating it with stories has always been something constantly happening in my brain, I constantly day-dream ideas and have had a whole universe of archs and ideas in my head and for what ever reasons, I have never put them down on paper and I am slowly getting older and forgetting more than I remember.

Now I can draw but I am no way an artist so the thought of creating a whole comic by myself has always scared me. The only conclusion was to be the writer and get others to draw them and this is where for me the fun left.

Working with artists is amazing, I love the creative process but I hate with a passion the risk you take as a writer when making comics. The whole financial burden of getting your idea out into the world becomes your own which means you have to do the hard sell. You have to start thinking about how the readers will take you work also so you can reach more people and sell more.

Do you adjust the tone of voice or the visuals to please more people. At the end of the day you have to make enough money to make the next one because for me thats all I have ever wanted to do. Keep making more.

Which brings me to now.

I have been going through a lot of mental health issues this year which is one of the main reason I have not been producing any comics or getting my chapters out on this substack and I have been trying to ground myself back into life.

Part of this is really just trying to understand what makes you happy in life and what does not. Comics has always been that two sided sword for me where I get immense Happiness from working with people in the medium and everyone reading my ideas, however I hate the idea of it having to be a business which is where my answer for the question on the podcast comes from.

So What next?

This is a long rant for me to say that I will keep writing, I want to get that universe on to paper, I want my future kids to have a place to come and read what I have written and explore the stories that I am sure I will use as their bedtime stories.

I am going to be making more effort to just release scripts and works on this substack with the aim of making them for myself and with no pressure of any selling.

This place will just be the archive for them, I will not pressure myself on a reader count. I do hope however you read my work and enjoy it. I will also not care about making money back on a comic. I will produce the ones I want to exist with art by my friends and just push them into the digital void for free as well.

At the end of the day I want to make stuff for myself and not have the burden of others. Just to be clear I would feel super happy if you read my stuff and leave me a message in the comments on here but there is no pressure anymore and I hope this leads to me producing more and not being afraid whether it is shit or not.

Thanks for reading through this therapy session and If you have a few seconds, making take a moment to ask yourself the same question and see what the answer for you would be.

If you do want to read my current comics, all are free digitally on my Gumroad or on my GlobalComix page.