Wednesday, September 16, 2015

About those delays....

First off, let me apologize for the delay on the series. Issue five should've been done months ago and instead I've only just begun on the issue. I'm backed up by nearly a year, so the earliest I'll have all 16 pages done would be next year.

Comics, like anything else in life, get delayed for many reasons. Big companies might have logistical train wrecks that cause production delays. But oftentimes they can find pinch hitters to fill-in for the weak links in the chain and get the series back on track quickly.

For comics that come revolve around one person, usually it's something more personal. Maybe something happened in their lives. Maybe another job came up that tied up all their time. Maybe the demand just wasn't there and they had to do other things to pay their rent, after all, art  is wonderful but it won't keep your lights on if no one buys it.

For me it's all the above. And unlike a company, I have no pinch hitters to help. It's just me putting out a full color comic by myself. This took up all my free time during a relatively stable time in my life. The last year however, has been anything but stable.

So when the poo hit the fan for me in January, just as I was supposed to start work on the series again after a much needed holiday break, it really made it tough to get back into it. The time I usually worked on the series was gone. Work was taking up everything I had and then some. 

Sometimes your daily life just takes up everything you got, emotionally and physically. Sometimes it takes all the hope you muster just to get up and get through the day.

So I rarely worked on the comic. The reaction to the series has been minimal to say the least. I love each and every one of you who've bought it or had kind words to say about the series, but I can fit all of you in my living room, and my living room ain't that big. There's just a handful of people who could possibly be waiting for the conclusion of "Psychoboy Goes to Washington."

So this has pretty been demoted to a hobby for me. I can't make any money off it. I want to finish the story for myself and for the couple people who might actually be wondering what did happen to dear old Psychoboy.  And it's a great story that deserves to be told. It's amazing what you say about the country in just 16 pages.

So with that in mind, I took advantage of a lull between instances of feces flying towards fans in my life to start working on the comic again. I'm going to try my darndest to work on it in some way, no matter what happens, no matter how many turd storms are in the forecast. I can't promise anything, but I'm going to try. The issue will be completed at some point. 

Both Kevin Smith and J. Michael Straczynski came back and finished comic series that had been delayed for years. Rob Schrab had everything fall apart in the 90s and came back 10 years later to finish Scud the Disposable Assassin. And none of their works were any worse for the delays, once they were completed.

The point of me typing all this isn't to say it's okay to give up on your dream, but to know that if it gets put on pause or gets set back, that it's not the end. You own that story you want to tell. It's not going anywhere. It'll be waiting for you when you're ready to tell it. Never give up. There's always going to be another chance. 

Creativity isn't a race. It took Da Vinci years to finish the Mona Lisa. It's the creation that exists at the end that's what matters. Make it good no matter how long it takes.




No comments:

Post a Comment