Caleb Orecchio here with thoughts on work ethic, and other news.—————————————————————————————————
I was talking to my dog recently. I says to her, “Zoe, I’ve rearranged my life around making comics and I still can’t finish a daily strip on time. I moved to a secluded lighthouse outside an old, cheap rust belt town and work the bare minimum to pay off school loans and rent and I still can’t manage to keep a consistent comics work schedule. What am I doing wrong?”
She looked up from licking her privates and and answered, “You complain too much.”
You probably already know this, but SPX 2017 was last week. I put my daily comic strip on hiatus because I was “too busy to be bothered by it” (if you’re a loyal CW Daily News reader, you’ll have noticed that Joanie and Jordie has been absent from this site for a minute). But lo and behold, Sally Ingraham (star cartoonist of Suzy and Cecil fame, comics educator, and managing editor of this very blog–among other things) made all her strips for that week in her hotel room at SPX AND executed her Daily News duties–PLUS! managed to manage the Comics Workbook Workshops being held throughout the weekend and keep tabs on us “kids.” I’m sorry to be so conflict of interest, but I didn’t do nearly as much and I was still more fatigued than she was by the end of the weekend.
I mean, I still drew throughout the weekend. I did my drawing exercises and drew funny faces and dogs running every day. That counts right? Yes, but then I look over at Audra Stang and she has basically filled up a sketchbook with comics, documenting the journey from Pittsburgh to Bethesda and has Frank Santoro literally rolling on the floor with laughter reading them. Then Kurt Ankeny comes in with his sketchbook where, that morning, he had more-than-adequately redrawn some old masterpiece painting from some museum in D.C. He probably did it in 5 minutes while standing up. He invited me to go with him that morning but I was asleep when he messaged me.
I could go on and on.
What’s my point? My point is, to just keep going. Yes you’re tired. Yes you’re broke. Yes you’re busy. But guess what–we’re all in the same boat and we all want to be the next Gilbert Hernandez or Lynda Barry or whoever. Welcome to comics, it’s hard. Just keep going.
—————————————————————————————————
The fall semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers starts October 1st 2017. 8 weeks of comics instruction that will bang your practice into shape – 500 bux. Full details about the course and how to apply can be found HERE.
—————————————————————————————————
if you don’t know now you know
- Noah Van Sciver talks to Peter Bagge at The Comics Reporter.
- I always enjoy an interview with Alan Moore no matter the subject. Go to The Beat for more.
- Frank Young writes about Chester Gould’s “meta comics” over on TCJ.
- Darkseid model sheet by Jack Kirby.
- The Village Voice has published their last issue (the cover features the great Bob Dylan signing off) and have a history of their art directors at SPD.org.
—————————————————————————————————
Suzy and Cecil – 9-25-2017 – by Sally Ingraham