The exhibition hall. More photos can be found on our Facebook Photo Album.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Dallas Comic Con (January 2010)
Dallas Comic Con happened again this previous weekend with another great show. The big guests this year were Adam Hughes and Tim Sales. Oddly enough Adam's line was fairly short; though that could be due to his limited sketch list that has developed over the years. The crowd around Adam was pretty intense if you know who you are looking for. Surrounding Adam were four pretty intense art collectors; we've had the luxury of seeing some of their collections and man, it's awesome. The line for Tim was pretty long as he was doing sketches at the show too. People had everything from his Batman stories to magazines about the TV show Heroes. Tim was doing something that was kind of odd but also appreciated. He was signing only five books for free and charging one dollar for each book past that. That may seem like a dick move, but one, the money was being donated to a charity and two, it did cut down on the people with BOXES of books for him to sign. Overall the two were really nice guys and interacted with the fans.
The con itself is pretty awesome. Though like others have stated, it's either a big small show or a small big show. Which means the venue they are still in is really tight for the attendees; this is especially true for the parking. We arrived at noon and the place was PACKED. We were lucky to catch someone leaving for lunch and got in. It was INSANE. And though artist alley is well lit with the large open skylight above during the day, it also creates dark spots in the hallways where most of the artists are. These are really nothing to fault the convention for, it's just the nature of the venue. Hopefully their growth in this economy will lead them to a bigger venue without over spending. So if you want to catch the next show, get there early!
The con itself is pretty awesome. Though like others have stated, it's either a big small show or a small big show. Which means the venue they are still in is really tight for the attendees; this is especially true for the parking. We arrived at noon and the place was PACKED. We were lucky to catch someone leaving for lunch and got in. It was INSANE. And though artist alley is well lit with the large open skylight above during the day, it also creates dark spots in the hallways where most of the artists are. These are really nothing to fault the convention for, it's just the nature of the venue. Hopefully their growth in this economy will lead them to a bigger venue without over spending. So if you want to catch the next show, get there early!
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Indy Comic Book Week 2009
The shelf at Zeus Comics. More photos on
our Facebook Photo Album.
The Breaking Comics crew ventured out into the great DFW area to capture the first Indy Comic Book Week event. We visited Madness Comics and Games who hosted Nate Bramble and Matthew Warlick for the day. Madness is a great shop that really lives up to their name. They have as many games as they do comics. It's a great variety of merchandise that really caters to the geek in all of us. Next was Keith's Comics at their flagship store on Mockingbird. Signing earlier was Mike Hankins of Dorm Dorks and in the afternoon was Joe Eisma with his friends from Outlaw Entertainment. Titan Comics was hosting Jake Ekiss and Michael Lagocki at their store on NW Hwy. And we finally dropped by Zeus's Comics on Lemon. The Zeus crew was doing a read through for their next episode of The Variants, a great webshow about working in a comic shop.
All in all the spread was pretty awesome and the shops said they did fairly well with ICBW. Whether or not this will turn around into an annual event only time will tell. But for now we were able to see a great grassroots effort take hold and made itself a nice home in the independent comic book scene.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Interview: Nate Bramble of Hermit Hill
Nate Bramble is a Dallas-Ft. Worth cartoonist. As a graduate of Art Institute of Philadelphia, he has ventured on his own into the world of illustration and cartooning. After a brief collaboration with his friends on a podcast called "Digital Strips", Nate left this project to pursue his own endeavors in comic strips. He is the creator of his own webcomics Hermit Hill. Breaking Comics recently sat down with Nate to talk about his journey as an independent creator and the changing comic scene.
What started you into comics? Who has influenced your own work?
Nate Bramble: My earliest experience with comics was MAD Magazine. When we were kids my family would always go on these long car trips and my mom would let us pick out magazines and stuff at the book store before we'd leave to keep us occupied. I always jumped at the chance to get my hands on a new issue of MAD. I had a stack of them in my room for years. I was hooked on comics from there on.
I've always gravitated towards the humor comics. I read everything I could get by Sergio Aragones, all his Groo issues. I also collected all the comic strip collection books I could find. I had volumes of Garfield, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes and the Far Side. Once I was really into all this comics stuff I started looking at what came before those guys. Around the time I was in High School I discovered Krazy Kat by George Herriman, the cartoons of Charles Addams in the New Yorker, and Walt Kelly's Pogo. Those guys, the classic cartoonists, really influenced my interest in becoming a cartoonist more than anything else.
Why did you choose to go with a strip style for Hermit Hill?
NB: I've wanted to do a comic strip since I was a little kid. I have a box filled with failed comic strip ideas from over the years. The idea of one person being able to develop a whole world little by little, strip by strip is very appealing to me. When I came up with the characters and concept for Hermit Hill I thought I might have a concept broad enough to write the kind of silly gags and funny drawings I come up with in my sketchbooks and just went with it. It's a challenging format to create for and I really admire anyone that can do it well.
Where do you find inspiration for your comics?
NB: I try to pull inspiration from everything I encounter throughout my day. If I overhear a funny conversation at work or hear an interesting news story on the radio I'll try to put my characters into these situations and just try to imagine what they'd do or how they'd react. A funny turn of phrase or a word I've never heard before or an interesting image on the web can trigger a week's worth of strip ideas. I just try to absorb and fantasize whenever I can.
Why do you choose to work with traditional mediums as oppose to digital ones?
NB: There's plenty of digital works that impress the hell out of me and I'm not down on working digitally at all, it's mostly a personal preference. There's some astounding color effects I see in comics these days that just wouldn't even be possible working with traditional tools. Although, there are plenty of times you see cartoonists getting lazy. Too often some creators rely on ready made tools or copy/paste or will insert a photo instead of drawing something outright. There's a lot that can be done with a computer that I'd consider cheating and I wouldn't be proud of my own work if I were to pull some of those tricks.
I consider myself a student of cartooning and for me the classic techniques are still the best. I enjoy seeing the artist's hand in his or her work.
What obstacles have you faced being an indy creator?
NB: Money and time. It's probably the same with any creative endeavor. I struggle to find the time to work on my comics and I have to pour over my comics late into the night, day after day knowing full well I'm not going to make much money off of them. To work so hard and so long on something without expecting there to be some kind of big payoff at the end is a daunting thing to tackle. I can't expect to get rich being a cartoonist because that just doesn't happen any more. I do it because I love it and because I know that if I'm ever to turn this into even a moderate success I have to just keep plugging away.
There has been a lot of debate on online syndication versus traditional newspaper syndication. What are your views on this changing landscape?
NB: Well that's the big question these days, isn't it? I know one thing for sure, the traditional syndication business model is in shambles. Newspapers are folding up or cutting comics out of their pages all the time now. A large portion of the comic strips still being printed are strips credited to folks who have passed away. There are less than 80 professional political cartoonists still employed in the entire country. What chance does a new cartoonist even have in an environment like that? The current print syndication model relies completely on this very outdated mode of delivering information and the only reason newspapers are still around right now is out of some sense of nostalgia by the people who still buy them. It's not a medium with a very optimistic future.
Now we have the internet. We have a huge amount of freedom and can be free of any censorship, of pleasing the editors and of all the middlemen who have always taken such a huge cut of the comic strip profits. Creativity in comics is flourishing like never before, but where is the business model? Moving a comic strip operation online is like starting from scratch. How does a cartoonist make money on the web? There isn't a set model of success to follow. Back in the day it was never easy to become a paid cartoonist, but at least the path was clear. You knew what you had to do to make it. You get a portfolio ready, you get a pack of strips complete and try to sell the strip to a syndicate editor. Once you're in and you sign a contract you just draw every day and send in the work and you get a paycheck. It may have still been very hard to get an editor to pick you up, but it was a clear and easily understandable path to try and follow.
Now all the infrastructure that made the whole thing work is disappearing. There's so much complication on the shoulders of the online cartoonist that was never a factor before. Now you have to learn how to make and maintain a web site, how to get a URL, what an RSS feed is, how to sell advertising on the site, how to promote through social networks. Then there's actual product. You have to become a publisher and get books printed and shipped all on your own. All the ancillary stuff that goes into running an online business can be a huge distraction for someone who needs to keep drawing an ongoing comic strip. All this freedom comes with a huge burden.
Even if you get to the point where you have all that figured out, you get your work up on the web and find an audience to come read it, there is still is no clear and set business model for actually making money as an online cartoonist. If you look at all the folks who have been financially successful at running a webcomic they've almost all come to success via completely different paths. Since we're all on our own now to figure this stuff out it'll be some time before a model everyone can follow really emerges. Until then we just need to keep trying new things until we find a formula that works.
From a business perspective the modern day cartoonist is entering a kind of limbo. It's got to be scary as hell of the traditional print cartoonists, but could also be seen as a huge opportunity for the creators who "get" all this online stuff. The next several years will be a turbulent time for this art form. It needs to reinvent itself and right now I have no idea what that's going to look like. Who does?
Being the artist, writer, editor, and promoter of your own book, which of the roles do you enjoy the most? Which one is your least favorite?
NB: I get the most personal satisfaction out of drawing the cartoons. It's definitely my favorite part of creating comics. That's where I have the most fun.
Promoting my own work is probably the most difficult aspect of this whole endeavor. It's a hard thing to try and sell yourself and it's really hard to prepare for all the inevitably rejection. The best places to promote comics are at comic book shows and you need to really physically put yourself in front of people. It's not easy to wrap your head around active selling after being alone to draw for so long. But, I'm learning to do and it can be very rewarding.
As a family person, how do you balance your work, your family, and your comic? Do you even know what free time is anymore?
NB: Time management can be very tricky. The one thing your average comics reader doesn't fully realize is the huge amount of time it takes to make comics. It's bizarre to think that it can take me a few hours to create something that take 30 seconds to read.
I have a full time, 50 hours a week day job and I have my wife and son at home, so finding time to make comics has been a challenge. This is the main reason I update my strip three times a week instead of every day. I have come up with a routine that I need to stick to in order to get everything done. During the day I spend my lunch hour in a coffee shop near my office where I can get most of the writing and drawing done. I spend my evening with my family, but after everyone else heads off to bed I get the scanning and web site part of the comic complete. If I stick to the routine everything gets done. It's hard, but very satisfying to see it all fall into place.
Obviously, a major part of being an indy creator is being able to promote yourself. What things have you done that worked out for you and what things didn't work out as well?
NB: The most success I've had at getting the word out there about my work has been jumping into the convention circuit. Exhibiting at a comics show affords you lot's of opportunities to tell people about your work and I see that my site traffic often jumps after successful appearances. Getting my books and flyers into the hands of the attendees is one part of it, but another often overlooked aspect to going to these shows has been introducing myself and my work to other creators. I've met and made lot's of friends in the creator community this way and since we all have blogs and web sites and social networking stuff in place cross promotion can be a huge boon. Rubbing elbows with the other creators during the after parties can be even more beneficial than the shows themselves.
The biggest promotional failure I've had came last year. I printed up a bunch of my comics and sent samples to retailers via mail. I put together this nice packet with a letter explaining who I was and included a flyer for my comic and a nice glossy collectors card and a copy of my comic I was trying to sell to them. I sent those packets out to a ton of Texas comic book retailers, mailed them by the stack. I naively sat back and waited for the orders to roll in. I got no response to any of them. Not even a single email.
I'm not sure why this didn't work. I was proud of the packet I had put together and thought it looked professional. After about a month and a half of not hearing anything I decided to try and go to some of the shops personally. I went to several comics retailers in the Dallas area with my books in hand and I sold copies to every retailer I went to. In person they were all enthusiastic and seemed to like my books. I've even gotten re-orders. I guess the mail promotion is not going to work, but I can't be expected to personally go to and sell to every retailer out there. This is something I'm still trying to figure out.
How do you keep yourself on track and motivated?
NB: At this point I've self published eight comic books, a trade paperback that collects the first year's worth of comic strips, had some of my guest strips published in other creators' books and have had some short comic stories printed in a few different anthology books. When I look at the section of my bookshelf that collects everything I've done so far I just get so jazzed up to keep doing it. There's nothing like the feeling I get from looking at a finished book, holding it my hands and thinking, "I created this. I put something creative into the world that wasn't there before". This just revs me up to keep at. I can't wait to add the next project to that book shelf.
You've traveled the nation doing comic shows; how is the indy creator community out there?
NB: In my experience the indy creator community is very active and welcoming. When I go to shows I find other creators to be really enthusiastic about showing off their work and very encouraging when looking at mine. I don't really ask for critiques or anything like that, but I feel like once the other creators see that I've put out my own work, that I have actual books that show I have really put an effort into publishing, I feel welcomed into the convention community.
Like I mentioned before, hanging out with the other creators at a show is often the very best part. Grabbing dinner and a beer afterwards has become an incredibly educational experience since that's when everyone shares their convention war stories. People would be shocked to hear about some of the things that go on at these trade shows. Shocked, I tell you!
How did you hear about Indy Comic Book Week? How are you participating in the event?
NB: I heard about ICBW through Twitter back in August. I know several Texas area creators through the convention circuit here and follow a lot of them online. When I started seeing posts about ICBW from the Space Gun Studios guys I went to check the indycomicbookweek.com site they set up and immediately signed up to put out a book myself. Their call to action on the front page of the site really grabbed me.
Soon after that I read about comic book writer David Hopkins putting out an anthology book for the event. He put out a call, again through Twitter, for submissions to be a part of the book and I signed up. So, now I have a page in the anthology book "One Night Stand" and my own comic, "Hermit Hill the Comic Strip", is complete, printed and shipped. Both books will be on the shelves of retailers signed up to take part in the event.
What are your goals for the next few years? Do you feel that you are on the right track?
NB: I'm about a year and a half into running my comic strip, Hermit Hill. I'm just now starting to get some attention for that and my readership is slowly growing. Over the next few years I need to keep up the quality of my strip and continue to grow my audience. Balancing the time I spend promoting the site and the time I spend on actually creating the comic is tricky and hopefully I'm on track to keep this whole endeavor moving forward. I've already put out one trade book that collects the first year of strips and I intend to put out an issue for each year the comic is active. I want to keep up that print schedule and try to get those books onto retailer shelves. It's a daunting task, but I'm having a lot of fun trying.
If you could give any advice to new creators, what would it be?
NB: I feel like I'm still a very new creator myself and I'm not sure I really have the experience to be advising anyone, but since you asked I would advise someone starting out to avoid pursuing the approval of other cartoonists. If you have an idol or a hero in the business let them remain the ideal you have in your head. The reality of those confrontations, which I've seen over and over again at trade shows, never turns out to be what you had hoped for. If you do insist on thrusting your work under the nose of other creators and asking for a critique keep in mind that harsh criticism should only serve as a challenge to do better work and a pat on the back may be thrilling, but ultimately doesn't sell you any more books. It's not a useful situation to go after. You should be working to create for your own satisfaction and for the entertainment of your readers. Never mind what other cartoonists think, they're just trying to sell their own work too. Their opinion of your work, one way or the other, doesn't really help you.
If you could have any super power, which would you choose and why?
NB: I would love to be able to stop time for everyone but me. My mind boggles at the amount of cartooning I'd be able to get done if I could do that!
What started you into comics? Who has influenced your own work?
Nate Bramble: My earliest experience with comics was MAD Magazine. When we were kids my family would always go on these long car trips and my mom would let us pick out magazines and stuff at the book store before we'd leave to keep us occupied. I always jumped at the chance to get my hands on a new issue of MAD. I had a stack of them in my room for years. I was hooked on comics from there on.
I've always gravitated towards the humor comics. I read everything I could get by Sergio Aragones, all his Groo issues. I also collected all the comic strip collection books I could find. I had volumes of Garfield, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes and the Far Side. Once I was really into all this comics stuff I started looking at what came before those guys. Around the time I was in High School I discovered Krazy Kat by George Herriman, the cartoons of Charles Addams in the New Yorker, and Walt Kelly's Pogo. Those guys, the classic cartoonists, really influenced my interest in becoming a cartoonist more than anything else.
Why did you choose to go with a strip style for Hermit Hill?
NB: I've wanted to do a comic strip since I was a little kid. I have a box filled with failed comic strip ideas from over the years. The idea of one person being able to develop a whole world little by little, strip by strip is very appealing to me. When I came up with the characters and concept for Hermit Hill I thought I might have a concept broad enough to write the kind of silly gags and funny drawings I come up with in my sketchbooks and just went with it. It's a challenging format to create for and I really admire anyone that can do it well.
Where do you find inspiration for your comics?
NB: I try to pull inspiration from everything I encounter throughout my day. If I overhear a funny conversation at work or hear an interesting news story on the radio I'll try to put my characters into these situations and just try to imagine what they'd do or how they'd react. A funny turn of phrase or a word I've never heard before or an interesting image on the web can trigger a week's worth of strip ideas. I just try to absorb and fantasize whenever I can.
Why do you choose to work with traditional mediums as oppose to digital ones?
NB: There's plenty of digital works that impress the hell out of me and I'm not down on working digitally at all, it's mostly a personal preference. There's some astounding color effects I see in comics these days that just wouldn't even be possible working with traditional tools. Although, there are plenty of times you see cartoonists getting lazy. Too often some creators rely on ready made tools or copy/paste or will insert a photo instead of drawing something outright. There's a lot that can be done with a computer that I'd consider cheating and I wouldn't be proud of my own work if I were to pull some of those tricks.
I consider myself a student of cartooning and for me the classic techniques are still the best. I enjoy seeing the artist's hand in his or her work.
What obstacles have you faced being an indy creator?
NB: Money and time. It's probably the same with any creative endeavor. I struggle to find the time to work on my comics and I have to pour over my comics late into the night, day after day knowing full well I'm not going to make much money off of them. To work so hard and so long on something without expecting there to be some kind of big payoff at the end is a daunting thing to tackle. I can't expect to get rich being a cartoonist because that just doesn't happen any more. I do it because I love it and because I know that if I'm ever to turn this into even a moderate success I have to just keep plugging away.
There has been a lot of debate on online syndication versus traditional newspaper syndication. What are your views on this changing landscape?
NB: Well that's the big question these days, isn't it? I know one thing for sure, the traditional syndication business model is in shambles. Newspapers are folding up or cutting comics out of their pages all the time now. A large portion of the comic strips still being printed are strips credited to folks who have passed away. There are less than 80 professional political cartoonists still employed in the entire country. What chance does a new cartoonist even have in an environment like that? The current print syndication model relies completely on this very outdated mode of delivering information and the only reason newspapers are still around right now is out of some sense of nostalgia by the people who still buy them. It's not a medium with a very optimistic future.
Now we have the internet. We have a huge amount of freedom and can be free of any censorship, of pleasing the editors and of all the middlemen who have always taken such a huge cut of the comic strip profits. Creativity in comics is flourishing like never before, but where is the business model? Moving a comic strip operation online is like starting from scratch. How does a cartoonist make money on the web? There isn't a set model of success to follow. Back in the day it was never easy to become a paid cartoonist, but at least the path was clear. You knew what you had to do to make it. You get a portfolio ready, you get a pack of strips complete and try to sell the strip to a syndicate editor. Once you're in and you sign a contract you just draw every day and send in the work and you get a paycheck. It may have still been very hard to get an editor to pick you up, but it was a clear and easily understandable path to try and follow.
Now all the infrastructure that made the whole thing work is disappearing. There's so much complication on the shoulders of the online cartoonist that was never a factor before. Now you have to learn how to make and maintain a web site, how to get a URL, what an RSS feed is, how to sell advertising on the site, how to promote through social networks. Then there's actual product. You have to become a publisher and get books printed and shipped all on your own. All the ancillary stuff that goes into running an online business can be a huge distraction for someone who needs to keep drawing an ongoing comic strip. All this freedom comes with a huge burden.
Even if you get to the point where you have all that figured out, you get your work up on the web and find an audience to come read it, there is still is no clear and set business model for actually making money as an online cartoonist. If you look at all the folks who have been financially successful at running a webcomic they've almost all come to success via completely different paths. Since we're all on our own now to figure this stuff out it'll be some time before a model everyone can follow really emerges. Until then we just need to keep trying new things until we find a formula that works.
From a business perspective the modern day cartoonist is entering a kind of limbo. It's got to be scary as hell of the traditional print cartoonists, but could also be seen as a huge opportunity for the creators who "get" all this online stuff. The next several years will be a turbulent time for this art form. It needs to reinvent itself and right now I have no idea what that's going to look like. Who does?
Being the artist, writer, editor, and promoter of your own book, which of the roles do you enjoy the most? Which one is your least favorite?
NB: I get the most personal satisfaction out of drawing the cartoons. It's definitely my favorite part of creating comics. That's where I have the most fun.
Promoting my own work is probably the most difficult aspect of this whole endeavor. It's a hard thing to try and sell yourself and it's really hard to prepare for all the inevitably rejection. The best places to promote comics are at comic book shows and you need to really physically put yourself in front of people. It's not easy to wrap your head around active selling after being alone to draw for so long. But, I'm learning to do and it can be very rewarding.
As a family person, how do you balance your work, your family, and your comic? Do you even know what free time is anymore?
NB: Time management can be very tricky. The one thing your average comics reader doesn't fully realize is the huge amount of time it takes to make comics. It's bizarre to think that it can take me a few hours to create something that take 30 seconds to read.
I have a full time, 50 hours a week day job and I have my wife and son at home, so finding time to make comics has been a challenge. This is the main reason I update my strip three times a week instead of every day. I have come up with a routine that I need to stick to in order to get everything done. During the day I spend my lunch hour in a coffee shop near my office where I can get most of the writing and drawing done. I spend my evening with my family, but after everyone else heads off to bed I get the scanning and web site part of the comic complete. If I stick to the routine everything gets done. It's hard, but very satisfying to see it all fall into place.
Obviously, a major part of being an indy creator is being able to promote yourself. What things have you done that worked out for you and what things didn't work out as well?
NB: The most success I've had at getting the word out there about my work has been jumping into the convention circuit. Exhibiting at a comics show affords you lot's of opportunities to tell people about your work and I see that my site traffic often jumps after successful appearances. Getting my books and flyers into the hands of the attendees is one part of it, but another often overlooked aspect to going to these shows has been introducing myself and my work to other creators. I've met and made lot's of friends in the creator community this way and since we all have blogs and web sites and social networking stuff in place cross promotion can be a huge boon. Rubbing elbows with the other creators during the after parties can be even more beneficial than the shows themselves.
The biggest promotional failure I've had came last year. I printed up a bunch of my comics and sent samples to retailers via mail. I put together this nice packet with a letter explaining who I was and included a flyer for my comic and a nice glossy collectors card and a copy of my comic I was trying to sell to them. I sent those packets out to a ton of Texas comic book retailers, mailed them by the stack. I naively sat back and waited for the orders to roll in. I got no response to any of them. Not even a single email.
I'm not sure why this didn't work. I was proud of the packet I had put together and thought it looked professional. After about a month and a half of not hearing anything I decided to try and go to some of the shops personally. I went to several comics retailers in the Dallas area with my books in hand and I sold copies to every retailer I went to. In person they were all enthusiastic and seemed to like my books. I've even gotten re-orders. I guess the mail promotion is not going to work, but I can't be expected to personally go to and sell to every retailer out there. This is something I'm still trying to figure out.
How do you keep yourself on track and motivated?
NB: At this point I've self published eight comic books, a trade paperback that collects the first year's worth of comic strips, had some of my guest strips published in other creators' books and have had some short comic stories printed in a few different anthology books. When I look at the section of my bookshelf that collects everything I've done so far I just get so jazzed up to keep doing it. There's nothing like the feeling I get from looking at a finished book, holding it my hands and thinking, "I created this. I put something creative into the world that wasn't there before". This just revs me up to keep at. I can't wait to add the next project to that book shelf.
You've traveled the nation doing comic shows; how is the indy creator community out there?
NB: In my experience the indy creator community is very active and welcoming. When I go to shows I find other creators to be really enthusiastic about showing off their work and very encouraging when looking at mine. I don't really ask for critiques or anything like that, but I feel like once the other creators see that I've put out my own work, that I have actual books that show I have really put an effort into publishing, I feel welcomed into the convention community.
Like I mentioned before, hanging out with the other creators at a show is often the very best part. Grabbing dinner and a beer afterwards has become an incredibly educational experience since that's when everyone shares their convention war stories. People would be shocked to hear about some of the things that go on at these trade shows. Shocked, I tell you!
How did you hear about Indy Comic Book Week? How are you participating in the event?
NB: I heard about ICBW through Twitter back in August. I know several Texas area creators through the convention circuit here and follow a lot of them online. When I started seeing posts about ICBW from the Space Gun Studios guys I went to check the indycomicbookweek.com site they set up and immediately signed up to put out a book myself. Their call to action on the front page of the site really grabbed me.
Soon after that I read about comic book writer David Hopkins putting out an anthology book for the event. He put out a call, again through Twitter, for submissions to be a part of the book and I signed up. So, now I have a page in the anthology book "One Night Stand" and my own comic, "Hermit Hill the Comic Strip", is complete, printed and shipped. Both books will be on the shelves of retailers signed up to take part in the event.
What are your goals for the next few years? Do you feel that you are on the right track?
NB: I'm about a year and a half into running my comic strip, Hermit Hill. I'm just now starting to get some attention for that and my readership is slowly growing. Over the next few years I need to keep up the quality of my strip and continue to grow my audience. Balancing the time I spend promoting the site and the time I spend on actually creating the comic is tricky and hopefully I'm on track to keep this whole endeavor moving forward. I've already put out one trade book that collects the first year of strips and I intend to put out an issue for each year the comic is active. I want to keep up that print schedule and try to get those books onto retailer shelves. It's a daunting task, but I'm having a lot of fun trying.
If you could give any advice to new creators, what would it be?
NB: I feel like I'm still a very new creator myself and I'm not sure I really have the experience to be advising anyone, but since you asked I would advise someone starting out to avoid pursuing the approval of other cartoonists. If you have an idol or a hero in the business let them remain the ideal you have in your head. The reality of those confrontations, which I've seen over and over again at trade shows, never turns out to be what you had hoped for. If you do insist on thrusting your work under the nose of other creators and asking for a critique keep in mind that harsh criticism should only serve as a challenge to do better work and a pat on the back may be thrilling, but ultimately doesn't sell you any more books. It's not a useful situation to go after. You should be working to create for your own satisfaction and for the entertainment of your readers. Never mind what other cartoonists think, they're just trying to sell their own work too. Their opinion of your work, one way or the other, doesn't really help you.
If you could have any super power, which would you choose and why?
NB: I would love to be able to stop time for everyone but me. My mind boggles at the amount of cartooning I'd be able to get done if I could do that!
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