On Friday, I attended my first "Breaking in to Comics" panel, moderated by Andy Schmidt, with friends and colleagues of his including Mike Costa, co-writer of GI Joe:Cobra, one of my current favorite comics.
The panel was informative and encouraging. Andy runs www.ComicsExperience.com, a site dedicated to teaching prospective talent the tools for starting a career in comics and staying in, which were the main points of the panel.
There are three things every potential comics-industry pro need to have, according to Schmidt: Talent, Professionalism, and Courtesy. (That is, "be a nice guy".) And only having two of these are necessary. So my fear, and this is simply a matter of pride on my part, is that I only have the professionalism and courtesy parts licked. This is where I stumble - I 'm not sure that my talent is up to snuff. I know I can get something in print...Anyone can these days. Just like anyone can make a CD. What I don't know is if anyone will ever want to read it and talk about it with their friends. If all I can do is churn out product for product's sake, what's the point?
That's not to say that I don't think my stories are invalid, or that telling them isn't worthwhile. I just mean, how realistic should I be, or am being?
And yet, this is not something to dwell on, or something to stop me before I begin. As Dougles Neff said at his panel (see the next post), it's best to fail brilliantly than succeed moderately. I'm not sure how much I agree...I'm still working that out.
No comments:
Post a Comment