Page of the week

This page was fun, and it came together pretty easily during a very busy week. This will start sounding redundant if I always say 'wow, shocker it was a busy week.' Doing the production of the original it took 18 months of my dedicated focus, most of the time I just wanted to be done. I was really poor and I spent most of my small advance 6 months in. I know for at least a year I was doing other work to eat, then work on this at night. When I had completed the first 32 pages I thought I was just going to not be able to do the others. I don't think I understood that graphic novels are the artistic equivalent of marathons. The second book was much better than the first, and just like the other series I did the last book was the best in my own opinion. There's sort of an initial excitement about a project, at some point regret and rejection of the amount of work that needs doing, and then finally you accept that your other plans just need to go away and you dismiss all sense and reason and lash yourself to the board until it's finished. The problem with writing, drawing, coloring, and doing everything on a book is that it becomes exactly that, you're a man in a box and nobody knows how to help you because there's no reasonable point of insertion of aid. If you have a penciler, an inker, a colorist, a cover artist, and a letterer I imagine it feels much more sane. It's probably why very few people do this kind of thing. I think because time and money aren't really affecting my decision making this time around (because of my day job) I'm genuinely enjoying it, where the first time I was just blowing through pages like the devil was on my heels...I'm now a month in and I'm still really excited about the project, even though it will take two years, which sounds like a long time, but when it's done, it will be forever done. I hope to do a few more books in my lifetime, but it all starts with getting one right.