How Do I Start Making Comics? One Great Story at a Time

We are going to dip into the mailbag, or in this century, our messages, for this one from J. Wagner in Rome, GA.

Do you make comic books for a living? My daughter wants to and she is a really talented artist. Any advice?

Sure! Work with me! lol They are part of my living. I am going to make more money in the short term from paintings, but meanwhile I'm drawing the comic I hope will break us out in a big way. (That's Integr8d Soul Comics Number One, for those of you who are late to the party!)

I've drawn quite a few and had a small sell-out run of my 2011 comic D'n'A: The Mountain, which, like everything from California days, I need to get back into print. (I just want to do it with its sequel, because getting on bookshelves via Diamond is like murder if you're not a Trade Paperback.)

But I could go on and on. Is her passion Manga comics, btw? What are some of her favorite titles? My advice will vary a wee bit depending on her heart's desire, which she'll need to tap to not only conceive projects, but complete as many as humanly possible, too.

I will start with this: however great your characters, however much you love them, remember you need One Great Story. People have to start somewhere, so think up the life of a given character for a while and see what part of that life seems like a compelling place to tell just one complete and not-too-ungodly-long tale that leaves anyone hungry for more. It will mean so much to her if she gets positive reception for one single complete effort, even if she envisions years of epics embodied in her cast. When you really care about telling that one story, you work through any problems along the way and enjoy bringing a full piece of your vision to life, in a form people can now share.

Just get together an interesting conflict that unveils the inner character in some insight, with a beginning, middle, and end.

Bring something to a conclusion and you will trust yourself more. You will have a template then which you can repeat the rest of your artistic life, throwing in all the new challenges you take up along the way, telling new insights you get about people and making characters that get hung up in people's minds.

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Be Chill, Cease Ill: Volume One- it's real

https://www.createspace.com/5789419

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Why Pretend I Meant to Live Any Other Life?

So as I answered a friend, this is how I'm living:

We only have a couple of people come by sometimes, friends made for us by Angela from work. I don't necessarily expect anyone else to actually visit, but I have Mom and Dad out there and the three cats. I've drawn visitors twice. My sisters in law also visit sometimes. Then, it's just my various contacts primarily online. I could probably invite people more often, but I work every minute I can til Angela gets home and then as always she is most of the company I really need.


I am making a couple of overtures to get regular meetups goings but if it doesn't work like so far it will be really easy to look for a city where I might find that. I like my neighbors, too, they're just hard to catch except at some late night time after work, which changes from week to week. I have my own ways of coping, but I've embraced the thing I'm creating to the point that music, visual art and writing are all friends in and of themselves. In fact, what I want to do outside of my house is almost inevitably for Art's sake or my family. I went to California to become this, fully. I can turn loose for a day at a time but even yesterday, I was still quietly practicing songs in the back seat on the ride for a while.

As I have lost the agency of the wonderful favor of the truck, I am content that I'm resigned to the whims of others as to whether I go anywhere I can't go on foot. My life is about relaxing enough, being happy enough, to accelerate towards one of any number of Next Steps each of my pursuits take. Body Happiness is so crucial to that, so I watch what I eat within reason, get some nice walks, exercise whenever I can get the habit activated and discover I love it, and meditate a little to keep the slate fresh, so to speak. The stimulation of Newness as a sense of things keeps the amount of Desire necessary to even express myself creates that paradoxical satisfaction/ dissatisfaction. I lock on to whatever's bringing me my peculiar joy like songs I take times with or favorite cartoons, and I judge myself harshly as little as necessary. No doubt, there's times some good company might've evened out a given night, but then I wonder if I don't simply require a bit of melancholy and other feelings for the sake of embodying the human experience more fully and by contrasts, appreciating deeply the difference (in what my choices are/have brought me=the good of my life as it is compared to any other way).


Since the pursuit of those deeper truths is the most valuable contribution I have for the human race outside whomever enjoys my company personally, it dictates my motives, requiring me to pursue my path empathetically rather than from any Machiavellian set of impulses despite the clarity of intellect to offer a full slate of choices. But that dictation is what some mystics would refer to as the Holy Ghost, or as Angela might put it,the higher self. it is a Self to whom I've found to be true and believe in that I find from stints of silence in the mind, a voluntary quieting of distractions that serve to distract the "floating." It is My Self, My Creator Creating, or even just the particular way I conduct thinking and living. Now I tend less to be a victim of my own rationalizations (those I shoot down by hearing how ridiculous they sound spoken to Angela, who is always steady on) and from a clean emotional starting point, which might take days or seconds depending on how much I'm reacting to "Life," I make what tickles my fancy. Practicing an instrument is another good way to freshen the mind because the Body enjoys it.


Some years ago I realized what I had to offer couldn't be expressed only verbally, but required tactile expression like song and dance and visionary stimulation borne of drawing. Once I was tormented by the ill effects financially that would accrue from living a multiple artistic life, but better I cope with balancing this life than pretend I ever meant to live any other...
https://www.createspace.com/5789419
https://www.createspace.com/5789419 OK y'all this is it: first book born of this writing I've shared with you here for six years. Grab it while I drop it like it's hot!

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