I'm going to take a real crack at this, seriously. I haven't done stuff like this since Myspace (anyone still got their profile?), and even then it wasn't that serious.
But anywho.
Where to start? I can go as far back as the beginning of college, or just last week. I'll stick with last week.
For the past four months I've been slaving away at what will be my absolute FIRST comic book, legit shit no doubt. It's called Periphery, and I've been tight-lipped about the details, purposefully, as a means of maintaining intrigue, and to not put too much out there should I fail, that way no one cares. But the book is indeed a HUGE, personal success; the type of attention it'll garner obviously depends on how well I promote it, which brings me to my first dilemma:
MOCCA!
The Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art hosts this annual shindig in the ol' NYC that allows for indie comic artists, and just about anyone alike, to have an awesome venue to promote your shit. I was brought on to the idea by my friend Katarina who resides in this great metropolitan, and sure enough I got the ball rolling; this was last November.
Time presses on and I finish all 24 pages of Issue One. I drew, colored, lettered, and created this damn thing from scratch ( yes, I am indeed fucking proud of it). Elated at my determination to finish this thing, all that remained was for the pieces to fall into place to make this dream a reality; money being the common denominator here. Here are the factors involved: funds to cover the cost of printing, the ticket to New York for April, and other random occurrences that would, well, occur. My first mistake was betting all my eggs on my tax return funds to cover everything, and subsequently, the second mistake was not filling it myself.
The cost of printing was covered; I'm a delivery driver for a sandwich shop, and I had to cover shifts left vacant by a recently let-go driver at the time. So I worked and worked, with a shift or two everyday (I literally mean everyday) for two weeks, nonetheless the tips started accumulating and aided in my savings. Keep in mind, the kicker here is that the printing requires a FULL MONTH of process, print, and shipping to your doorstep, so my window to actually pay for the printing was shrinking drastically.
The first domino fell when my car gave out and required repair (I'm a delivery driver, no car means unemployment), I dropped my entire paycheck on bills (which was originally planned prior to my car woes) and my savings went into repair costs and overruns of bills that had yet to be processed. So that fucking sucked.
The next domino that coincided with the first, was that the guy filing my taxes had only recently processed it, and it would take two weeks for the money to get to me. That's two weeks too late. Ok, so there goes that.
And the train-wreck of shit that followed suit came in the news that I was getting far less than I had earned the previous year, which means that a plane ticket this late in the game was out of the question.
4 months of planning and perseverance fell apart in a weekend.
So MOCCA didn't work out this year, and most of you might say "hey buddy, at least you got a comic out of it right?" Yes, you're correct.
And what else is there for me to do but continue onward and finish the rest of the issues, plan for other conventions and start saving now? Again, you'd be correct.
But since this is my blog, I get to bitch and moan for all who care to listen.
I really do fucking hate circumstances, this was such a complete clusterfuck of circumstances that I can't bring myself to imagine the shit luck that I'm plagued with. I had everything ready to go, and all it took was one fell swoop.
I put a lot of work into this thing, but I very much still plan to print the book and do what I can to promote it here in FL. I've yet to speak to the legendary Tate to have the honor of having the book for sale in his shop. I decided that only after the book has been sent to the printer that I'd ask; no sense in bringing it up to him before that. I really wanted this to happen, it would not only be a huge boost in self-confidence, but also be a great promotional opportunity for me and my art. Yeah yeah there'll be others, but man...
So yeah, there's that. Thanks for reading this, it works for what I need it for, for now. As soon as I familiarize myself with this blog thingy, I plan on posting up like teaser pics and shit of Issue One nearing the time of the book's release, and any other goodies that i'm involved with (I wish I can show you that stuff) . So stay posted, and here's to the future!
Cheers.
