Creating Legitimate Work
Can a create person be legitimate on their own? Is success solely tied to big clients and recognizable content?
When I started in print comics I was under the impression I should make a zine. Zines are often small, hand-printed, and stapled together. They’re a punk-rock corner in the comics industry. Walking into my old comic shop changed that idea though. One of the guys at the shop, “It looks like you want to make a comic, go make a comic. Zines are little stapled together things no one will ever pay more than $2 for. No one takes them seriously.” To this clerk zines weren’t legitimate, and he saw that I wanted to be legitimate.
I hadn’t chewed on it much, but there’s always been a fight in creative industries over what’s legitimate, serious work and what isn’t. When I wanted to animate at the beginning of my college career I wanted to work in cartoons. Meanwhile, the world around me had a bigger outlook. They wanted Pixar, or Blizzard. They wanted big names and big work. In those circles, working somewhere with a dinner table name meant they made it. They were legit.
An ancient animation test from my early days.
As I moved into film, I felt a similar pressure between comedy and drama. I made a few absolutely ridiculous couple of no budget comedies and I was horrified I had been pigeonholed into making silly, stupid things. I was convinced I’d never be able to work on something serious and meaningful.
I didn’t realize until getting into comics that arguments over what counted and was considered real would permeate my career. For example, I’ve worked with something like 35 schools, each of these wrote me into grants from which I was paid, but that doesn’t seem to have the weight that would come with me writing 35 grants that I earned on my own. Champions, my comic, is entirely self-published. I’ve driven some 3,000 miles to get the book to retailers. But self-publishing has no standing compared to getting the book in at a publisher like Image Comics.
Legitimacy, or the lack thereof, is an uncanny thing. I’ve got buckets and buckets of work under me, but is it real? I’m moving into the last stretch of creative work for Champions before the entire focus is managing my colorist and getting the book out. The project gets more serious when I say that I’m managing someone. Then, it really starts to feel real when I can say I raised $10,000 to get the final print out. That’s serious dough. People don’t spit at ten grand.
Champions has been a serious story. It might have ludicrous parts like killer clowns and man-pigs, but it’s a violent drama. As the project inches toward its end, I long for things that are absurd or at the very least, unusual. It makes me wonder what the world is going to think of me when I come off something aggressive and go into anything with softer edges.
So what the hell is this legitimacy thing? When I was a spunky punk making trash comedy was I an illegitimate fraud? I’ll agree that those videos were garbage. But I do think it was legitimate in hindsight. I wrote scripts. I managed people. I edited film. Now, I manage an artist. Now, I write scripts. I pencil. I ink. I make, and I make, and I make. It’ll never matter if one person reads my comic, or if a million people do. Whether or not my work is serious, successful… legitimate… only relies on how I understand and respect my work.
In true rock and roll fashion, regardless of what you’re making, you should take a bit of punk-rock from the zine crowd. Make the thing you want to make and put it out into the world how you see fit. Legitimacy depends on how you defend your work.
“If you look good, and you talk well, people will swallow anything.” - The Great Criswell, Ed Wood 1994
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