Coming Up in Comics The comic book industry can be hard to love sometimes. But that being said, I love reading and making comics so much and believe in its ability to an accessible way to tell and absorb stories. Community is key when it comes to comics. Meeting other creators that are at your same level and coming up with them is something that was invaluable to me. It can be hard to explain the industry to someone who doesn’t understand it so having people around who get what’s going on can be such a relief. And having people that mutually support and uplift each other goes a long way. In addition to having a community that I could count on for support, it was also where I really started to thrive storytelling wise. In the Toronto comics community, there’s a small press publisher called TO Comix. They’re best known for their anthologies like the Toronto Comics Anthology where each volume features a wide variety of stories by an array of creators; the only stipulation is that it has to be set within Toronto. My first ever-published comic was within the fourth volume of the series, Yonge at Heart. It was a story about how my Oma came to live in Toronto and how she met my Opa. It was deeply personal and allowed me to explore my roots. The next year, the publisher was looking for a Lead Editor to oversee the next volume of the series. I applied and wound up getting the position. I don’t think that I’d ever saw myself as becoming an editor but it quickly became something that I fell in love with. It’s rewarding in a completely different way than writing and allowed me to help others hone and refine their story concepts. It launched a new aspect of my creative career that I hadn’t imagined for myself and I loved it. None of that would’ve been possible without the community there to help me find my voice. I went on to work on more short stories and fell in love with experimenting with different genres, methods, processes, and more. It’s notoriously hard to tell a good short story and make it satisfying…it’s even harder to do it with comics. A 10-page prose story is not the same as a 10-page comic story. It’s vastly different and requires some practice. You have to learn to walk before you can run and the same thing goes for storytelling. Walking is the short story and learning how to craft something that is appealing to readers on a smaller scale. And running is a long form project, whether that’s doing something serialized like you’d see at Marvel or DC or a big graphic novel. I still write short stories even though I have a few graphic novels under my belt now. Learning new techniques and testing them is far easier in smaller doses and allows me to continue to grow as a creator. That’s another thing that I think we all need to remember as we move forward: moving forward means growth and adapting to the world around you. It means adapting as a writer, a collaborator, and more. So finding new ways to reach your audience is vital to a lasting, thriving career. Nothing is a guaranteed formula for success but at the very least, I find that it helps to keep things interesting for me as I go on. But the hustle never really stops. The community I’ve built around me is my network, support, and sounding board. We all had to hustle to find our projects, and none of it means becoming an overnight success. Comics is such a long haul medium and while again, it is so wonderful in so many ways, it has to be something you love if you want to stick with it. Paranorthern: And the Chaos Bunny A-Hop-Calypse |
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