2009 Outlook

A. David Lewis was nice enough to give me a “thumbs up” on his blog even though 2008 was a bit of a major let down for me (award nominations aside, the only thing that was newly published was my road journal on DCist). It’s not like I was trying – I was hustling Postcards II to no avail, the Sam Cooke book had some wonderful pages drafted by Nate Powell but life stalled that project several times (it seems like it’s kicking back up again, though), and this “ultra-secret, ultra-cool” project I was working on got delayed twice. Now it’ll be kicking up late next year but, honestly, I’m not going to believe it until I see a check.

And now it’s 2009 and I’m working on new things. I’m doing fun stuff, not worrying as much about book deals and big publishers. The money’s drying up anyway and I have a pretty stable day job that’ll always pay me more than comics will ever pay me anyway.

I have an 8-page story with Chris Piers in DC Conspiracy’s upcoming war anthology about the first time chlorine gas was used in Ypres Salient. I’ve become obsessed with Ypres and I’m going try to get an ongoing or a web comic moving that takes place in the region.

Robin and I are cowriting an 8-page comic for our wedding. Noel Tuazon’s drawing my story and Chris Piers is drawing Robin’s. It was a fun little book to work on and it allowed Robin and me to take many a wine-fueled stroll down memory lane together.

I’m also collaborating with Dale Rawlings on a really fun webcomic. It’s Jack Chick meets video game strategy guides. We’re doing a Jack Chick/Sims comic now to see if people dig it.

And, as I said, there’s supposedly some life in Sam Cooke again. I need to hook up with my cowriter, Chris Stevens, to get the full story on that one. We’ve been playing phone tag since Sunday.

I also have a couple of pitches out with various magazines and websites. I’m trying to move away from comics a bit, honestly. I’m finding that I enjoy comics more without the stress of payment and metrics. With articles for magazines and websites, however, I need the stress and payment in order to get them done.

If I make money in comics I make money in comics. I really don’t care about the money enough to chase it, though.

Labels: comics, news

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