I'm going to be published sometime this year. It's a watershed moment for me, as I've really only puttered around in independent anthologies and small press fanzines for the most part since they're more accommodating to someone who's got a work schedule that reads "when I can be arsed", but this year, Com.X will publish Babble, and the last few weeks I have been editing the pages already in the bag and - not unsurprisingly for something over a hundred pages long and drawn by someone with a drinking problem and ADD over a four year period which included a still-ongoing brush with RSI, arse bleeding of a magnitude that went from funny to disturbing and which now requires surgery because dignity is overrated, two deaths in the immediate family, a cancer scare, a house move, two computers dying on me, and my boring GP giving me the "stop drinking or die" speech while wearing the ugliest tie I have ever laid eyes on - I came to notice that the pages are wildly inconsistent and I have to grudgingly admit I am just not quite there in terms of my craft. So with that realisation that others far outstrip my own ability in creating comics and how much I have to learn, I have to take the only sensible step and resent Alan Moore. I don't think I'll improve much beyond the point I'm at now, so I may as well slag him off rather than concentrating on upping my own game.
Oh, I also can't publish any screen grabs, either, until I get the book finished proper, at which point I shall be taking a break from drawing, using the computer, playing videogames or even using remote controls to see if I can make myself go insane - or rather to see if my RSI will bloody well fuck off for two whole minutes so I can have day without pain, though if you really want to see the final few pages from Babble, you can probably grab a free .CBR of the book from a torrent site two hours after it goes on sale. In the meantime, I have to pad out the blog with text in place of the screen grabs, which means I have to come up with something to say. Thank Christ I hate Alan Moore now - I won't even have to make sense or be consistent.
That's a wretched stroke of ill-luck, Mr B. Particularly that *&!$ tie.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on your success!! I shall be buying a full-price, real-world, unbootlegged copy.
And as for that Alan Moore, he can ...
You operate in the comics sphere, Colin - how can you begrudge a man who shares your love of beards?
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