A Kind of Papery Film

Whenever I read about people who write graphic novels they always refer to the fulfilment of a childhood ambition.  They all seem to have grown up subsisting on food, water and comics, they have fond memories of the owners of their local comic-stores, and all seem to have attended every comic convention and club since Gutenberg’s 1452 invention of the death-ray.   

Well, I have some confessions to make:

1.  My measly graphic novel collection consists of 4 books I like (including one manga series and a Calvin and Hobbes collection), and about 12 books that are in between average and dreadful, and I acquired my first volume after I decided to draw one myself, no more than 5 years ago.

2.  I have never spoken to anyone in a book store of any kind, or ever attended any comic convention, club or online forum, largely because the thought of people who like comics fills me with equal parts fear and apathy.

And finally, the most shameful and strange of them all:

3.  As a kid I don’t remember ever saying that I wanted to draw comics.

I will now attempt to offer justification for these crimes against both comics and logic.

I do not love Spiderman, but I also don’t hate the guy.  

So many people who draw graphic novels seem to be fiercely defending traditional superheroes, or fervently distancing themselves from such base origins.  I just don’t feel that I have anything to do with the history of popular comics. 

Spiderman is also a film.  If you’re a film-maker does that mean you had to either love or hate it? Must you spend your life either devoted to it, or desperately trying to escape from relation to it?

Of course not. 

Different films are made for different people.  And the only reason that I want to make a graphic novel is that I like the idea of a kind of papery film that a person can make on their own. 

It’s true that there are so few graphic novels I like, and even less that I respect both intellectually and artistically (Calvin & Hobbes, why you so good?).  

I’m just writing for me, and any clones of me that happen to be out there.  Everyone who writes is.  The fact that I feel nothing for almost every comic book in the world, I believe is actually a positive thing.  If you like everything, how can you bring anything new to the field?

I love classical guitar music, it all sounds so great to me.  Every piece is a delight.  Due to this I could never write guitar music, because I don’t have the ability to critically deconstruct a piece and discern between functional and brilliant guitar music. 

I don’t like many graphic novels, which is why I’m not copying out something that already exists.  There are so many things I find devastatingly wonderful that I want to bring to the field.

As to why I don’t feel inclined to seek out conventions, clubs and other ways to interact with people who read comics; well, they’re a creepy bunch.  I dislike most people, and only a few of the people I like read books, or practice any kind of art.

According to Myers-Briggs the exact opposite of my personality is a type referred to as “The Artist”. 

Apparently my type is mostly populated with scientists, and that actually sounds pretty good to me.  My dream is to spend my days working in a silent office of anti-social people, ignoring one another and getting copious amounts of ridiculously complicated work done. 

Growing up I never said I wanted to be a comic-book artist.  I was surprised when I realised this, but actually I always did want to draw comics, I just never felt like I would get to because I didn’t know any adults who did art. 

When people used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up I answered with what I thought was most likely.  I don’t remember thinking about what kind of job I would work, or what awesome things I would discover or invent, because this would be imagining the real world, and I only ever imagined everything else.

Perhaps the one thing that unifies all of my childhood ambitions was the desire to make things.

 

I built tree-houses, cubby-houses, forts with walls of rocks and a vast arsenal of stick weapons.  I carved dwarf faces into tree-stumps, built strange cabinets and devices for my room, and pioneered the concept of the trampoline-board.  My dad had a box of timber off-cuts which I constructed into animals (the giraffe with a spring for a neck was a fan-favourite, the fan being my grandmother), I made a decent approximation of a pool table out of wood and old carpet and I created at least one, elegantly planed longsword with a proper hilt. I painted figurines, my face and various pictures on both paper and furniture.  I made assorted sounds that bordered on music, assisted with theatre productions and puppet shows, and I made drawings.  Oh my god, so many drawings.

I wasn’t good at drawing as a kid, I just spent a lot of time making pictures. 

When I was very young my older sister did a beautiful drawing of Bert from Sesame Street, which my parents framed.  I was so jealous that my dad consented to frame a scribbly piece of nonsense I produced for the occasion.

Some people will tell you that a child’s scribbles are genius in their own way, but those people are idiots.  When a child fails to tie their shoes properly, it’s not heralded as a brilliant piece of performance art.  The intention of the child was to successfully tie their shoes, and my intention was to create an illusion within the page of a three-dimensional space containing some kind of fantastical beast.  With enough attempts I started to be able to achieve some rudimentary form of this, and I just went from there. 

When I really think about it, I didn’t just idolise being praised as a skilful drawer, I genuinely felt a desire to create new things. 

One time at church I spent hours working on an elaborate picture of a giant basketball factory.  A girl came over and said that it was a nice picture.  Genuinely embarrassed, I folded up the paper and mumbled that it was a map, not a picture. 

I’m sure there was plenty of ego involved, as there always is in being shy, but there's always been another side, where the ego is about evoking a universe from nothing.

In highschool I started my first comic.  It was a hilariously inept rip-off of Evangelion. 

Actually, that’s not true at all.  I wonder why I wrote that.  The comic was a great effort, and I worked so hard on it and taught myself so much about drawing and writing and stories and life.  

A page of which I unashamedly submit before you.

(It's actually a page from the second iteration of this comic, done slightly later, yet still a million years ago, before humans invented foreheads.)

Every time I finished a page I would bring my folder to school and get people to read it.  Sometimes they would be genuinely keen to find out what happens next, which I found really magical. 

One fateful day a young Kyle Neideck read my latest page, (wherein it turned out that the demon attack was an orchestrated test all along), and he described it as “A plot-twist worthy of Triple-X” (referring to an abysmally stupid film of the time which starred Vin Diesel as some kind of skateboarding vigilante).   

It was a fantastically crushing response, to be sure, but he was absolutely correct.  I could see that I’d let myself down, and that I could do better, which I did.

Ah Kyle, a fairly enigmatic human being, he went on to teach me more about art than I’d thought there was to know.

That about wraps up the early years of my graphically novel career, or whatever other crap I was originally talking about.

Fin.