2024 is practically finished.
If you are reading this in December of 2024 you already know the end of the year is less than a week away. So what happened? Mainly what consumed me this year was putting out five issues of Toxic Avenger for Ahoy Comics. I had a lot of fun illustrating this book. It was well received and they would like me to do a monthly book. Hurray!... except I'm an adult now. The last time I did a monthly book was 1995-ish. I was about 28 yrs old, married, 2 cats, and not many friends. I didn't drink alcohol much, I didn't go to bars or clubs, I just worked.
My day would start around 8 or 9 in the morning. I'd drink coffee and talk to my roommate Stefan about stories that he had written or an idea I had for a story. He'd then go to work and I would grab my paper and pencils and show up at the new coffee shop to draw out the next few pages. I'd have more coffee and draw at least two pages by lunch time. I'd get food in me around that time, run any errands, and then start inking. I was penciling a 24 pg Vertigo book, "Animal Man" at the time. I averaged 6 pages a week. I was doing finishes for Marvel Comics Presents as well. That was an 8 pg story and I averaged about 4pgs a week. It usually involved re-drawing everything the breakdown guy drew. I'm surprised he still talks to me! Sometimes I would get an extra cover or pinup to do. Looking back I'm flummoxed at how I managed to do that schedule. But it was mainly because I didn't know that many people in NYC at that point. I had no social life... probably a good reason why I ended up divorced and one cat.
I have struggled to get an entire issue finished in 2 months on this stretch with Toxic Avenger. I have too many awesome friends and way less energy than I had in '95. I really want to do the monthly, but I think it will be more of a month-and-a-halfly. And that's if things are going well. I have the responsibility of a homeowner since my GF owns an apartment now. That means there are interruptions that always happen when I have the least time to deal with them.
This reminds me of an observation I've had over the years. People with long careers tend to be pretty stable. Good health, not moving from place to place, one divorce or less. They don't drink heavily or do lots of drugs. I've met a lot of these artists at the Society of Illustrators. The social ones are very cool for the most part. Why wouldn't you be? Most of the people you deal with are artists or creative in some way. You get to make art and people give you money for it and you get to make more! It's a rather enjoyable occupation. You just have to learn how to create the environment that you are happiest to work in.
The hiccup in my journey was the more than 25 years doing editorial illustration. It paid so much better than comic books did and with about a quarter of the effort. I could get my work done , get paid, and have leisure time. I still took on too much work because I never knew if it would end so I had to say "yes" to anything that came up. At least that's what my thinking was. Don't do that if you can help it, it's not good for marriages.
Editorial illustration for me began drying up around 2016 or so. I started having more of a social life as there was less work. I started picking up comic book work here and there. My friend Ann Nocenti, a writer I worked with at Marvel Comics Presents, asked me if I wanted to do a short story, then another, and next thing I knew I was doing a lot more. I knew I had too many friends and an exciting and very satisfying social life to be doing comics full time. So here I am in 2024, a full time comics artist again. Let's see what next year throws at me!
Also, I can't figure out how to upload images to this post. I'll remember this as a parting shot from 2024. Not from LJ, as I'll eventually figure this out and I will hold them blameless.