Not Hulking out -- carefully, deliberately, thoughtfully + patiently mountain-climbing.
I can tell [type-of-therapy] is working because I'm on the cusp of finishing a whole comic issue I brained myself.
... aaand apparently my choice of comic conventions has an iffy reputation, so chances of overnight awesomeness are slim-to-none. I am not deterred.
The struggle is thus: if I polish and craft a long-held independent idea for an independent publisher, at the end of the day I'm still writing about Bluperman from Blypton in a way that won't get me litigated.
"Comics are American myth," I tell anyone who asks [like my brother!]
New Greek myths are not being belched up on a daily basis. Nobody writes about Shmercules from Shmolympus because there's a "Hercules" from "Olympus." The sandbox has toys in it, they're eighty years old and internationally recognized, and wholly the property of a commercial and corporate enterprise. Woe betide anyone who touches my 'Zeus(TM)' action-figure, because NOT YOURS. NEIN.
Hercules is copyrighted, registered and has a team of vicious lawyers.
It isn't about making an international symbol out of a guy named Flickingtoad who wears glasses and would be bowled over by a stiff breeze if he weren't more powerful than anyone ever in the history of anything -- I am over that impulse. It's about telling good stories with the tools already in place, which are locked behind a laser-grid in a toolshed rigged to explode if you look funny at it.
I'll finish the issue I'm proud of. Maybe even keep writing that story on a back-burner. But I have to walk this mindset over to a knock-off original idea -- must. keep. climbing. And it is hard work.
<3,
-- C.
... aaand apparently my choice of comic conventions has an iffy reputation, so chances of overnight awesomeness are slim-to-none. I am not deterred.
The struggle is thus: if I polish and craft a long-held independent idea for an independent publisher, at the end of the day I'm still writing about Bluperman from Blypton in a way that won't get me litigated.
"Comics are American myth," I tell anyone who asks [like my brother!]
New Greek myths are not being belched up on a daily basis. Nobody writes about Shmercules from Shmolympus because there's a "Hercules" from "Olympus." The sandbox has toys in it, they're eighty years old and internationally recognized, and wholly the property of a commercial and corporate enterprise. Woe betide anyone who touches my 'Zeus(TM)' action-figure, because NOT YOURS. NEIN.
Hercules is copyrighted, registered and has a team of vicious lawyers.
It isn't about making an international symbol out of a guy named Flickingtoad who wears glasses and would be bowled over by a stiff breeze if he weren't more powerful than anyone ever in the history of anything -- I am over that impulse. It's about telling good stories with the tools already in place, which are locked behind a laser-grid in a toolshed rigged to explode if you look funny at it.
I'll finish the issue I'm proud of. Maybe even keep writing that story on a back-burner. But I have to walk this mindset over to a knock-off original idea -- must. keep. climbing. And it is hard work.
<3,
-- C.