Sort of an odd post to write, because the subject matter is a bit of a tightrope walk. I’ve been extremely fortunate with comics writing so far – I’ve had some incredible opportunities, and I think a large part of that has been that I’ve had a few people in the business who were further ahead in their careers than I, who decided to help me out in large or small ways. That could be anything from advice on the business to a critique to a publishing deal. There are a ton of people I could name, but my list is starting to get so long that I’d be in danger of skipping important people. Basically, my feeling is that you don’t get very far in comics if you don’t get the occasional leg up from someone higher up the ladder.
I think that it’s important to pay that forward – Haley Joel Osment and Kevin Spacey taught me that much, at least. (They also showed me a bit about telling believable stories to police detectives and a great deal about how to craft a successful performance as a sad, child-sized robot.)
(Yeah, that was an A.I. shoutout.)
Anyway, when I get asked to look something over, or to give advice on breaking in, or to talk about page rates or similar questions, I do my best to find time to answer. I did a long Q&A session over on reddit’s comic book board recently, which was great because I was able to reach thousands of people in the same time it would have taken me to explain all that stuff to just a single person over email or at a con. You can see that here, if you’re interested.
I’m very flattered whenever anyone seeks me out to ask a question – I’m really not that deep into the industry at this point, and I make a ton of mistakes and there’s still a lot I need to learn. I really enjoy helping people when I can. However, there’s also a point where my willingness to help someone out is exceeded by that person’s expectations of what I should be giving them.
This post has been triggered by one specific guy – he seems nice enough, and I am CERTAINLY not going to provide his name – who is very excited about his book and wants it out there in the world right now, right away. He friended me on Facebook and started popping up in the chat window from time to time to introduce himself and ask questions. I’m usually happy enough to do that, as I’ve mentioned, but it started to be that every time I logged into the thing (it’s a bad enough timesuck as it is without getting into FB chat conversations) he’d pop up and ask for more, more, more. He wanted to send me his book to review for comments – I said sure, go ahead. Then he asked for my mailing address and told me what he would charge me for the book.
I explained that I was already taking some time out of my schedule to read his book and see if I could give him any tips – that’s farther than I would usually go, in fact. I also tried to convey that you don’t ask a guy to do you a favor and then ask him to pay for the privilege. (See, this is where I’m starting to feel like a curmudgeon. I feel like my position is justified – I AM busy, and I WAS doing the guy a favor – I’m not Alan Moore or Axel Alonso, but I think I give decent comments on people’s stuff. On the other hand, he’s just a kid – he’s 21, he told me – who really loves his work and wants to see how he can get it into the world.) He agreed to just send me a PDF.
I read it. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but I don’t think it’s pro quality at this point. I do think he’ll get there if he keeps working on his craft. That’s basically what I told him – I gently explained that I thought his stuff has potential, and he should keep hammering away and eventually he’ll have his own book out on the stands (or the tablets, more likely.) I didn’t really give specific beat-by-beat comments, because I didn’t feel like he’s at a point where that would have helped. He needs to learn from experience – and if I’m being honest, I didn’t have the time to give a line-by-line critique.
He wasn’t thrilled. He said that someone else had told him that he should start over and redo the whole thing, and he thought they were so, so wrong, because he’d already put a lot of money and time into what he had. (What I probably should have said then, but didn’t, is that money and time don’t automatically equal quality – hello, Transformers movies.) In a delightful twist, he also asked me if now I would buy a copy.
I’ve been ignoring his emails and FB messages since then. Most recent one was to ask how he could get the book published at Image. The short answer is “you can’t, not in the form your book currently exists,” but I don’t want to crush the guy. What I want him to take from his interaction with me is a sense that he should just keep working and refining his talent. Instead, I suspect he has a general feeling of resentment, possibly doesn’t like me or my stuff anymore (if he ever did), and his original sense of entitlement hasn’t been whittled down to where it probably needs to be.
I feel kind of bad about the whole thing, like I mishandled it somehow, even though I recognize it’s possible that this fellow didn’t want to hear anything except that he’s the second coming of Mark Millar. He didn’t want a critique or advice, he wanted validation (and possibly to sell a copy of his book.) Instead, where it stands today is that I would never recommend his work to anyone (even if it does improve), because my interactions with him left a bad taste in my mouth. On his end, he may never do what he needs to do to get better. Bad result on both sides.
Bottom line – if you’re asking for help (in comics or otherwise), recognize that people have stuff to do, and be as gracious as gracious can be about your request. You want to leave people feeling good that they helped you out, not feeling like they wasted time they should have used for something else.
So, am I a jerk here? I don’t know. Most of the time, I love helping people out, and I’m not going to stop doing it. I have a feeling this guy was a one-off. Truth is, most comics people are awesome.
November 21, 2011 at 4:00 am
You definitely did the right thing here. As a professional software engineer I often have kids asking me for help with their computer science homework. That’s fine, and I’m happy to help them learn (time permitting), but very quickly it almost always turns into them asking me to just do their homework for them. They don’t want to understand how to do it, and they don’t want to even write up some code and have me point out to them where things could be improved – instead they just get mad and act as if I owe them something.
As someone who enjoys doing comics as a hobby I’m always happy to get advice from those who are seasoned in it, but I don’t really seek it out (aside from reading a few cartoonists’ blogs and such). For some reason there have been a few semi-professional (or at least professional-wannabe) cartoonists who have taken it upon themselves to tell me how terrible my stuff is but I still try to learn from what they’re telling me, even if they don’t have the best intentions in doing so. I also have a number of real-life cartoonist friends but I actually don’t like talking cartooning with them because I feel like I’m stealing their time.
November 21, 2011 at 4:32 am
It sounds like you’ve got basically the same philosophy I do. I still ask for advice on projects all the time – just last week I asked one of my favorite writers for some tips on a difficult sequence in something I’m working on. (He was cool about it, and gave me a succinct idea that was exactly what I needed to hear.) It’s part of the process.
Good luck with your stuff!
November 21, 2011 at 8:05 am
Charles, sounds like you tried to do right by the guy. Hopefully he’ll read this post and think twice about his attitude next time. However frustrating it is to have your work critiqued, if that’s what you ask for… Well, thats what you’re gonna get! You can of course choose to ignore the critizism, it if you don’t agree. Take the punches, move on. Say thank you. Try not to ask for anyones time or money, unless you really, really need it. And do your best to help others – Like you do, Charles, by writing up your experience like this. Like your tips on breaking in as well, except your words “grinding it out” reminds me of an 80′s Mtv show with dancing bikini-clad girls. How’s THAT gonna help me break in?
All the best, keep up the good work.
November 21, 2011 at 2:36 pm
I can’t think of a single scenario where dressing like a 1980s dancing girl WOULDN’T help you get ahead, Palle. It’s actually a big part of my 2012 marketing plan.
November 21, 2011 at 8:26 am
Not to put too fine a point on it…
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/09/harlan_ellisons.php
November 21, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Totally. I’m not at the point where I’ll never read people’s stuff – this fellow doesn’t represent my experiences with people overall – but I can see how people get there, eventually.
November 22, 2011 at 2:00 am
You’re not a jerk, Charles. Every one of us who works in the arts eventually has to face this, and very simply, you have to set your own limits.
One thing I’ve found useful: I do piecework for a couple of manuscript assessment companies (I’m a writer; mostly SF/fantasy) and the fact is that sitting down, reading through a full work closely enough to give back detailed comment is not only a very specific skillset – but one for which there is a market.
I get about $300 from one company to go through a novel-length MS, and write somewhere around 4000 words of critical breakdown. I read and write quickly, so that’s about a day’s work for me, if I get some uninterrupted time.
That’s a benchmark, as far as I’m concerned. Like you, I’m happy to answer casual inquiries, spend a bit of time helping a newcomer. Why not? I got help too. I’m still getting it. But once the newcomer starts to demand more, I gently point out that I actually get paid to do what they want done for free… and then I quote them a price.
That usually ends the discussion on a fairly friendly basis. And hell; on occasion, it puts me in the way of another $300 for beer money.
November 22, 2011 at 3:39 am
That’s extremely interesting. I didn’t realize that being paid for critical reading was a thing, but in retrospect it’s not surprising at all. People who can be critical in the most literal sense of that word (that is, highlighting both the good AND the bad in a work, so that the writer can learn their strengths and weaknesses) are rare. Most of the time, opinions on work seem to be either a quick gloss (e.g. “it’s great, loved it”) or mindless trolling (“sucked.”) Neither’s even a little bit helpful.
Even though I am
not
currently paid to read other people’s work, I think I might just steal your line one of these days, if you don’t mind.
November 22, 2011 at 2:40 am
Actually, “you can’t, not in the form your book currently exists” sounds like exactly the right thing to say. You’d save him a lot of trouble and disillusionment later on. But we find that being able to explain why you made that statement is helpful.
Let’s face it – some people are hopeless and don’t really want to know when they aren’t doing well enough or need to seriously think their approach. You cannot help those people. At all.
The people who deserve your energy really do want to know and really do want to do whatever it takes to turn out awesome work that gets awesome results. Those people are future top performers and will be glad you set them straight. They are not, however, the majority.
November 22, 2011 at 3:42 am
Can’t argue with a word you said here – probably should have laid it right out for him. Oh well. I’m sure he’ll get it from someone else down the road.
November 29, 2011 at 12:17 am
You’re not a jerk for how you handled it. Now that I’ve been reviewing comics for a few years I get a LOT of unsolicited DIY comics sent to me. All they want me to do is review it they say and they really get pissy when I tell them that they really don’t want me to publish that their comic isn’t great. That’s the problem: most of them don’t suck, but they’re at the 70th percentile. That isn’t “bad”, but the world doesn’t have time for the 70th percentile because consumers can choose from a world of possibilities at the 95th percentile and saturate their leisure time that way. I usually think it’s kindest to just tell them so they can redirect their energies into some where they might be awesome rather than waste their time clawing from the 70th percentile to the 75th. But that’s just me.
November 29, 2011 at 12:22 am
I agree with what you’re saying, although I think it depends on where they are in the process. If they’ve been spending years and years to move from the 65th to the 70th percentile, then yeah, find something else. But if they’re 19, this is their first attempt and they’re at that 70th percentile mark, then maybe it’s a different story.