A Year of Making Comics - Update #9
Added 2023-02-14 12:54:26 +0000 UTCWhat Are You Going Through
In my last update I'd mentioned that I'd read an advance copy of a Vince McMahon biography that I was hoping to create a cartoon review of that I could submit to The New York Times. Well, I hit a complete wall with that. I just haven't been able to generate an idea that I like. I'm thinking it's a situation where I want the $1000 fee from the NYT more than I want to say something specific about the book. So, I took a break and finished a draft of this other comic that I'd had percolating around in my head recently.
I hope you enjoy this piece. I would love to hear what you think. I am going to try submitting it to a few places to see if there's any interest in publishing it somewhere.
My kids have been on "Winter Break" since last Thursday, but once they're back at school tomorrow, I'm going to give a Vince McMahon comic another try. Yes, I want the fee, but also, I feel like I should be capable of coming up with something worthwhile. At this point I think I'd also very much like to know that I can solve that kind of a problem.
Comments
Thankyou for this comment, it’s very encouraging. How much “me” to put in a comic like this, but also a potential comic about Vince McMahon and the WWE seems to be a lot of what has to get figured out. I feel like it works pretty well here to put myself fairly front and center, it works somewhat thematically with the novel I’m talking about, which is a lot about sharing what we’re all personally dealing with. Summer Pierre’s work is great, I have really enjoyed her comic essays along these lines as well
Mike Dawson
2023-02-14 14:10:13 +0000 UTCAwesome, thankyou for the comment. I have heard second-hand that the story with Vince McMahon keeps getting wilder. I just need to figure out something I can say about it in a very quick comic. I’m mainly thinking how it’d be fun to draw lots of colorful wrestling figures from all the different time periods.
Mike Dawson
2023-02-14 14:06:13 +0000 UTCThis is great, Mike, and makes me want to pull that Melissa Border book of the shelf where it's been sitting since I bought it, and the Nunez one, too, which I did the same with. I've had a hard time reading fiction since the pandemic. I feel like something in my brain broke. It's not like I'm reading a lot of nonfiction either, though I'm somehow more able to read personal essays and even memoir now. Mostly poetry though. Something short for my monkey mind. I so relate to those early AM wakings and worryings about all. the. things. I really love personal review essays like this--Summer Pierre has done a couple--one on a book about Sylvia Plath and another about a book of letters that Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West wrote to each other that ran in The New Yorker. I was extra happy to see this because I was approached to do a "graphic review" for a poetry journal--it'll be a whole issue of them--and I'm in the connecting phase for it and struggling with how much "me" to put in it. Anyway, it's great. I am certain someone is going to snap it up. Thank you for sharing it here.
Susanne Reece
2023-02-14 13:06:37 +0000 UTCThe Vince story keeps getting more bananas. He just took back control of WWE and his daughter quit. But I agree with you about sharing your worries with others by reading. There's something comforting about knowing we're not in it alone. That others feel the same kind of ennui or longing or claustrophobic sense of panic.
Melissa Fowler
2023-02-14 12:57:55 +0000 UTC
