A Year of Making Comics - Update #5

My comic essay, "Orwell Was Right" was published today over at The Nib. This is of course the piece that I serialized here as I wrote it. That was a satisfying way to make a comic, sharing it here as I went, then going back and making some revisions and changes before finding a home for it.

As I've covered here also, last week was also the week that my cartoon review of the Dan Kois novel "Vintage Contemporaries" was published at The New York Times. 

In terms of writing cartoon essays and getting them published, this has been a pretty good month. There are always ways things could have been better. I didn't realize that the NYT piece was going to be print only, I'd assumed they'd publish it online, and that way it'd be far more shareable. I posted the content on my newsletter blog, but that's absolutely not the same thing as it living on the NYT website and getting shared by their social media accounts etc. The New York Times book review twitter account has 5.5 million followers. Mine has 5 thousand. So, if I'm being honest, that was a bummer. I have another book in mind to potentially write a review of that I can submit to the New York Times that I hope they accept, and this time at least I'll have an idea of how things will go. Basically, I have to encourage everybody to pick up the actual paper on the day of (assuming I'm so fortunate to have them want to publish a second piece of mine). 

What's Next?

I'm trying this week to flesh out a concept I've got for a new middle-grade graphic novel. This kind of work is hard for me. I feel like the whole day fritters away and at the end of it, all I have is one nothing-looking sketch and a page full of notes, but I know that isn't exactly everything that's actually happening. Not to get too woo-woo about writing, but on these kinds of days, I'm doing the work of getting my head around a story, and it can be a challenge getting things moving. I'll go back to it tomorrow, I'll keep picking at the basic plot, it'll start falling into shape little by little. This drawing is nothing much to look at, but it's further along than where I was when I started. I feel frustrated and a little mopey, but I'm going to go for a jog now, which is good for continuing to think things out regarding this book, and also for shaking off some of those feeling-like-I'm-getting-nowhere blues.

'Zines

In case you missed it, last week I sent my new 'zine out to the printer's. They should be back to me by January 30th, meaning I'll be sending them out to everyone over that first week of February. Thanks again for your support!!

Mike