Old Sketchbook Page, Old Thoughts, Old Bad Habits

I barely touch the few, old, yellowing sketchbooks I have.

I have never been much of a sketchbook-type cartoonist. Part of the reason is because I hated having a space to see my many disappointing and failed attempts at drawing. Another is that for many years, I mainly did roughs on loose pieces of typing/printer paper. When I was done with those, I could throw them out (or, nowadays, recycle them). Some of them still exist in my old, yellowing files that are stacked in my studio closet -- old Milk & Cheese scenarios and business, old Hectic Planet material, old pitches that never went anywhere or eventually got folded into Beasts of Burden or Blackwood. I have to go through those someday and see what can still be used, what can be recycled (trash-wise), and what can sit around for one weird, personal reason or another. I have a feeling most of it will get trashed, but some of it might be interesting to scan for the Patreon before banishment to File 13.

If you go through my sketchbooks -- and you can't, ha ha -- you'll find many instances of me writing insulting notes about my work, self-recrimination and boomerang character assassinations. This was especially common when I was feeling depressed or in despair, when the self-loathing was set to 11. That's not healthy behavior, clearly, and is something I've been better at not indulging in. The same goes for not calling myself "'stupid" or "worthless", et al, because when you do that, it reinforces the negative self-image we might have of ourselves. I'm generally better at giving advice of this sort than acting upon it, but I've been fairly decent with this particular brand of self-destructive behavior.

I'm not sure why I got on this topic, I just wanted to drop a quick post because I'm going to be busy on a cover and more doctor stuff this week. I was supposed to see Godzilla Minus One with friends Thursday but that isn't happening, but hopefully I'll still be able to hang out that night. I need a night out. If you're nodding your head in agreement, I hear you. Well, obviously I'm not hearing you nod miles away. I'm just typing positive crap. Ha ha.

There's no self-hate on the old sketchbook page pictured here. There is a character from a failed pitch for a superhero thing I wanted to do called Bastard Squad. Her name was Tomboy, and of course a someone had a Tomboy character or three in the time since I designed her. That's always happening, you have to expect to "lose" names and concepts as the hive mind gets to them first.

My brain still generates superhero ideas fairly often. So many of us comics nerd kids have a superhero thing lurking in the brain. I've always created them, as a kid, as a Champions RPG player, as a wannabe Marvel artist, doing Kid Blastoff for Disney Adventures, doing the odd Marvel or DC comic, and always and forever as a card-carrying nerd. Superhero ideas constantly get sparked.

Fight-Man got a lot of my superhero brain out of me, just creating reams of stupidly-named and awkwardly motivated villains and heroes. I can never take them completely seriously anymore, there has to be some humor in there somewhere or I start rolling my eyes and it seeps into the script. Bastard Squad was an earnest superhero thing with outlandish characters, a Philip K. Dick element and an exploration of my interests in escapist entertainment simmering underneath. But mostly, I just wanted to create and design lots and lots of oddball characters and have them fight and interact with one another. It would have been less "stupid" than Fight-Man, but along those lines of just throwing a ton of shit at the wall.

(PRO TIP: The trick is to not have the comic run out of steam an issue or two after you introduce all the cool characters you've designed and sat on for years. That's where a lot of indy comic attempts at "universes" fail -- all the fun is over after the Seven Samurai are introduced and team up. You have to have something for your Seven Samurai to do and make it matter.)

As usual, I typed a lot without planning to, on topics I had no idea I was going to talk about. Haven't typed one of these out in a while, I guess my brain's churning a bit more than usual today.

I'm going back to the drawing board, if Winky will move off my chair. I'm working on a cover, which I've re-roughed out and I'm really happy with the way it's going and trying not to get stressed over possibly screwing it up. You gotta lay off yourself sometimes and just do what you gotta do. I guess what's going on is that I'm super anxious and I'm working through it by posting this ramble.

Hey, whatever works. Hope it works! Hope you like the sketchbook page. It's old! I'll never get to do the "Dot and Dash" comic mentioned on it! These things happen! it's okay!

Whew. 

More soon, later.