A Comic About Making Comics (#3 in a series)

Regarding panel 4: Paying a sensitivity reader or an expert on a subject to go over your work is not something the average cartoonist can do -- but if you happen to be working on a project that weighs heavily on stuff you're not personally involved with/knowledgeable about, well, there's a reason professional reader and research assistants exist. If you're feeling out of your depths, hit the books and/or get some help. At least find out how out of your comfort zone you might be. If you have a friend willing to help, that's great. I asked Zack Davisson to go over our scripts for Occupied Territory for notes regarding Yokai and related material. It never hurts to have another pair of eyes on your stuff, especially when you want to make sure you've got things right and are acting in good faith towards your subject. Don't wing important stuff.

Regarding panel 6: Knowing your limitations is obviously shorthand for recognizing your personal boundaries. It's hard to turn down work, and we think we can write most anything, because we're writers, right? For me, when I was asked to pitch a Black Panther 2099 series in 1993 (or 1992?), I came to two conclusions after giving it a lot of thought. One, this is a lot of worldbuilding work to just hand over to Marvel for a page rate and twelve issues. Two, this is also a lot of worldbuilding for a young middle-class Jewish white kid from Brooklyn to attempt. The friggin' high tech would throw me for a loop to the library for months, let alone the cultural and racial elements. 

Did I at least think about it? Yeah, of course I did. Your brain wants to go places. You got offered a Marvel gig. You're a writer. Not long after being asked I had a twelve issue arc plotted out about a granddaughter of T'Challa, angry and resentful about his abandoning Wakanda to run around with the Avengers all the time, who nevertheless takes on the Panther role to defend Wakanda from a white nationalist movement led by The White Skull, a cyborg Red Skull/Dr. Phosphorus kind of mash-up (iirc). I had callbacks to old villains, old continuity, I had new power structures, political intrigue, villains, cameos, blah blah blah. I even sketched some stuff out. 

However.

I liked the plot, and I had some interesting ideas, but plot isn't enough. Ideas aren't enough. I didn't have the feel for the material, the knowledge to take on a 12 issue arc and make Wakanda a real and honest place. I couldn't write those characters properly, beyond the usual comic book white guy attempt at it. Would I have written "Sweet Christmas!"-type stuff? No. But I wouldn't have done it right. Even if I had had more writing experience at the time. I was not the writer for the job. I'm still not. At best, I'd have written honest, earnest but cringey white guy 1993 comic book-style stuff, with the old Marvel callbacks and nostalgia being the only things that actually rang true. Because that's what I knew -- Stan and Jack and Roy Thomas's Wakanda. White guy Wakanda (very white guy, when you have Roy the Boy in there). Comic book stuff. Trying to write about an African culture, even a fictional one with vibranium mines, was -- and is -- beyond me. Believe me, it killed me to turn down that gig, not that I'm saying I would have gotten the job for sure if I pitched. But it wasn't right for me, and I wasn't right for it. 

I always wondered if Marvel editorial came to the same conclusion I did, because the series never actually happened. I don't even know if they went ahead and actually got pitches for it. It was very probably for the best that it didn't happen. Wakandans in the future saying "What the Shock!" and shit. Oy gevalt.

In closing: Am I saying we should never try to write outside our world, our bubble, our experiences? No, I'm not saying that. But I think we should know when our writer's eyes are too big for our stomach. Or something like that. It's good to stretch yourself, but you can stretch yourself too thin. For me, for that gig, it was the right decision to say no. There are things I can't draw well, and there are things I can't write well. You do the best you can.

Anyway, the main thing is, look stuff up so you don't look like a goddamned fool.