This Week's Inks, and a Publishing Story

In the images above: many arguing heads, some scenery, and some pencil-inked inked pages. I started using a Winsor & Newton Series 7 sable brush (with Dr Martins ink). It's been sitting in my toolkit for years, and I was too scared to break it out because A) it's expensive and B) what if I really liked it? Then I would be tied to the messy work of getting ink out maintaining expensive brushes and cleaning them etc etc. The bad news is I DO really like it, oh no. I see why people swear by them.

Anyway, pictures. First, Alexandra discovers a long dagger, or a small sword, with elaborate decoration. She has never seen it before. What could be its significance? In the first panel of that page, I must have spaced out, because I put Mom's head/hair on DD's body. Oh well. We'll fix it in post.

I'm self-conscious about having so many panels of characters "just" "acting" at each other. I feel like the comics medium lets us do more, and by choosing to emphasize all this emoting and interaction, I'm using only part of the toolkit. Mike Mignola would never do this. But on the other hand, Naoki Urasawa did it a whole bunch in Asadora. Perhaps I worry that I am choosing to approach the scene more as an animator would, with a character animator's thirst for acting and character expression, instead of approaching it like an illustrator or a comics artist, which would be more ideal. But this does feel natural, and I look forward to drawing these scenes, so perhaps I should just stop wringing my hands and be happy with my choices ("Perhaps I Should Stop Wringing My Hands: The Tony Cliff Story").

That alleyway shot is a reference back to one of my dad's old photos from Greece. I'm excited to see how it comes together in colour.

Then we have a few big panels from the "children's book" sequence of the chapter, returning to the fountain and the gnarled tree supported by columns. I'm leaving these images as you see them here, "just" pencil. No ink. I'll colour them using a thin watercolour effect. Working on them, I wondered why I stopped "inking" in pencil. I really do like the way they look, and I think my pencil-inking skills are better for all the work I've put into line control using pens and brushes and ink. (Context: the first three DD books were all "inked" like this—solely using Prismacolor Ebony pencils. No ink.)

And here's an image of a kite that I thought might come in handy somewhere.

A PUBLISHING STORY.

I think I promised I would tell the story of how DD found a publisher. The dates are almost certainly wrong, but the cause-and-effect is probably in the right order.

2002-ish: I'm in Capilano College's two-year Commercial Animation program. Classmates introduce me to illustration forums online. Specifically: Shane Glines' Drawing Board. Through the act of just drawing and posting fun junk, I meet Kazu Kibuishi, among many other people I still consider friends.

2004: For the first time in several years, I go into a comic shop. It was a bright, pleasant place in San Francisco. I buy Mignola's AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD. It makes me like comics again. Around the same time, I read HORATIO HORNBLOWER and fall in love with the Napoleonic War period.

2004-2005-ish: Kazu goes and forms the Flight Forums. I join. People are making comics, it seems, just for fun, including webcomics. Also, Kazu says "hey we're making a published comics anthology. You want to do a comic for it?" and I say "yes," mostly just for fun and for the experience. I submit a comic called OLD OAK TREES.

2006: I do the first drawings of a character that I will eventually call "Delilah Dirk." When I picked this name, I did so only half-seriously. Because I was in my mid-20s, I did not think anything would come of it, and simultaneously believed it would absolutely dominate the media landscape. I draw the first few pages of a comic, too, but sort of leave them aside. When I throw them up on the Flight Forums—just to say "hey here is a thing I started but will probably not finish," Doug Holgate says, "you gotta keep doing this comic," so I do. It doesn't take much.

Looking back through emails, I guess I made DELILAH DIRK AND THE TREASURE OF  CONSTANTINOPLE prior to going to my first SDCC, though I don't understand the cause and effect there. Anyway, that seems to have happened between 2006 and 2007.

2007: OLD OAK TREES is nominated for a Will Eisner award. What-The-Actual-Fuck, I think. As a teen, I'd read about Eisner awards in WIZARD magazine. I knew they were a big deal. Now my name was on a ballot next to Stan Lee's. I would not likely win, but I was in my mid-twenties, so I was secretly open to the possibility that I might. In the event that I did win, it was inconceivable that I not be there to accept. So I go to my first San Diego Comic Con (where the awards are held). I meet many of the other Flight crew. I sell a few copies of TREASURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

2008: THE TREASURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE is nominated for a Will Eisner award. My head spins, I fall over, I die. It does not win, but Samuel L Jackson reads my name out during the awards ceremony, and for me that's basically as good as an award.

Flight Friend Raina Telgemeier says "hey do you want to come to waffle breakfast" and because I love waffles, I say "yes I love waffles" and I go, because I think it will be fun (and waffles). Besides having good waffles, I meet several people who I would get to know a lot better in the coming years, including First Second's Gina Gagliano.

At one of these SDCCs, I also meet Kazu's film agent, Nick Harris.

2010: All the other Flight folks are making graphic novels. I figure, well, I guess I should make one as well. Kazu puts me in touch with his agent, who tells me I'll need to have a finished book before I try to pitch it to publishers. I have two DD stories that sort of fit in line with each other (this was intentional). I take a year off animation work to write and illustrate the additional pages that will slot in between the DD stories I already have. TREASURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE becomes Chapter One, THE AQUEDUCT (from FLIGHT VOL. 5) becomes Chapter Three, and with 120 new pages, I have a graphic novel, DELILAH DIRK AND THE TURKISH LIEUTENANT.

I begin querying agents, as is the recommended course of action. I have a few nice phone calls, but no one chooses to represent the book.

Out of the blue, I get an email from an editor at a major publisher, who says "I know your work from Flight, and at a recent comic convention, a librarian recommended your work, as well." This editor wanted to know more about Delilah Dirk.

THE TURKISH LIEUTENANT was done, so I sent it to Editor. After four months, Editor tells me that the marketing department has said, "we can't sell the Middle East in America." And so they reject the book.

2011: After more querying and rejection, I decide to serialize THE TURKISH LIEUTENANT online, like a webcomic. I want to know if there was an audience for it, and that seemed like a good way to find out. After it had been online for a few months, I was contacted by two different editors at familiar publishing houses. At SDCC that year, I describe this situation to Nick Harris, who offers to act as agent (huzzah!). He gets the book to First Second, something I had until then had no success doing. They like it! Lucky me—First Second was putting out so many of my favourite books. Nick introduces me to Bernadette, who has been my wonderful agent ever since. She helps me sign a proper contract with First Second.

2013: First Second Books publishes DELILAH DIRK AND THE TURKISH LIEUTENANT!

There are more details in there, but those are the salient points. I go so far back because I sometimes wonder, how did I hear about Shane Glines' Drawing Board, where I met Kazu? From a classmate, I think, but how did they hear about it? If I had never met Kazu online, would I be doing any of this? I gotta tell you, I am 55% confident the answer is "no." If it weren't for Flight, there wouldn't have been an Eisner nomination, and I wouldn't have taken CONSTANTINOPLE to SDCC, so there wouldn't have been a second (!!!) Eisner nomination. I never would have crossed paths with the Mysterious Influential Librarian Benefactors who have played such an important role.

So, getting an agent and getting a book beneath a publisher's nose—those are important things. I understand why those are such key questions for a new author. But when I think about how I got into this racket, I don't think about those steps. I think about Kazu, who presented an easy opportunity to take, and I think about blithely stumbling forward and making the work and seeing might happen, and I think about the Mysterious Benefactors who gave such encouraging award nominations to a young comics-maker, and I feel very fortunate.

I must note that I did not have any debt (school fees were so low at the time), I did not have any children to support at the time, and I come from a white middle-class family in a stable nation with socialized medical care. My partner and I owned our apartment with a manageable mortgage thanks to some modest family assistance (metaphorically, picture a smartly-maintained Toyota instead of a gold-trimmed Lamborghini) which, in turn, made it easier to accumulate the savings I leaned on when I took a year off real work to make DD1.

Let's leave it there for the time being. My Remembering Bits are tired. 

HOW'S THAT NEW COMIC COMING ALONG?

Good! Thank you for asking. Half way through inks!

I very much enjoyed the audiobook of ATONEMENT during this week's inking, and I thank Kean Soo (who I met through Flight) for the recommendation. Also, LINCOLN IN THE BARDO was, in fact, damn good. Probably would have been better in book form than in audiobook form—which is saying a lot, because the audiobook is a helluva audiobook—but nonetheless, lives up to the hype. That George Saunders has some really impressive writerly intuition.

Intuitively yours,

TC