Progress on Roughing-In.

Above, a select few roughed-in pages for DD4 (as before, apologies that they’re so hard to see). This is my favourite part of the process, I think. At this point, each page has so much potential. Nothing is set in stone. Every sketchy line could turn out a hundred different ways. And yet, at the same time, unlike with thumbnails, it is possible to see that final form in there. Every time an expression is funny, a composition is exciting, or a drawing just turns out nicely, it makes you (me) feel like, “I am on the right track.”

EDIT: Below, I go on a bit of a tear about cryptoart. Having now posted it, I don't necessarily feel like this is the place for it. Still, it's a topic that's been occupying a lot of my thoughts. I went to fine art school and have stuck my nose in the art-sales business. I have friends who are dabbling in NFTs. The TL;DR here is that I am happy to not participate in this emerging practice, and I am grateful that you—a patron, here—are making it possible to pursue the work of DD4 through a separate, parallel, and hopefully more egalitarian commercial model.

Cryptoart

Have you heard about crypto art? Drama about it has been eating up a lot of my Twitter timeline, and for good reason.

The basics: the “crypto” in “crypto art” relates to “cryptocurrency,” and an arm of cryptocurrency is NFTs— “non-fungible tokens.” They can be attached to, say, a work of digital art, and then apparently that digital art becomes exclusive. It essentially checks the inherent ability of a digital asset to be duplicated, perfectly, at will, the way all digital assets ostensibly should be able to do. Someone has made it possible to own the exclusive copy of a digital file, just the way someone might own the one, original, real-world instance of an oil painting, or any of a limited edition of prints. And the biggest talking-point on this issue has been the fact that the technology that powers NFTs is wildly ecologically irresponsible.

My favourite reading on this topic has been first this article by Joanie Lemercier, and  this one by Everest Pipkin. I’m a big fan of Mike Mitchell, too, and here’s what he had to say.

Watching this all unfold and reading along as it happened, I was surprised to find it clarified a lot of my thinking about art and the art market, and tied in to some of the feelings I was trying to express at the end of last year, when I was thinking through a new approach to DD4. It also reminded me of a campsite I stayed at twenty years ago. Let me explain.

Camping in Switzerland

In the early 2000s, I was backpacking around Western Europe with my partner, going as inexpensively as possible so we could afford to splash out where it was worthwhile. We stayed in campsites, sleeping in a tent that was itself at least twenty years old at the time. I think it was the same tent my parents took on their camping trip to Europe in the 1970s.

Most campsites we stayed in were a modest distance from the towns we were visiting, and none stand out in my memory because of their situation or amenities… except for one. 

In Geneva, the campsite was marvellous. It was located on a little nubbin of land that stuck out into Lake Geneva. If you stood at the water’s edge, you had a panoramic view of the lake, including the city itself and its monumental Jet d’Eau. For not-too-great a price, we had accommodation at what like the nicest spot in the city.

I wondered how we had got so lucky, how it came to be that Geneva had put a campsite on such a high-value piece of land. Apparently, the land was owned by someone who, upon their death, gifted said land to the city under the strict terms that it be used solely for the purpose of  camping. The campsite was so nice and was accessible to us because a rich person had been benevolent.

At the time, I remember this feeling exceptional, and it seems like that sort of benevolence has only become more exceptional, more rare.

The Two Roads and the Corner Plot that Connects Them

We recently moved to a home in a suburb of Vancouver, a suburb which is characterized by having long, long suburban streets that are not especially considerate of the pedestrian. It is a lovely place to live, except that if you want to walk somewhere, the pathways are few and they are long and straight.

There are two roads near us which run parallel, but there is only one pedestrian walkway connecting them, at about the middle-point of their lengths. If you want to go from one to the other, you have to take that single pathway, or go a long way around. There is one spot in particular that would be a great place for another connecting pathway, at a point just before the parallel roads diverge. There is a single residential lot in that exact spot, and it has recently been bulldozed and re-developed.

The lot was large. There used to be one house on it. Now, there are four. The developer will almost certainly make a tidy amount of profit selling those four properties, especially since the market right now leans in their favour.

I very very very very very much doubt that the developer had at the front of their minds, “this would be a great spot for a pedestrian walkway, so I will accommodate one.” And yet, walking past this plot the other day, I see there is a vehicle-sized passageway that now runs straight through from one road to the other. Do I dare imagine that this passageway will be left open, and that no one will level an angry glare at a pedestrian who might borrow it for their own use? Or will they erect a fence or a gate or some other impediment so that this potentially-useful passageway will be exclusive to the owners of the property? How many “private property” and “no trespassing” signs will be posted?

Based on the behaviour I am seeing with regards to crypto art, I know which outcome I am anticipating.

Lock it Down, Make it Mine

And so, with crypto art, someone has gone to the effort—and, again, at catastrophic environmental expense—to take something ephemeral and infinitely reproducible (a digital asset) and give it the properties of a real-world object, presumably for no other reason than to introduce artificial scarcity. There is, typically, nothing scarce about a digital file. But if we bend over backwards into a hundred loops, we can introduce that aspect. And once something is scarce, people can fight—sorry, I mean “bid”—over it, and own it, and hoard it for themselves.

Even if the environmental problem were solved (and crypto proponents are so, so horny to tell you that this will happen, and soon), I would still hate this.

I have always hated this. When I bought floppy comics, and publishers would release variant covers, I hated that I couldn’t get a copy featuring a cover by my favourite artist, just because it had been printed in limited numbers, and so snatched up by collectors because of its rarity. This disgusts me, that the sole appeal of something might be that it is rare, and so may grow in value, outside of any consideration of its other aspects. I wanted a Travis Charest cover because I love the look he brings to his work, but some other dude swooped on it because it might be worth a few bucks more some time in the future.

This is the same reason I don’t like to simply sign books. I prefer to add personalized dedications, because at one point someone gave me the idea that dedicated books are less valuable to collectors. I hope that’s true, because I hate the idea of someone collecting a book and simply storing it away to appreciate in value. That’s a copy of the book that could be in a library, where people might actually read it, and that is why I make these books—to be read.

This is also, I think, why the Ken Burns “National Parks” documentary always makes me cry. The idea of men going to great lengths to preserve and protect natural places for the benefit of both that place’s inhabitants and for visitors from the general public seems to me, to a perhaps increasing degree, a most noble endeavour.

Now, of course I am not arguing that my books serve the same public good as a National Park or even a beautifully-situated camp site. But if I have to choose between two sides, where one side is in favour of  exclusive ownership and artificial scarcity at great environmental cost, and the other side is in favour of broad dissemination and easy availability with as little ecological damage as possible, I know which side I am picking. If being able to “have” and being able to “give” are my two options—as much as I really do like having things—I know that “giving” is the route to happiness.

$$$ Cha-ching $$$

The great appeal of NFTs for artists seems to be that it is a shot at a decent payday. A potential upside to NFTs is that the artist might participate in royalties on any subsequent sale between traders. That would be novel, and very welcome.

I certainly do not begrudge any artist for pursuing financial security. The arts do not typically pay well, Americans especially seem to have no social safety net, and how galling must it be if you happen to be a living artist watching as a work of art that you sold for a thousand dollars is subsequently re-sold for ten or a hundred times that, all while you are completely unable to participate in that sale. Maybe that’s a fairy tale rare occurrence, but surely it crosses every artist’s mind. 

So, considering the promises being made by crypto art, I understand why someone would be afraid to miss out on the opportunity it might present. I only wish the concept did a better job of passing the smell test. To me, it doesn’t seem worth it, especially considering the ecological cost. Also, I do not wish to associate with people who respond to critique with, “I hope you like being poor.” 

Open it Up and Make it Ours

I’m not trying to write a manifesto here. And certainly there are more aspects to the art market, the collectors market, to cryptocurrency and NFTs, and to measurements of the ecological impact, each of which could be its own discussion. These days, there are never enough asterisks or sub-clauses to please everyone. I’m also making the mistake of conflating the fine art market with the business of book publishing.

Regardless, here are some truths. I am happy to be using this medium—publishing digital comics on the internet—to its strengths, as opposed to fighting against them. After the thoughts and concerns I expressed about the business of making comics, I’m grateful to you all for your patronage. Again, I’m not pretending to be building a National Park here, but thanks to your benevolence, I am glad to be able to participate in a realm of art-making that is easily accessible to its audience. I think art is meant to be seen, not hoarded. And stories are meant to be read.