This week, by popular request, we’re drawing MIDDLE SCHOOL! OR, specifically, the three things I was looking forward too about Jr High back when I was a kid: having a locker, having a cafeteria, and having anti-bullying initiatives (I was a nerd, what can I say).

I also got around to drawing a few comics:

Here’s a timelapse of me drawing that last one:

Last week on twitter, people were posting their stories about how comics broke them. I think the hashtag was something along the lines of #comicsbrokeme or something. It was story after story after story from cartoonists sharing about how they are passionate about making comics, but how the industry is just too small to support a viable livelihood. If you are fortunate to plug into the comics creation pipeline for one of the ‘big’ publishers, you’re a cog in a machine working for page-rates that haven’t increased for 50 years. If you try to get your own stuff represented and properly published and distributed on store shelves, by the time everybody involved gets a cut, you’re not really making rent money. Even people that I would consider to be famous comics creators don’t get to do it for a living, it’s their passion project they do on the side while they have other jobs (such as art instruction, or teaching, or a trade or oil field or what-have-you) that sustain them. The self-publishing crowd says they’ve got a viable solution, but it’s got a bit of a patreon-fueled pyramid scheme bent to it. Basically, for an aspiring cartoonist, the hashtag was story after story of how people pursuing their dreams of being a cartoonist led them to heartbreak after heartbreak.

I’ve always dreamed of being the next great cartoonist- to have my name included on a list with the likes of Bill Watterson or Charles Schulz or Berkely Brethed Scott Kurtz. Even in my late thirties, this thought still lurks in my head. But like a kid in a band hoping to get discovered by the right people and make it to the big times, my dream is naive. And yet, that dream lingers like a sickness the my psyche robbing joy for no good reason. So, having read the testimonies of many, I am led (once again) to these conclusions:

1. There is no such thing as ‘making it big’ in comics, at least not as I envision it. With few exceptions, even famous cartoonists who ‘make it big’ are barely scraping by and don’t seem to be enjoying their life too much. Anyone who says their experience has been otherwise is a unicorn preaching to horses and donkeys.
2. I don’t actually want to be a successful cartoonist. Here’s what I mean: being a ‘Successful’ indie cartoonist means spending 30% of your time cartooning and 70% of your time hustling and side-hustling around comics online through social media and the likes. Seeing as comics are still crazy time-consuming to make, that means you’re working ALL. THE. TIME. That 30% of your time is still the 50 hours a week it takes to make the comic. the 70% spent hustling and side hustling seems to be every other waking second. I’m exaggerating a bit, but probably not much. I actually hate social media, so spending my life cultivating it sounds like fresh hell.

So here is the conclusion of the rant: who cares? I’m probably always gonna keep making stuff and wanting to share it with people. And I am SO thankful for you, my readers! It is a privilege to have readers at all. I’ll continue to do my best making the things I enjoy, from comics to videos to music or whatever, and I share it with the hope that it gives you some of the joy it gave me. It’s nice to be reminded that I don’t have to let a childish dream dictate my actions as an adult.

Thanks for reading! See yah next week.