July 14: Bad artist babbling

You know, when faced with an endless sea of options as to what to draw and what to do to take the steps necessary to nail down some intangible path towards making your life what it is you've always wanted, one, and by one I, of course, mean me, is generally left huddled up in the fetal position in a corner somewhere, weeping softly into a pile of tarnished bristol board , futilely praying that your tears will reveal a pattern on the page that may give you some idea what the hell to do with yourself.

It's harder than I thought trying to come to grips with the idea that the possibilities are endless, my work is only limited by my imagination. The work one can do in the comics medium isn't limited by budget or actors. I can set a scene *anywhere* and can do *anything.* That sort of freedom is mind-boggling and is, for lack of a better term or a willingness to admit to already being considered it, making me crazy. When you sit down to create something, the process is somewhat aleatoric and can be either a masterpiece or self-aggrandizing fluff that forces onlookers to jab nearby objects into their frontal lobe to avoid being forced to view it again.

This is why I am probably going to be a plug & play penciller for awhile. I'm great with coming up with scenes or characters, plotting is fun and interesting, but sit me down to create a complete work and I can't seem to do it. The ideas are plentiful, but I am not a writer. Creating realised worlds to inhabit and a story worth following is something I am not good enough to do at this point. This fact makes me sad, since it doesn't seem the rest of the comic industry is very interested in the kinds of stories I want to tell.

I am a fairly typical guy when it comes to this stuff. I like hot chicks & men dripping with machismo. I like trenchcoats & purple prose. I adore cyberpunk and cityscapes that go on for days. I swoon over kung fu, gunplay, fully realised violence and wanton destruction. These disparate elements are not all very good at meshing together in my brain in anything resembling a coherant story structure. I have 3 pretty well realised concepts that I would love to working on at this moment, but instead I am sitting here , babbling the madness into the internet, trying to get a handle on my own sanity through forcing thoughts into sentences that others can read and understand. This is the blog version of babbling about your problems to friends, not so much so that they can respond or help in any way, but just so that you've had a chance to say the things on your mind and really get a handle on your problems.

I'm going to go get something to drink and sit down to draw now. Hopefully, I'll have something to scan & get online to show folks in time for the podcast tonight. I'm getting tired of becoming a ghost on my own damn show.