Finished lunch super early and I've got some things on my mind, so I'm going to do a little thread that I'm calling "The Working Comic Book Creator's Lament". Because I'm pretentious like that.

So I've been kicking myself a lot the last few months for not doing my own books like JOHNNY CHAOS and ARCH NEMESIS a lot sooner. Like, you know, not doing them yeeeaaars ago.

Some of the things I'm doing now, like THE OCTOBER GIRL and JOHNNY CHAOS are things I've had in my head for more than 20 years.

And there's part of me that says if I had done them back then, my career would have been very different. Which, honestly, is a thought you just can't afford to have rolling around in your head.

Side Note: I firmly believe those ideas came out of my head a lot better now than they would have back then. I've learned so much about writing and graphic storytelling over the years.

Could I have done them back then? Maybe.

Would my career have been different? Maybe.

But I didn't. And let me tell you why...

Because I couldn't afford to do them.

I'm a working comic book creator. I pay my bills by making comics. And a lot of the time, maybe even most of the time, it's really, really hard to get those bills paid.

For those who don't know, there are two kinds of comic book work out there -- Work For Hire (WFH) and Creator Owned (CO).

Most WFH projects, you do it, you get paid a page rate, and the company fundamentally owns it.

Most CO projects, you do it and maybe get paid royalties.

I say 'maybe' because now, as in the early 90s when I broke in, the market is pretty flooded and there's no guarantee that your book will sell enough copies to get paid any royalties at all.

And depending on how you get it published, you may not even outright own the intellectual property. If you're publishing through another company, often they ask for a portion of ownership in the contract.

This is not a criticism of that system. It's just how the comic book industry operates. Personally, I don't give up any portion of my intellectual rights without receiving something in return, whether it's advance money or a page rate on top of royalties. But that's me.

So doing a creator owned book is a huge risk for working comic book creators, particularly for artists. The amount of time and energy it takes to draw an issue of any book is enormous. Especially if there are horses.

I get a little frustrated with people who say things like, "I don't understand why you would do WFH books when you could be making whatever books you want!"

Because the bills come. And the bills don't care if I am artistically fulfilled. They care if I can pay them.

And listen... as much of a struggle as it's been - and still is - for me, I've been pretty lucky. I've gotten to do some great WFH projects that I absolutely loved getting to work on.

But I do still wonder what would have happened if I'd done these projects years ago. And even though I shouldn't, I do wonder what my career would be like now if I had. But I am glad I'm finally doing them.

Still working on being able to pay the bills doing just my own books, though.

And THAT, my friends, is the Comic Book Creator's Lament.

/End