I used to make comics. I know that because strangers would look at my work and immediately share their most excruciatingly banal experiences with me:

— that time a motorised wheelchair cut in front of them in the line at the supermarket;
— when the dentist pulled the wrong tooth and they tried to get a discount;
— eating off an apple and finding half a worm in it;

every anecdote rounded of with a triumphant “You should make a comic about that!”

Then I would take my 300 pages graphic novel out of their hands, both of us knowing full well they weren’t going to buy it, and I’d smile politely, “Yeah, sure. Someday.”

“Don’t try to cheat me out of my royalties when you publish it,” they would guffaw and walk away to grant comics creator status onto their next victim.

Nowadays I make work that feels even more truly like comics to me than that almost twenty years old graphic novel. Collage-y, abstract stuff that breaks all the rules just begging to be broken. Linear narrative is ashes settling in my trails, montage stretched thin and warping in new, interesting directions.

I teach comics techniques at a university level based in my current work. I even make an infrequent podcast talking to other avantgarde artists about their work in the same field.

Still, sometimes at night my subconscious whispers the truth in my ear: Nobody ever insists I turn their inane bullshit nonevents into comics these days, and while I am a happier, more balanced person as a result of that, I guess that means I don’t make comics any longer after all.

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Joined 3 months ago
Cake day: November 23rd, 2024
  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoStar Trek Social Club@startrek.website•"Star Trek is dying." How would you sell it to a younger audience?
    38·
    12 days ago

    There are plenty of good responses here already, but to me the main thing in marketing Trek to new audiences would be stop the frigging nostalgia fest.

    • don’t circle back to the TOS characters at the tip of a hat. Yes, JJ Abrams, I’m looking at you, but also every other recent attempt at new Star trek movies.
    • All the stories around those characters have been told already. Make something new and current within the same universe.
    • Don’t shoehorn canon and continuity onto every new show. Having Bones make a cameo in the TNG pilot was cute. Making Burnham a previously unmentioned lynchpin in Spock’s character was… unnecessary. Don’t get me started on SNW.
    • The wealth of continuity from previous shows shouldn’t be a namecheck scorecard, but a backdrop that curious current viewers can track down and explore on their own.

    Twenty years ago when the BBC relaunched Doctor Who, they played down all the background stuff for most of the first season, only drip feeding lore to the audience.

    • The stories, the characters had to be appealing on their own
    • The 26 seasons worth of classic Who wasn’t required watching to keep up, but it gave resonance to the new show.

    Star trek needs to learn from that approach to focus on good stories and engaging characters — and to aim outside of the established but dwindling fan group by allowing the almost 60 years of canon to play second violin.

  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoStar Trek Social Club@startrek.website•Star Trek is like a warm blanket for me.
    6·
    1 month ago

    Sorry for your loss!

    If I may offer my own experience in sympathy — last year my brother passed after a few years of cancer treatment. We grew up as TNG aired, and Trek was always a shared reference.

    During his final illness, one effect of his treatment was constipation which he alleviated with… prune juice. Often in the last months he would raise his glass and say, “A warrior’s drink!” It never got tired 😄

    On the night he passed away the only meaningful thing that I could think to share on social media was the TNG screenshot of the Klingon death ritual — I’m sure you know the one.

    Star Trek may be a utopian sci-fi future, but the shared stories and communities lend meaning to our everyday lives nonetheless — your deep, shared experiences with your grandfather, or my brother putting up his best Klingon warrior face against his illness. We need those optimistic stories to ward off hopelessness, and to remember the good moments by.

    In the face of grief and loss — Qapla’!