To the best of my experience, making comics is at its best when it becomes a collaborative experience. Given the difficulties posed by the overlapping skills and disciplines involved in writing a cogent story and not only translating it, but actually executing it as sequential imagery across a page, it almost has to be a collaborative experience. I have the great good fortune to be reasonably well skilled in writing and drawing, but finding the time, the drive are difficult enough, and eventually, one should probably show their work to someone in an editorial capacity lest they traipse the boards of the world stage with their narrative pants around their trite little ankles.
Going into the second half of my first decade as a…Professional? Yes, I guess, professional comics…Person? Artist? Sure. Going into this second half, I’ve been blessed and fortunate enough to have had a number of wonderful collaborations. I’ve also had some terrible ones—and one of these days, I will get around to spilling the whole Max Gadney/Story Worlds story—but for the overwhelming majority, collaborations have proven to be wonderful way to make both good comics and excellent friends.
Tales From The Pandemic
I had wanted to work with Mario Candelaria for some time. Watching his career progress from the equally distant and proximal vantage point of Twitter, he’d come blaring onto the scene as a writer of noteworthiness and , dare I say it, panache. As I understand it, Mario is from New York, and my impression of New York people is that they are among the most straight up, cut the bullshit kind of folks anyone is ever likely to meet. Whether true or not, this was certainly the impression I got from Mario when we began exchanging emails over my proposed involvement in his proposed anthology, Tales From The Pandemic. In it, Mario teamed with a number of artists to produce a wide range of Twilight Zone-esque short comics.
My contribution to this collection was a short story called Lips, in which a girl who has grown up wearing a mask her entire life—her whole family wears them as well, and no, they never, ever take them off—until one day she meets a boy who is, inexplicably maskless. The two strike up a friendship which culminates with the boy convincing the girl to remove her mask.
I won’t spoil the ending here, but if you’re interested in reading lips or the other stories in the collection, I’m given to understand it will finally be coming to print edition in the early part of 2023. Alas, the original digital edition, available via Gumroad, appears to have gone “out of print,” as it were. However, I do have another collaboration I made with Mario available for download…
Fan Art vs. Copyright Infringement
This is a point I bring up often with my drawing students. There is an exceedingly fine line between fan art and copyright infringement, and budding artists would do well to heed and understand the difference and proceed with caution. Fan art entails an unlicensed artist making an unlicensed work of or from a licensed, commercial intellectual property, or IP. While fan art is generally acceptable, it becomes copyright infringement when the generator of the work attempts to generate money from it. There’s more to all of it than that, obviously, and in spite of their unlicensed state, many fan artists make a very lucrative practice selling their own artwork from a major IP. However, if the studio or corporation that owns that IP decides to pursue it, one could be sued back to the stone age.
Anyway, as it would turn out, both Mario and I were fans of HBO’s Westworld TV show. Unfortunately, my life went pear shaped at a certain point after season 1 had finished, and I have yet to circle back and watch beyond, but fortunately, Mario’s idea was set well within the confines of my understanding of the show.
Lasso was a six page short story set in the same western town introduced in the first season of the HBO show. As it was clear Mario was writing as if for an episode of the show itself, I showed no compunction and took no prisoners in imitating the likenesses of many of the actors from the show itself. While it wasn’t entirely clear what our intentions were, apart from making the story for our own edification and amusement, we did manage to sneak it in as a digital reward in Brentt Harshman’s ill fated Off Into The Sunset anthology (talk about shit going pear shaped, phew).
Suffice it to say, Off Into The Sunset didn’t really happen. That’s a story that has been covered a fair bit in recent months, and as I had two other pieces apart from Lasso that were to appear in that book and didn’t get their day in the sunset, I’ll suspend my own comments and feelings at this time.
Following suit with Mario though, who made Lasso a freebie with subscription to his newsletter, I’m putting it up here as well, free to download to all subscribers, paid or otherwise. Consider this a love letter from two hopeless fanboys to the show, genre and medium they have fallen so hopelessly in love with. Or, perhaps you’ll steal a glance and realize…It doesn’t look like anything at all.
J. Schiek is a comic book artist, writer and art professor at North Idaho College. He is currently freezing his tookus off in the North Idaho panhandle, and longs to wander the sunbleached sidewalks of Southern California once again. His first solo comic, Hush Ronin, will be available in comics shops on January 23, 2023, and is still available for preorder from Band of Bards on their website (click the title above to link directly to the Bardshop).