Dreams

I want to make comics.


But I don't know how.


At least it feels that way sometimes. I try to tell myself that I've already made a few (one of one which has won a small contest) but if I'm going to spend ten years trying to break into the small publishers market, I don't know what I'll do for a day job. Whatever I can, I guess...

I just spent an hour looking at the internship sections of:
marvel.com
dccomics.com
imagecomics.com
darkhorsecomics.com
topshelfcomix.com
firstsecondbooks.com
fantagraphics.com

And then I ended up at Craig Thompson's blog. Damn, that man is so talented. And even he spent quite a few years doing work he didn't love to pay the bills before he completed and published Blankets. Can I do that? I don't know. Sometimes I'm sure. Sometimes I'm not.

A friend of mine applied to the Marvel internship and simply never heard back from them. But if I do it, I have to do it now 'cause they only accept students and I'm not going to be one of those much longer. Now that is scary.

I just started registering for the classes of the first semester of my last year of college. My last year of college. I didn't think this far ahead. I wasn't always sure I would make it this far, let alone start thinking about an after-college job.

Maybe graduate school. There's the Center for Cartoon Studies. They're essentially up my alley. But that's another $15,000 a year on top of the excessive amount of money already being spent on my education by my parents. I don't pay for any of it. I'm lucky.

But I don't think that luck will extend for much longer. No one has limitless money and certainly not my middle class parents. And if I don't begin to make my own money and live my own life soon, I'll be in danger of falling into a rut and continue being dependent on them for another ten years. I don't want to do that. It's not good for them or for me. So I need to get an internship, so I can actually have some contacts with a publisher. Which will probably cost them more money in the short term (living in New York City is not cheap and these internships are all unpaid) but give me (hopefully) an in with a major publisher.


I want to make comics.


I know I'll keep making comics. The question is whether it'll be for Marvel Comics in Manhattan or for Gorga Productions, or whatever, at the corner Kinkos.

But in the words of Captain Malcolm Reynolds: " 'Course, that ain't exactly plan A."
So if you'll excuse me I have an internship application to write.