Posted on by michaelwconrad

Bad Advice.

I have posts coming about Wonder Woman and Midnighter and all the excitement I have about those projects, but I figured it might be a good time to talk about something that has bothered me for years. I’m not going to include names because the players involved are insignificant. I am only able to see this now, because of the confidence afforded through the forward momentum of my writing. There were long stretches of time where stuff like what I’m about to share really bothered me. If anything I’d like to think that the pain that comes from striving has made me only less likely to push that pain along to others.

It was maybe 8 years ago, I was very early in my efforts to self publish comics and had formed a collective called Mystery School Comics Group. The purpose of the group was to create the illusion of legitimacy, to give myself and the others involved a sigil under which to build our resumes, and mostly because it pleased me to do so. Early on it was myself, my brother Winston (who designed much of the imagery still in use), along with our friends Justin McElroy and Jef Overn. We had others jump in and out, but really that was the roster. We all tried our hands at writing and drawing with varied results, but it was our enthusiasm that fueled the whole thing. While sales were never great we weren’t in the practice of keeping count, we were there for the passion of doing it.

Part of the fun, but also part of the struggle was getting accepted into conventions. Most of these charged a lot, but they were also very choosy about who they would allow to table. I remember sending countless applications and only hearing back from a select few. When we would do shows it was always a party. We would get a hotel room and make a whole thing out of it. Nothing nefarious, just a couple dudes trying to sell comics and zines, drinking too much at the hotel bar, and retiring to the hotel room to shared beds and bad reality tv. None of us had interest in much beyond sharing our work, checking out the work of others like us, and spending time doing something that was ultimately quite costly but fun. Between the tables, the room, the tab, and all the comics we would buy we would VERY rarely even break even, most often taking a loss. No one cared. We were happy.

Around this time there was this influential comics creator who was well known for hopping on a soapbox and telling everyone the RIGHT way to do things. He was in our orbit as he had expressed some interest in Justin’s work, and rightfully so, Justin is a beast. This creator in question once again undertook to deliver unsolicited advice on a thread that several of us were participating in on an indie creators group on social media. Someone outside of our group had lamented the high cost of tables at shows and was asking for advice as to how to deal with this. Several from my group chimed in about the value of collective investment in projects, understanding that loss is almost guaranteed, and how we go about feeling ok about what others might see as a something less than successful.

So this established creator pops onto the thread and basically is like “If you can’t make money at a con you shouldn’t do them.” This might seem like sane advice, but we took it a bit like “If you fall off of a skateboard while attempting a new trick, stop skateboarding.” We said as much, without any disrespect, and were met with a really aggressive response from the dude in question.

“Comics aren’t for everyone, if you can’t make money that’s saying something, it’s saying they aren’t any good. Good comics sell, bad ones don’t… this is tough for some people to understand. If you do a convention and can’t make money you might wanna look at doing something else with your time.” I’m not exaggerating, this is almost word for word what he wrote. I remember my brother being like “Yo, fuck that guy.” But we all made excuses for him, and defended his stance by reworking the message to feel less gross. It turns out my brother was just the only one among us who wasn’t starstruck by some passing interest from someone in the industry.

This guy turned out to be a real shit. A couple years later it became public knowledge that he was a fucking creep. While we were losing money at conventions, he was using some of those same places to harass women. While we were drinking budget beers in the budget inn, he was using the perception of authority he carried to manipulate and deceive. This information wouldn’t come out until years later, I wish we had known it at the time, it would have been easier to shrug off his dumb comments.

Anyway, we kept it up, but the damage had been done. We couldn’t shake the nagging self doubt he had inflicted on the group. We didn’t slow down because of what he said, but we weren’t exactly empowered by it either. When you’re striving toward a goal the LAST THING someone should do is suggest that you aren’t growing, and that the struggle isn’t worth it.

This kind of gatekeeping bullshit has been the bane of my creative life. It was like this in music, and to see it in comics as well is incredibly disappointing. Art and storytelling serve a lot of purposes for folks, for me at the time it was giving me a reason to dream. I was working in a very taxing field, I had stopped playing music (unable to find time with the kind of work I was doing) and comics were my escape. I found myself dreaming of some of the things I get to do now, and really that memory is so strong, and so close, I don’t see how anyone can get anywhere in comics and manage to forget the fight. Maybe it’s easier for folks who have an art style that immediately grabs the attention of publishers? Maybe this creator never had the kind of struggle we had? Or maybe he had supportive voices in his life rather than the flat disinterest or discouragement most of us face?

With my achievements sometimes I fantasize about telling off doubters from those times. I daydream of my work being celebrated in the faces of those who didn’t believe in me. I want them to know that I kick ass, and I want them to feel ashamed for missing that. Of course this is the wrong way to engage with growth as an artist, but I’d be lying if I claimed to never have thought such things. 

I temper this egotistical thinking by reminding myself that I’m extremely lucky. I have been granted access that few manage, I have been encouraged by more folks over the past few years than I have deserved, and maybe most of all I’m thankful that I am the kind of person who doesn’t give up easily. I’ve had more dark nights of the soul than I care to admit, and it has really added gas to the tank. In many ways I feel like these are the last days I will be able to work with the vigor required to get where I wanna go and I don’t want to miss my chance. The hardship reminds me that the stuff I get sore about is much closer to my dream than the previous concerns.

This all comes to mind when I see how folks engage online today. Things have become even more aggressive, dismissive, and rude by orders of magnitude. I see people take shots at peers for sport, and grind their heels into those “beneath” them. I see putting on airs of superiority that’s almost laughable, but not entirely, because I know for those on the receiving end it can be a real wound. I’ve been wounded before, and will be wounded again, seeing it happen to others sucks.

So I try to be kind and to share the very little I know. In truth there isn’t a huge gap between the most established folks in the comic industry and those losing money at shows. We’re all just making things and hoping they make others happy. 

Not long ago I offered advice to folks looking to self publish. I had 2 individuals take me up on it. One was not motivated, the other dismissed my advice by saying he “wanted to do it for real.” Two polar opposite ends of the equation, both completely understandable, both as right as they are wrong. The lesson was mine, I can’t show others the path, that’s for them to discover. Their path will be invisible to me, occulted by my own experience. I’ve found all I can do is not stand in anyone’s way, to welcome them to this world with stories of my own, and to hear theirs with unbiased ears.

We need each other, we always have. Maybe when we realize this people will be less concerned about status and more concerned about the responsibilities we often neglect in pursuit of feeling important.

Posted on by michaelwconrad · 2 Comments

An Unnamed-Unknowable Place

I used to have these bad ear infections as a kid. Apparently this was something that had been going on since I had been a baby, but there were a couple standout moments in my early childhood that I can still recall.

Ear infections are tricky to describe, it’s a pain that has no analogous value, if you’ve had one you know. It isn’t exactly a headache, or a sinus issue, it walks the line in a way that generates agony of an exquisite nature that we lack the language to describe. Something interior, hot, a pressure, it isn’t a migraine, but similarly it cannot be escaped, and sensory input can exacerbate it. In my case the afflicted ear would boil with heat, the outer elements would feel swollen, ablaze with radiant torture from deep inside.

I must have been five or six when the last real bad one gripped me. I’ve had them since, but life dulls the intensity of all things. When I was young there were many foods I struggled to eat, things like onions and tomatoes. I’ve read that it’s the acidity that makes kids less likely to enjoy such things. Young, sensitive palates that have not yet beaten into submission by whiskey shots and packs of Pall Mall. I suspect that this is the case with pain as well. Suffering is something we learn to rationalize after years of torment inflicted by virtue of existence and all the nastiness of feeling our bodies slowly become less and less capable. While I can no longer engage in some of the high impact foolishness of my youth, I am well prepared to accept pain and to move through it.

Maybe this was an exceptional infection, it’s hard to say, I just remember my parents showing great concern and preparing hot packs to hold to my ear. Little was expected of me, I was allowed to heal, I was allowed to cry and even to feel sorry for myself. I was given affection, my back was rubbed and I was told that I was a beautiful boy, that this would pass, that I was loved.

The pain that comes later in life is generally more existential. We fear bills and betrayal by our lovers. We start to think more often of death as a cruel eventuality rather than a freak thing that happens to the unfortunate. We start to see the celebrities we admired meet their ends, old school friends pulled away from this life by the kinds of ailments that were surely only dangerous for the few older people we had in our lives. We start to look at our failed dreams and those still lingering as foolish trappings of a time when pepperoni was too spicy. We get cigarettes punched out on our dreams and we’re left with the ashen reality of the situation. The rent is due. You don’t have good ideas anymore. Whiskey shots.

This sadness can’t be properly addressed. Mom can’t rub your back and tell you that you are her little pumpkinhead. The person you love is looking at their own mortality with the same terror you are, your friends are reconciling their orphaned dreams with the same degree of regret and woe. Most importantly, you can’t talk about your pain and fear because it’s too strange to describe.

This last earache kept me up at night. I was allowed to stay on the couch with the TV on, my parents knew that a bit of distraction goes a long way in situations such as these. I don’t recall what was playing, I just remember laying there in the stillness of twilight. The program on the TV was of little comfort- I had this pain I couldn’t figure out, no end in sight, no way to end it, I just had to endure.

So I screamed.

It was from somewhere deep, not from the lungs or the diaphragm, it was from a deeper place, a place beyond my body, somewhere in a distant time before me, a place that will still be there when I am gone. This mysterious place, this unnamed-unknowable place, a place I suspect mothers who have lost their children know. A place the clinically depressed are too familiar with. A place of suicide and loss and grief. An echo shot back in time, a scream that I cannot find today, but I know it’s sound, I’ve just lost the threshold with which to hear it. It’s the sound of the vacuum. It’s the sound of the universe mourning itself. I had stumbled across that tonality through the pain, but was well aware the scream would bring me no comfort… I was just out of options.

My parents came to me, both with great concern. They understood the sound to be their little boy in pain. They just didn’t know that this was the start of the long, hollow, now muted bray that would live inside of me, as it does in you, forever.

I took up meditation very young, several years later. I explored religious thinking, trying to understand this new pain. The ear healed, the details now live on an island in the fog of my memory, the pain was an effigy of the yawning terror of living. I didn’t suffer like that again, I had graduated. The meditation has tamped it down at times, but there is no silencing the bellows. It’s always there for me, my truth.

I started eating onions and swearing and living on less sleep. I started drinking booze and not sharing my fear. I stopped complaining and lived with it; rubbed some dirt in it, walked it off. I took work helping others, ate up all their “sins” and tried to forget what I learned. I changed my worldview, I abandoned hope, I became something other than myself.

Earaches are caused by lifeforms setting up shop in the cave of your tympanic cavity and struggling to live. Theirs is an existence so completely strange I cannot even imagine. They find somewhere suitable to reproduce (in this case your ear hole) and build communities. These communities use resources and produce waste and in time their world will die. I wonder if in those short generations there are ones who peer from the depths of the ear canal? Do the young fungi scream? Do the mature bacteria mourn their squandered time? Do they miss their dead? Does the ear speak to them as it spikes with heat attempting to stem-the-tide of growth and consumption? Do they dream, in their viral incompleteness, for something we understand less than simply living? 

My mother stayed up with me, consoling me, holding the hot compress to the side of my head. A tiny dying Christ tableau in the darkness. Somewhere in her heart she had that scream too. Somewhere we all scream within. The ear of the universe too infected to listen, an atonal plea to be seen. 

I cannot describe this pain.   

Posted on by michaelwconrad · 2 Comments

Dewey(?)

I hid it in my closet. I promised myself I wouldn’t look at it anymore. 

My memory is such now that I can’t even say for certain that it even existed and I wouldn’t even know where to begin with a Google search for proof of it actually being a real thing. I’m pretty sure my brother wouldn’t remember it so that’s a dead end too. In reality it doesn’t matter if it ever existed anyway, memories serve the purpose of informing future choices, and nothing- even a revelation that it was an item I simply imagined- could undo the idea of it. This is the kind of thing that comes to mind when it is idle, or at the precipice of sleep, times when the mire of the subconscious rises and floods over manufactured ideations of the self. This is fundamental now, it’s veracity is no longer relevant.

It was a coloring book, a cheaply produced and easily purchased means of keeping the kids tied up, even for a few fleeting moments so that my mother could have a second to attend to the other pressing matters of keeping the home. The book had a high gloss, color cover and ragged newsprint interior, the perfect vector for the broken assembly of crayons we kept in a snap-lid tupperware container. This book was a Huey, Dewey, and Louie theme, and it haunted my young life.

Crayons were a big part of my youth, and remain a medium that interests me. I love the chaos they bring to the table, and their versatility. These are especially valuable when you’re young because they’re cheap and don’t require much to keep them in use. One might use the plastic sharpener affixed to the large collections, the ones with the coveted metallic hues, but most of us didn’t have that did we? Upkeep requires only that you peel the paper sleeve back if they get too short, and some of us would remove those entirely. I’m pretty sure that the kids that removed the paper all the way are among those most likely to have sociopathic tendencies, or the types who buy cases of single use plastic water bottles, the ones full of water stolen from municipal sources and redistributed to wealthy. The removal of the paper was at times unavoidable, but to willfully do so (without intention of broadside fill applications of course) seemed sinful to me. Many of the cheap crayons I used would slide from their paper in their own rebellion, and this always caused me some dismay. I would make an effort to ensure that they remained paired, which was often impossible, as they would again escape the sleeve in the jostling of their container.

Melting crayons on a hot lightbulb was a whole other matter. Yes it was wasteful, but it was 1 part science and 2 parts art to my brother and I. The act was taboo in the Conrad house, but we couldn’t stop. The evidence was impossible to obscure, between the smells and the dripping stains left on the bulbs, we always got caught. I don’t recall any heroic efforts made by my parents to prevent such actions, but we must have been dressed down a time or two for our indiscretions, I simply cannot remember those reprisals.

  We had filled out a number of the pages, my brother being a couple years my senior, was able to stay in the lines and even incorporate advanced shading techniques. I emulated his touch, but often in an effort to complete the piece I would leave streaks of darkness where I had applied too much pressure, run fills of the wrong color on elements, and of course find my crayon dancing its way outside of the line art in ways that revealed my lack of fine motor skills. My mother was always supportive, and was bold enough to let me know that when I colored I could use any color palate I desired, and to remind me that the lines were mostly a suggestion. She was very kind, and while we weren’t exactly the “hang it on the fridge and give this boy a bow” kind of family, her support of the arts was as genuine as a tired mother of 2 (soon to be 3) could muster. 

I made a discovery though, one day, one that would require me to hide this book away and hope to never see it again.

I have been called many things in my now 40 years of life to shame me for my empathy. New England remains a bastion for machismo and gender bias, and while it wasn’t the hot topic then that it has become in today’s world, this too was something that my mother protected me from. She had her reductive moments, but when I would cry she would console me. When the other kids called me a “cry baby” or take shots at my sensitive nature, she would always remind me that the world needs more heart, and that I should never be ashamed to express my sadness.

Even with my mothers support I kept some of these expressions to myself. I knew that understanding had limits and that there were going to be times in life I had to march forward with the stoic knowledge that our existence is defined by pain and suffering. I was 5 years old and already learning unavoidable truths that stood like monoliths in my developing world view. I had become aware of death. I knew that when a baby was born there would be blood, and pain, and tears of both the mother and her child. I knew that this would be reflected in the end, having seen hardened adults weep at the loss of a loved one. I was beginning to see that while tragedy and sadness at times summoned tears, sometimes we cry for reasons mysterious to the world, and these tears often called for explanation.

I had to hide the book because it had made me cry and I didn’t believe that my expression of grief would be understood or accepted. I had to tuck it away under winter clothes and sundry storage items because I knew I would be unable to find the words to validate my cry baby showing. The book was hidden now and I would never have to look at it again.

But something strange happened and I did look again. In fact it became a bit of a preoccupation to sneak off to the bedroom, pop open the closet, dig deep for it and look at it, but only when I was alone and wouldn’t have to explain why I was crying. I didn’t enjoy the crying, and I’m not entirely sure what it was all about or why I insisted on revisiting this private pain, sometimes multiple times in a day. At times it felt like a compulsion, but it wasn’t as if I feared some malady if I didn’t look, or felt incomplete if I didn’t conduct the ritual. I think I was trying to make sense of what I was seeing and trying to conquer the empathy, or at the very least define it.

I guess I liken it to pulling out love letters from a former partner, or gazing at a picture of a departed loved one. Aside from rolling around in memories for comfort, this process seems to me a brave act of confronting pain rather that keeping it tucked away in the folds of a wounded heart. I have never been the kind of person who indulges in such activities routinely, but this situation with the Huey, Dewey, and Louie coloring book might have been my young version of such an act.

The cover was hard for me to look at.

We must have had that particular book for awhile before I noticed it, but when I did it bothered me in an exquisite way that I hadn’t felt in my short life prior to that. You see, we were a poor family, my mother would later tell me that we were not poor, we were just “upper-lower-middle class” which in a town of straight up middle-upper class folks felt poor. She was a writer, so her language was well honed and able to reframe our economic status in a way that felt less dire, but we were poor. We ate, we went to the doctors (sometimes) and were clothed and housed, but otherwise the struggle was there. We lived on a fixed budget, even food was, at times a commodity that proved limited toward the end of the week as my father awaited his paycheck. It was tight enough that I remember my brother getting chewed out for hiding a few slices of salami under his pillow- this stuff was for lunch, but he was hungry and only the mealy apples were to be used for snacking. We eventually got put on the free lunch voucher system at school to the ignorant ridicule of our peers, which only added to our hunger. We often opted not to use the vouchers for fear of harassment from our schoolmates who knew no better. It may have been this economic limitation that was contributing to my tears, but I suspect I was too young to understand all that. I just understood toys. If a toy became broken or lost it would be gone forever, there would be no replacement- maybe the tears were about death after all?

The cover showed the duck brothers playing with Matchbox cars. Having launched the cars off of a ramp two of the cars had collided, resulting in one becoming broken in the process. Two of the brothers laughed and smiled while the third Dewey(?) looked on in dismay at the destruction of his toy. He had a single tear squirting from his avian eye, a look and a tear that informed me that he would be left out as the other boys continued to play with their cars. That’s all. Was I crying over the idea of the loss of a material thing, something that in my adult life I have made an effort to not place too much stock in? Was I somehow preparing myself for the loss of my material goods? Feeling left out? Poverty? Death? Empathy? Sadness over the great truth that while some suffer others continue to laugh a play? Cruelty? The end? Lack of control? Why did I keep returning to this  painful meditation on losing something you love?

In a way it now feels silly to confess. While I say I was poor, I was taken care of. I wasn’t being raised in a dirty field under a corrugated tin roof, drinking befouled water from the creases left behind by a machine of war. I wasn’t watching friends and family get erased from existence by explosions and gunfire, or diseases long thought conquered by the developed world. I wasn’t scrabbling for government cheese, wearing shirts printed for the losing team of the Super Bowl. I was upper-lower-middle class, white, American, male, I had it easy by almost every metric of comparison, maybe I just didn’t know that yet. I had a coloring book hidden in my closet.

NOTE- So I did it with remarkable ease. I found the book in question in a single Google search and was surprised to find that Dewey(?) is in fact, not crying. I wonder now if that was an addition that my brother made, or worse, I may have been the one to do so. I could have added that and felt shame over what I did, which would only add to the bizarre quality of the whole situation. It’s entirely possible that over the years I tagged it on in my remembrance to give some context to my interpretation of what was going on with that cover to explain to myself why the book lingers on in my thoughts some 35 years on. 35 years of remembering SOMETHING, some pain I have never fully identified and reconciled. 35 years of self pity, or sympathy, or guilt, or fear. 

I don’t know what ever happened to the book. I suspect in time I grew tired of the routine, or my mother tossed it when the seasons changed and the winter clothes were moved to our drawers. Most likely it was trashed when my little brother was born and I moved to the basement, room was needed for the new member of the family and that seems to make sense to me.

When my brother was born I was 5, around the time of the coloring book and my secret crying sessions. I remember being woken early in the morning, night really, and being taken to my parents friends house not far from where my mother would go into labor. I barely remember the events of that morning, but I do remember speaking to my mother on the phone when my father came back to tell us that we had a new brother. I was able to call her before visiting the hospital later that day. I asked her if her tummy hurt. A picture once existed of me in my pyjamas, standing in some strange kitchen on a hardline phone holding my stomach as I spoke to her. She told me she was ok. She told me my brother was ok. I don’t remember ever seeing that book again after we all came home later that day.

Posted on by michaelwconrad

Loosely Interpreted Social Testimonials

Lately I’ve had a number of people reach out to me in congratulations regarding my recent accomplishments in writing. Their information largely coming directly from me via my various social media platforms. In a way, this means that I am doing a fine job representing myself as someone who is moving forward, grabbing at that Big Dream and making it happen. In other ways it feels like I have been a bit disingenuous. Allow me to explain in list form! I have no interest in making anyone feel like they aren’t witnessing a success story (for my own ego as well as for the sake of potentially inspiring others) but I do wish to contextualize the whole thing a bit better.

Before I really dip in, give me just a moment to say that I feel like a success. I feel like I’m edging ever closer to being able to look in the mirror and see someone who I am proud to be. Right now I see someone who, in honest self appraisal could stand to work harder, even though I know I am working very hard. I see someone who could stand to slow down and be reasonable, even though I know I have been relatively reasonable. I see someone who can push harder, even though I know I’m breaking my back even as we speak. I’m a work in progress, thank you very much.

THE GRAPHIC NOVEL- I’ve kind of teased this graphic novel online but I remain unable to speak much about it due to contractual agreements. I’ve shared pictures of stacks of paper, roughs, letters, and little unidentified images. I’ve hopefully shared just enough to let you know something’s cooking. What doesn’t get seen is the THREE YEARS of effort toward the goal. I don’t show myself welling with tears in frustration over my lack of ability. I don’t show the spats I’ve shared with the artist, and the neutered agony of having to call in my partner to help format things. I haven’t shown the embarrassing stumbles on the way, the anxiety associated with the project, and the horrific pitching process (which couldn’t have been better really, I’m just really bad at salesmanship). I haven’t shown this stuff because… that’s comics.

TOMB OF DRACULA- This one was pretty easy, and it’ll be the first thing that I’ve written for a major publisher. This was done in collaboration with Becky Cloonan, my aforementioned heroic partner. 

If you want to test the strength of a relationship I suggest you give collaborating passionately on a project with your lover. The result of ours is that you’ll get an AWESOME short featuring everyone’s favorite bloodsucker and you won’t be burdened with the ups and downs that come with the creative process. We made something incredible, but the process reminded us of that old adage about how you have to “kill your babies”.  The story is better than expected in part because some of my favorite moments hit the cutting room floor. You won’t see that pain, you won’t know it unless you do something like this. It’s not glamorous, and you feel like a real diaper baby when you’re dying to squeeze in that one critical line and it ultimately is decided to be superfluous.

This will be in BIZARRE ADVENTURES #1 out October 2, 2019 from Marvel Comics.

HEY, AMATEUR!- Kickstarter is scary. Before I get to that, let me explain how I fought my way into this book… well maybe that’s hyperbolic, but I did send a lot of emails. I jocked this project so hard because it meant I would get to know Shelly (see my first post). Bless her for letting me in, it remains a huge honor. 

What I didn’t know was that Kickstarter is the kind of thing that eats your heart unless you hit funding right away. For a month I checked the site multiple times a day and each time I felt sick. For most of the campaign it looked like funding might not happen. While Google told me the final 48 hours were the determining value of a Kickstarter I had already developed an ulcer about the whole thing. I didn’t want to fail, I didn’t want Shelly to fail, fuck failing. Failing sucks, I know it all too well. I’ll have giant blog posts in the future about them, I could write volumes on the matter. I didn’t want that old familiar thing in my life, not this time. 

We ended up making the funding goal (and then some) and I’m happy to say my script has been served and approved. Don’t look behind the curtain at the man sweating and clicking refresh on the page for an entire month. He doesn’t exist anywhere but here and in my memory.

HEY, AMATEUR! Will be delivered in 2020 from Black Crown Publishing

DOOM PATROL #5- Yay, it’s coming out in November 2019! Did you know the story sold about 2 years ago? I wrote it right away and was ready to rip but delays started and seemed like it might be over several times. Did you know that I had given up on it, renewed my faith, given up again, and again, and again, for years? Did you know it had 3 editors and with each editor I feared that SOMEONE was going to say “Who the hell is this guy and why should I give him any ink?” Did you know that when the initial announcements were made I was scared that I would be forgotten or left out even though I had poured his soul into a thing and would likely not even get to enjoy a moment of shine for the troubles? Thankfully the folks at DC were kind, the editors believed in me, Gerard and Jeremy supported me, and again my partner Becky had my back because she knew that we were worth it… even when I began to question. Becky has since revealed that she too had those same concerns, but in her damn near angelic way suppressed those fears and was strong for both of us.

DOOM PATROL #6 will be out November 6, 2019 from DC Comics

THE INVISIBLE MONSTERS- They are legion. These are the ones that couldn’t make it. They exist as files, Google Docs, unfinished work, pitches, outlines, and the worst… unanswered emails. It’s the ones you don’t see that will kill you like a disease, more deadly than a man with a knife. I have learned to keep my damn mouth shut about potential projects (I still tease some of these on twitter… but I get EXCITED) because talking about it scares them away. I’ve had some real close calls with INCREDIBLE opportunities. These encounters far outnumber the mini celebrations of the self I trot out every now and then on social media.

I don’t tell you about those emails that never came back. I don’t tell you about what a fucking tool you feel like when you feel ready to dunk and come up with a whiff of rank nothingness. I avoid painting a picture of myself waiting for a ride that will never come because it’s a bad look. I share this now so that you will understand that these great strides are being committed by someone who is well accustomed to the practice of dusting himself off.

There’s plenty of other stuff, but what the hell, that will do, I need to hang on to some stuff for future blogs anyway. As I typed that last bit I chuckled to myself, I don’t need to hang on to any stories of hardship and failure, I have plenty more ahead of me.

So why do I share the sunny stuff? Why do I congratulate myself publically and hope you feel good about seeing a normal guy get his? Well shit, I hope I’ve earned it, and haven’t lost myself in the process. My steps have been small, but to me it’s been what has kept me feeling like one day that mirror is going to reflect the way I wish to see myself.

So let it be written, let it be done.

M

Oh yeah I turned 40, and I don’t feel a day over 100. Thanks for all the kind Birthday wishes.

Posted on by michaelwconrad · 1 Comment

Labour Intensive

I would like to start this entry with a thank you to those who have taken the time to check out the Hey, Amateur! Kickstarter I wrote about in my first entry. We are well on our way to getting funding, but I encourage you to consider supporting me and my fellow creators in backing the project. It’s really appreciated, and I guarantee you will be pleased with what we are up to.

Over the past week my sleep has been poor, I have a major deadline looming and I’d be lying if I said part of the issue hasn’t been stress. All my life I have dreamed about writing comics for a living and here I am, doing it, and it is the hardest thing I have ever done. No, I’m not sweating in the summer sun digging trenches, or dealing with a careless public in a corporate setting, hell, I don’t even need to wear pants! The hard part is in the uncertainty.

For years I have said (often in jest) that I like to “live in the mystery” a term I stole from somewhere long forgotten. I use this phrase to describe my lack of long term planning. It isn’t a good thing by Western standards I’ll wager, worthy of scorn from those who would feel it their role to impart some unsolicited wisdom. The “mystery” remains one of the few ways I have been able to reconcile the hopelessness I know in my heart to be central to the truth. Maybe it’s a self fulfilling prophecy to live like my days are numbered, but it is a prophecy that will absolutely be proven true given enough time.

While I live in the mystery, I have never been one to allow myself to fear financially. I have always gotten up early and gone to work, stayed late, pulled OT hours, in short, I’ve done what it takes. Even on a meager salary I’ve always made sure that I can cover my bills and not have to constantly check my account. I wish to continue on this way until I drop dead at my desk, but as a freelance writer the most gripping fear is that there will be no reason to even be at that desk!

My brother Steven is a killer photographer. Like many troglodytes I have at times thought that photography was a lesser art, more reliant on the tool than the hand and eye. I have had this feeling rightly driven from my mind by watching what he does and knowing full well, that the tools aren’t the magic. We all laugh when some bum asks a great illustrator what kind of pencil they have used, like it’s a magic wand that will impart a lifetime at the drawing board to anyone willing to drop 7.99 on that soft graphite. It isn’t the tools, you know this right? The tools can be a handy excuse for procrastination, or something to foreshorten the suffering involved in a process, but it’s the head and heart of the creator that makes the magic.

But I digress, back to my brother and I. When I went freelance my brother had some great wisdom for me. Having been a freelancer for many years himself, abandoning the safety of an hourly wage he would know. His advice was to allow myself to relax. He explained that during his years as a freelancer he was never off the clock, always hustling to find more work. He gave up video games (a passion of his) and barely watched television. He wouldn’t go out with friends because, while he had some money, he didn’t know if another job would manifest before his next billing cycle. He wasn’t really living, until he sat himself down and gave himself the very advice he sought to impart to me.

I had already found that trap by the time he got to me. I wasn’t ever allowing myself to turn off, and in many ways that is still where I’m at. To the casual observer I have plenty of idle time. I can be found reading, listening to podcasts with a glazed expression, baking bread leisurely with that same glaze, but during these times I’m churning. It’s not just the freelance way, it’s the writers way.

I was out recently with my friend Evan Narcisse, an immense talent and freelance writer (if you haven’t read Rise of the Black Panther Marvel has been goodly enough to collect it in a beautiful trade- do get it, you’ll become an instant fan of Evan’s) and we were commiserating on how while a writer can knock out enough words in a day to feel accomplished, the real work is ALWAYS going on. Everything is an education, everything is potential, part of us always unable to be completely in the moment because there’s an internal court reporter clacking away in hopes of finding the next thing. But that’s only part of it, right?

The other part is the feeling that you’re constantly bothering editors. The “hey did you get my email” message can only be reworded so many times, and a human being can only deal with so much silent rejection without it taking a major toll. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a creative holding pattern because all of your hope and financial stability lives in a single, dusty, unanswered email that has been filed away in a digital waste bin without so much as “nice try kid” to show for it. After a few weeks it has be counted as a loss and let go of, soon you learn that if this thing is gonna work you’re going to have to count on NOTHING until a contract has been signed, and even then the future is not certain.

That’s how it goes, if you’re lucky you didn’t confide in a friend about this great potential project only to later have to explain that editors went another way, almost always freelance code for “I don’t know what the fuck happened and I’m still mortally wounded by it.” I have learned to keep my mouth shut, and for anyone who really knows me, this can be really hard. I’m not a braggart, I think I just desperately want to be excited and to share that excitement. Remember fatalistic stuff from earlier in this rambling diatribe? I’m hustling to find joy. Some of us carry a darkness that is only lit when we have found an outlet, a safe place to feel pride (had to look that word up) and give ourselves a break from that shitty voice in our head telling us we will die without having shared the very thing that may redeem us for our consumption.

Some mornings I wake up and feel like I could Kool-Aid Man my way through a wall. I’ll rise and attack the process, sometimes for no reason clear to me. Other days I get up and putter around, I go to the bad place, the place where I want to walk away. Who am I kidding, this is common, it’s the theme, the throughline of the thing. The default of every freelancer I know is the fear. We all fight it off in different ways, the ones who do best in that battle seem to have careers, the others fade away. 

Writing is less about being good at telling stories than it is about all the other stuff. Here are a couple to consider.

  • Slay the Nemean Lion- write everyday, even w/o assignment
  • Slay the Nine Headed Lernaean Hydra- know most of it will be garbage
  • Capture the Ceryneian Hind- stay up to date on what’s working in the industry
  • Capture the Erymanthian Boar- realize that other people tricks won’t work for you
  • Clean the Augean stables in a single day- edit/rewrite that shit
  • Slay the Stymphalian Birds- deal with missed opportunities/rejection
  • Capture the Cretan Bull- equally hard, deal with success on the rare day it happens
  • Steal the Mares of Diomedes- watch your babies get killed by editors and understand that they ALWAYS know better than you
  • Obtain the girdle of Hippolyta- make sure you move your body and eat right
  • Obtain the cattle of the monster Geryon- be working on the next thing before you get too comfortable with that tiny success you had
  • Steal the apples of the Hesperides- make sure you speak of yourself in a positive way, others will be sure to speak poorly of you, you don’t need to put them out of the job.
  • Capture and bring back Cerberus- know that your goal will never be obtained, the finish line is moving, always moving, just as fast or faster than you

Just a note for clarity, there are far more than 12 Labours… that’s just a couple, and it’s not intended for educational purposes as much as it is as a reminder to myself. A lot of these are going to potentially feel contradictory, or not true in all circumstances, and that’s because the rules change, always… we are gonna experience ups and downs, and during the ebb and flow of the process elements of this will be void or highlighted.

I think I’ll put a pin in it there. In many ways this has been an exercise in procrastination and that deadline is still there. Thankfully I have a deadline… I better also spend some time today working toward the next one… no video games for me today I’m afraid, gonna have to order a pizza and pull an all nighter…

Damn, it’s happening again.

So let it be written, so let it be done.

M

Below is the link to the Hey, Amateur! Kickstarter! Be a friend to the cause (and to me) and support the book! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sxbond/hey-amateur