A Tale of Embarrassment and Failure

This post was originally written for my Patreon supporters, who get behind-the-scenes updates like this every week. If you'd like to support my work and get access to process posts, works-in-progress, and more vulnerable reflections like this one.

Visit my patreon

So, I missed a flight for the first time in my life.

I'm at home right now when I should be on an airplane because I missed a flight. I'm sure I've missed some connecting flights due to delays and whatnot, but this is the first time I got to the airport too late. I am not traveling to Alaska right now. I can't believe it. I'm so embarrassed.

After shame eating a Burger King breakfast and taking a nap, perhaps to combat my shame, I decided to take the day to make a Patreon post.

So here it is, my "don't feel too bad, at least you are working" Patreon update.

For the last week, there hasn't been much drawing. I've got three pages done that I haven't shown you yet, but they are pages of the climax of the story, and I want to reserve showing them to you until I have more so you can let the scene play the way it's intended to be read.

Preparing for three different comics events that are all happening this month has been taking up most of my time. So I thought I'd share what that preparation and these events are like.

First, about the preparation. The three events are the Beaverton Library Free Comic Book Day, the Alaska Robotics Mini-Con and Comics Camp, and the Vancouver Comics Art Festival. I love all of these events. I go every chance I get. They're the only events I regularly attend, and they all happen in the same month. Therefore, my convention stuff had been packed away for almost a year. And on top of that, this is the first time I'll be taking Incredible Doom Volume 2 to comic cons. It's been quite the shift in logistics, traveling with 280-page graphic novels as opposed to the 30-page minicomics I'm used to. Keeping stock on hand and transporting it from the place, even when I'm going to a convention on the other side of town, let alone when traveling to Vancouver or Alaska.

If you haven't picked up Incredible Doom it's now in bookstores and comic shops everywhere.

Buy on Bookshop.org

The first thing I had to do was figure out if I had enough of everything. Luckily, since reading Kell McDonald's fantastic post about their method of preparing for comic conventions, I've kept spreadsheets of the sales I make at each convention for the last few years. This gives me a guess as to how many books and minicomics I might need to bring.

Unfortunately, I didn't have numbers for the Alaska Robotics Mini-con or free comic book day. I don't know why not.

So I made an educated guess based on the published attendance figures for cons I do have records for, compared to the expected attendance for Beaverton and Alaska. For safety, I multiplied those expected sales numbers by two, just in case. You hate to run out, and then I'll keep better records this year.

I have a fair amount of Incredible Doom books in my closet that I purchased from Harper Collins to take to future comic conventions. But now that I have spent a few days trying to figure out the best way to transport them, I think I would be better off in the future ordering books from Harper Collins to be delivered directly to the convention when possible, then shipping the ones that don't sell back home.

Next was figuring out my table setup. This also took longer than I thought. My design from previous cons wouldn't work because, unlike previous years, I have a 6-foot table to fill for the first time. So I spent a little while trying to mock everything up on my drawing desk, balancing making things look nice while trying to keep packing reasonable. The more stuff on the table that isn't books, the more I have to lug around, ship, or pay to have stowed on a plane. Here are a couple of photos of mockups I did.

The three-foot version for Alaska:

The six-foot versions for FCBD and VanCAF:

We will be selling two new things this time: the floppy disks that were part of a promotion for Incredible Doom Volume 2 and the "It is" minicomic. I even made a little video to loop under the floppy disk to catch folks' eye with some changing colors.

I also made a new video from some reused promotional images I put together for Vol. 2, and some quotes folks were kind enough to give us. I put it on an iPad and set it to loop forever using an old app I purchased and guided access to reject touch input in case any kids come up and play with it. This kind of thing has been pretty successful at drawing people in. I included a copy of the new video at the top of this post. Of course, the video plays silently when it plays on my table because you don't want to be that guy.

The Beaverton Library Free Comic Book Day Con happened last weekend and went well. My girlfriend started this event at the library years ago, but now it's been taken over by a different librarian. It usually consists of five to ten cartoonists who get free tables to show their wares at the library for a couple of hours. A booth also gives away copies of the official Free Comic Book Day comic books. Lots of kids come, and lots of folks that usually wouldn't stumble into a comic convention happen to walk in because there's a farmer's market across the street at the same time.

Jesse got to come this year for the first time, and I saw several old friends. In addition, a few people came specifically hoping that Incredible Doom would be there, which is very flattering. Amazingly, even though the con only lasted for a couple of hours, I was exhausted at the end.

The Alaska Robotics Show is next. It's an incredible event that I've been to twice. I love it so much, even though it's costly.

The show consists of three parts. A bunch of cartoonists fly into Juneau, which can only be accessed by plane or boat. They then first do school visits to show kids in Juneau (who I'm told are exposed to only a few potential careers living in Juneau) what it's like to be a professional cartoonist. Then we do a mini-con where the Juneau residents and people visiting on cruise ships can come by and check out our comics and listen to panels. And then, after the mini-con, all of the cartoonists hop on a big bus and travel out into the wilderness, where we camp together at a Christian camp for several nights.

We goof off, play games, and talk to each other about what it's like to work in this medium. Comics can be a pretty solitary job for many people, including me. And it is incredibly cathartic to get together with like-minded folks without a cell signal and hang out.

I remember a year when several of us were having a roundtable about the things weighing on us. One cartoonist, who had been having success with shorter posts online, was particularly worried about taking what they saw as the next step in their career and trying to make a graphic novel. But making a book like that can bring so much time, money, and energy, and they had never done anything like it before. What if they spent all that time and money, and then the book wasn't good? Or it was good but just wasn't what their audience wanted and didn't sell? Making something that could potentially flop and be a costly failure was terrifying. They thought it was something that could tank their career just as it was getting going.

I had a story. Several years ago, I wrote, penciled, inked, and colored over 200 pages of a graphic novel series that I eventually had to abandon unfinished because it just wasn't working.

In my memory, someone in the room gasped at hearing this. Another person let out an involuntary "aw." It was like I'd stabbed each one of them a little bit.

I said that it stunk that I had to abandon that project, but in the end, everybody who loved me before I started it still loved me after I gave it up. All my friends who supported me before that project were still friends afterward. And I was okay.

I couldn't speak to how it would impact someone's career because I didn't have much of a career myself at that time then. But as far as how happy I was or how ashamed it made me feel, I came out the other end feeling good.

I can't say for sure, but it seemed like it might have helped the other person. And honestly, the gasps other people made when I told them how much work I had put into a project I had to abandon helped me. Everyone knows what it's like to spend a long time invested in something that doesn't work out, but only other cartoonists understand that specific manner of failure.

I don't know anywhere else in the comics community where that kind of stuff, those kinds of conversations can happen, supportive friends away from the internet who can talk about doing this work.

I will fly to Alaska to get it. Except, evidently, I won't fly there today. I will fly there tomorrow.