“It’s different for you,” Janice said to me years ago, as we were talking about defining ourselves. “I don’t have a thing. Your thing is writing comics.”
If you know me only from here, where I mostly talk about crosswords and wordplay, that statement might surprise you. But a lot of readers here know me from my other great love, and in light of that, she had a point.
From January 2000 to February 2023, I had a writing credit on at least one ongoing comics series. Webtoon’s interest in me and my work was a shot in the arm for my career. My first Webtoon series, Traveler, was not a ratings success, but everyone involved was still willing to talk a second series, possibly more.
More to the point, I’ve thought of myself as a comics writer since childhood, more or less. My personal website and social media bios usually said “Comics writer” front and center. I think in comics, sometimes dream in them.
I’ve done lots of other stuff, too—crossword design, wordplay studies, freelance editing of books and papers, search engine optimization, search results analysis. But comics writing was pretty much always my thing. It was who I was.
A few weeks ago, I was bored enough to log into Twitter. I do so rarely these days. The madness of King George—sorry, Elon Musk—has made it less and less welcoming, and a number of people I know have deleted their accounts altogether. But other friends still find it a useful place to share thoughts…or haven’t found the nicotine patch to kick the habit.
As I signed on, I spotted a hashtag blasting through my remaining Twitter circle:
#ComicsBrokeMe.
At its core, the tag was social protest, calling attention to the lousy work conditions and low pay (sometimes no pay) still a part of the field. In the case of Ian McGinty, the resulting constant overwork likely led to his death. Others (chiefly artists) have discussed problems like nerve damage, tendonitis, and serious sleep deprivation. The most common issue, though, is that there’s just no money in it, except for a very privileged few.
Among those raising that last point, I saw a couple who’d worked with me. No one was calling me out, but that still stung. I’d hoped to be able to lift others up with me. As a comics writer, not a comics writer-artist, I was especially conscious that I couldn’t do great work in the field alone.
As it was? I’ve made some money, here and there, but never enough to spread it too widely or feel secure. There are stories I could’ve told: multiple comics collectives that decided paying talent was optional, the time Google Ads banned one of my comics without provable cause and essentially undercut our whole business, the three-volume book deal that got kicked down to two as the publisher started to implode.
Still, I held back from participating in the hashtag, and not just because it was (ugh) Twitter. A hashtag tends to flatten everyone’s experiences into one—and I haven’t had it nearly as rough as some full-time artists. When the movement includes a cartoonist six figures in medical debt arguing that a billion-dollar corporation should give its workers health insurance, I can’t really complain about the scrappy startup life.
Plus, by the time I looked into it, these legitimate protests had started losing ground to pettier grievances and culture-war issues. Twitter’s engagement-loving algorithms have always kept its trolls well-fed.
Then there was the phrase “broke me.” I don’t like it. I feel there’s a lot of well-intentioned talk in 2020s America that ends up normalizing trauma, encouraging hopelessness instead of hope. Broken bones heal, broken structures can be fixed, but a broken person, it’s implied, stays broken, with no function left except as a cautionary tale for those who come after.
I reject that thinking. Your story isn’t over till you’re dead. There’s always a chance to make tomorrow brighter than today.
But there was one other consideration, more selfish than any of these principles, that bought my silence. I was waiting to hear about my own new comics venture. I was waiting to see if a six-month-long pitch process, and by extension decades of writing and publishing comics, were going to condense themselves back into a regular income.
Shortly after that, I got my answer.
No. They wouldn’t.
To be continued.
I have nothing to offer, but want to note that I find this an alarming state of things.
Both for the industry as a whole and for your personal involvement.