I’m not “leaving writing comics” in the sense that I’ll never write one again. Using borrowed art, I could probably write one an hour from now, if I wanted. What I’m leaving behind is the identity—the belief that writing comics is the defining activity of my life and that I should plan that life accordingly.
The irony is that I’d sort of left that dream behind before, without saying so, and then it got halfway to reality thanks to Webtoon—for all of a year. So part of me still wants to say, Never say never.
(Using the “Spider Man: No More” image for this installment reflects that ambiguity a bit. As evidenced by the fact that Spider-Man’s career did not end four years in, he’d eventually renege his thought-ballooned commitment to growing up. Never say never.)
But still, I think it’s probably never. Probably never gonna write Spider-Man professionally. Or Green Lantern. Or Captain Carrot.
Probably never gonna get a graphic-novel memoir to chart (hey, I did get into the bookstores, technically, with Tokyopop). Probably never gonna get a TV adaptation of my work, probably never gonna do a newspaper comic strip.
Probably never gonna launch another big comics series.
And I have to say, that’s kind of a relief.
Each comics series I’ve done has been a joint project, and that’s meant I’ve had at least one creative partner whose welfare I was looking after in addition to my own. Sometimes that meant paying them directly. Sometimes it meant splitting the pot. Always, it meant an apology in my throat, because I could never pay what I thought should be fair market worth, only what they’d accept.
It’s been nice not to be alone on certain projects, but that responsibility has weighed heavier and heavier as the years have gone by. It certainly didn’t help the fraught relationship I had with my last co-writer, and it was tough to break it to my last creative team, all of whom I considered friends. (I still do, but we don’t have as much reason to talk now.)
In a sense, not much has really changed in the last month. In a sense, this is more about accepting change that happened years ago without my full acknowledgment.
But still…for all my adult life, if you asked me what my “thing” was, I could say, “writing comics.” And now?I don’t know everything the future holds. I don’t think crosswords and wordplay, much as I enjoy them, are going to be enough to be a full career, either.
I guess the best answer is just straight-up “writing.”
Not the easiest thing, changing your own self-definition. But if there’s one thing any writer knows, it’s that definitions change over time.