Poor Mojo's Newswire

STEP ONE: Consider Reality. You are talking about breaking in to an exclusive group that has a surplus of people applying for every paying assignment in a niche industry where tastes change like the whisk of a second hand. If all you know about being a pro comics writer is what you see at cons, in interviews, and on message boards, yes, it looks like a good laugh, and no, it’s not like digging ditches. But you are never off the clock. Deadlines never stop, never go away. You can do your very best work and have it demolished by a mistake in the printing. The more you care, the harder it is. The reality is different than the fantasy. It’s hard, and breaking in is really hard. And freelancers usually have to pay their own insurance and have few benefits that most employees receive, and little to no job security. Weigh all that carefully. Think if you want to put your family through that. An editor can take you off a book without thinking twice. Most people breaking in make very little money at first and many never REALLY achieve financial stability. Some of the all time greats in comics? They’re still alive, and can’t get work in the field they helped build. I keep wanting to tell the positive side, but odds are, you already know the positive side. Give this a thought, a long, solid thought, before jumping in. It’s a tough business, a fluid business. Also, if you go in expecting unending adoration from readers, you’re doomed. Doomed, I tell you. . . .

. . . It’s not my fault most “entertainment” isn’t entertaining. I didn’t put a gun to whoever made THE TOURIST’s head and tell him to ruin me going to the movies with my Dad. My dad wants to see Angelina Jolie have adventures, which I think is a pretty innocent thing to want out of life,and next thing you know, they’re punishing us for that. I didn’t will that to happen. I didn’t vote to put that TOURIST shit on the Black List or whatever. They just did that to my family, for no reason. Not sure how to respond– I don’t even know if we’re even on the same planet, here. I mean, just this idea that I’m “tearing apart” anything, for starters… You and Steve Niles and whoever believes this nonsense that things can be “torn apart”… Where the hell did that phrase come from? It’s just silly. Because I don’t think I’m tearing anything apart. I think I’m constructing something of my own, that belongs to me, and trying to share that with people, same as anyone who writes anything. I think it’s all writing; writing is writing, sharing is sharing, and pretending that one batch is somehow more special than another, or some other batch is bad and wrong and snarky and tears things apart– that’s just not how I understand the world. I think that’s just propaganda from people who want to sell shitty things to idiots. And anyway, nothing’s gotten “torn apart”: THE TOURIST is still there, on a DVD shelf, waiting to make innocent people miserable, no matter what mean things I say about it. As far as I’m concerned, they never put it together properly to begin with– they sold it torn apart. I like oodles of things though. HOW TV RUINED YOUR LIFE– I’m completely head over heels for that show; I think it’s Charlie Brookers’s masterpiece. I liked KING CITY. I’m enjoying INHERENT VICE (slowly) so far. I like that new Keira Knightley perfume ad. I definitely like the work of all those artists you mentioned. I definitely can’t do better than Howard Mackie or Chuck Austen at what they did, though I’m lucky that I don’t particularly want to do what they did. I definitely, definitely can’t do better than whoever made THE TOURIST. But I don’t think you have to (or should) believe that to have an opinion, or want to compare notes with other people…