How I Got Into Comics
At Norwich Zine Fair 2022
The Catalyst
On the 26th of September 2021, I went to an event where called Coffee & Comics where amazing comics people, Dominique Duong, Kry Garcia and Shane Melisse were present as exhibitors for the Hackney Comic and Zine Fair. That same year I went to Thought Bubble and saw everyone from people who printed comics on their parents or schools printers to artists, writers and editors from DC, Marvel and Image comics all selling their work side by side.
I can honestly say that if it was not for that event I would never have thought that printing my comics was worth doing.
Before that…
I never thought that I would be someone who draws ( I was about to say for a living but I’m technically not doing that). Since I was 6 years old I have been working towards a career as a musician until about 2019. I discovered that, in hindsight, I haven't actually been making any music or performing and therefore I could not continue to say that my album was coming soon (my last album was in 2010). I then decided that I wanted to learn to draw so that I could animate the music videos in my mind that played when I was hyper fixated on a song.
I took a “How to Draw” class at The Blackheath Conservatoire taught by Victoria Rance. I remember during the first class we sat down and drew aubergines and peppers on paper with charcoal. At the end of the class, everyone put their work on the wall so that we could see how we all did. Considering that this was a beginners class I was so surprised at the different levels of skill we all seemed to have. There were people there who were retired and excited to try something new, there were students that were looking for a creative outlet and a few people like me who had been looking for ways to get creative or remember how to draw from their school days. I was so amazed by how everyone genuinely could draw! None of the drawings was so different from reality that you couldn’t tell what we were drawing. I did find that everyone was so impressed with everyone else drawings and could see nothing but flaws in theirs so I did my best to squint and see the compliments from the perspective of the complimentors when they happened.
My first “serious comic”
In December 2021, the Faber/Observer/Comica prize was approaching. I knew about the competition but didn’t think much about it until Matthew Dooley was a guest on The Flawed Workshop Podcast. Based on what we spoke about I concluded that I should enter the competition. I am a huge believer that when you make anything creative of any kind you are never the judge of the work after it’s done and so if no one liked my work and the judges chose another piece that’s exactly what they’re there to do.
Now, I have trouble with deadlines, in that I never miss them but the lead up to them is completely insane but only when there are consequences. Entering this competition was an amazing way to motivate me to finish my comic Hair. I made the deadline, but I didn’t win, so I’ll try again next year.
Hair was the first time I told an autobiographical story I told and I’ve been told it has resonated with people which is always super heart warming to hear because it’s so nice to be able to share something like that with strangers and instantly connect about something as apparently trivial as the hair that grows out of our heads.
Tabling
Later in the next year, tabling was the perfect way to set up deadlines for printing some copies and designing stickers. That solidified my method to motivate myself to continue finishing things as well. This might sounds nuts but to continue the motivation for making new work, I imagine that I have a superfan that is coming to see what’s new at my table every time I do a fair. I need to have something new for them so that they don’t get bored at my table when they arrive and that works very well. If there is a fair or a competition, I’ll probably keep making things pretty consistently, I hope!
