Project Diary 8/21/11: Sitting here, drawing my drawings, and suddenly skidded into a patch of comic-related depression. No one ever talks about this part, but all that time just sitting there, drawing— you think some weird dark shit, man. Is it just me? Maybe it’s just me, but… that combination of working away on something and at the same time, knowing that no reasonable number of people will conceivably care about what you’re working on, and that you’re just doing it because you’re bored and nuts… I don’t know; maybe it’s just me…
I’m sitting here drawing a comedy, and then it’s like… I think “no one is in any meaningful way walking in Jack Kirby’s footsteps” and suddenly I’m all sad. What?? I’m trying to draw a dog vomiting into a toilet— that is not the appropriate time to be sad about Jack Kirby! Or I know Dave Sim’s going through a little tiny critical reinnaiscance right now, or I saw Tim Callahan’s piece anyways, but— it’s hard when you spend a long time drawing things not to get that thought in your head of… “This making-comics shit drove that dude fucking crazy.” (Which isn’t necessarily true because if you look at early Cerberus issues, there’s plenty of evidence that guy was not a great dude well before he went off on his “all women are Marxist voids” thing, but… ) (And heck, I’m sure Dave Sim looks at other people and thinks “And somehow, I’m the crazy one??”) And… and this all not even mentioning the weird personal thoughts that flit in and out, which we don’t need to delve into…
(There’s never going to be another Kirby, though. There’s not a business for one; there’s not an audience for one; and the guys in comics now just don’t have it in them. The heart’s not there. So what’s the point of any of it???? AAAAAAH!) (I think I got the vomiting dog to look okay, but I don’t think I drew a very good toilet…)
