Translator: isabel espinoza Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard
It's summer 2007, a really hot day.
I drove my car to work, parked it in a parking lot, turned off the ignition,
and I just sat there. Getting hotter, and hotter, the air on my skin was hot,
beads of sweat where forming on my brow.
Because I just could't bare the idea of getting out of my car,
going upstairs and starting my workday.
So what was this job, you wonder, that I couldn't bare to go to?
Probably, cool calling people to sell them insurance or
maybe clubbing babies seals to death...
(Laughter)
No, as it happens...-
Since 1993, I have been a full-time professional cartoonist,
comic book artist and illustrator. Being perfectly frank, I have a dream job.
You know, August 2004, my wife and I came back to the United States.
My wife Juli and I have wanted to have one last grand adventure
before we settled down, bought a house, had a family and in all other ways
became real responsible grown-up adults.
So what we did is, we lived in Japan for 2 years and
taught English and we drank with with other expats.
But when I was starting to come back,
I suddenly had lost a lot of the confidence
that my career as a cartoonist
was going to be able to support us
in that kind of way, to give us that kind of lifestyle.
My career was well established, but it'd always been sort of,
at my own whims.
Like, I would do this project because it was fun,
and I would do this project because it was for a friend,
and this one because I respected this person,
this one 'cause it raised my profile a little bit...
But it was all a little bit loose.
And I was just a little bit too much of an artist.
And I din't want to be an artist. I wanted to be a professional.
So some friends and I started a business. And we were professional.
We did photo touch-ups,
we did illustrations for ads,
we did animation for video games,
we did storyboards for commercials.
Any time someone says, "hey can you do this?"
We say, "Oh! Yeah Yeah Yeah! Sure sure sure sure..."
and we run out to the book store,
we buy the book on how to do it, and we learn how to do it, and we do it.
Over and over again, day after day, like real responsible
grown-up adult professionals.
And there I sat, every day in my car, sweating because I couldn't bear
to go up and start my work day.
One of the funny things about being a creative professional,
is that the money is just never
quite as good as you think is going to be.
You always know that right around the corner,
is that big job that's really gonna do it.
So all you have to do is, hitting you marks,
getting better and better at your craft,
and bigger and better jobs are just going to fall on your lap.
But, it just never quite happens that way.
Because the other funny thing about being a professional is that
you're doing the same thing as the next person in line.
People don't care if is you or the next person, they just want it done.
And so it's really hard to get any momentum
when you're constantly proving yourself.
The other funny thing about being a creative professional is that
no matter what kind of reputation you have
for being responsible, for being on time,
for being professional, there's always some yahoo
who comes strolling in your studio and says: "I got the greatest idea!
It is all up here, all you have to do is draw it.
We don't have a budget right now,
but when we do have a budget on another project,
we'll make sure that we'll come back to you,
and besides, it's gonna be a great exposure.
Great exposure, is always great exposure for them, and not you.
But it does get you thinking.
In the creative world, generally speaking, ownership equals risk.
If you own something,
largely, you have risked something to get it.
Sometimes is just money,
sometimes is time,
sometimes it's your reputation,
sometimes it's your skill and sometimes it's all the other things
that you could have been doing, when that happened.
I had been thinking constantly about second-guessing clients
and trying to adjust my art styles, so it was exactly what they wanted.
And I needed to do something that was just for me.
So some friends and I,
some are the same friends, some are different friends,
created the 144 hours graphic novel project.
12 chapters, 12 pages each, one hour per page.
Brutally fast. As a sort of conservative estimate,
that's about 8 times faster than you'd want to go
for professional great work.
For my concept, they chose this sort old half-thought-out idea I had,
called The Infernal Adventures of Heckhammer Schult.
It was a 40s-esque pulp action adventure
with a gun-slinging hero,
a mummy sidekick and they explored Dante's inferno.
It's gonna be a rip roaring, rock'm suck'm good time adventure.
Late 2007, I don't exactly remember the date,
I don't really wanna think about when that was:
my wife and I were in a doctor's office
and we were getting our 13 weeks ultrasound.
We were talking about a friend
and laughing about something they had done that week,
that was either in character or out of character, I don't really remember,
when all of a sudden, the ultrasound ticked,
excused herself, cleaned us all up and moved us to another room.
And then a doctor came in,
she told us that our baby's heart wasn't beating.
We had a miscarriage
and it was our eighth.
Infertility and loss,
had chipped away every last ounce of happiness
that we had have in our life.
Over and over again.
we had grieved,
and we had pulled ourselves out of the hole,
and then we tried again,
and then when we should have been living in perfect, happiness and hope,
we lived in a absolutely dread.
Until it inevitably happened again.
In my book,
this zany wacky high concept adventure
became this.
Our hero Heck
who is ,
is now,
sad,
melancholic,
downbeat,
his best years are behind him.
And the funeral director, that he meets,
only wants a child for his wife and him to love
but the angels take him away,
take all the unbaptised children away out of limbo.
And despair,
and death
and dread are everywhere.
November 2008,
July and I flew to Seoul, South Korea
and we met,
Mr and Mrs Yong.
And they handed us 10-month-old Pack Jing So.
Jing Parker Cannon,
our little boy.
And we put him on a plane and we brought him home.
And suddenly Heck's comedic, mummified sidekick
became a fragile helpless dependent.
And Heck's sole fear if whether or not he can protect him.
In my pulp conceit of doing a favor for a love interest,
became a long exploration of loyalty, of guilt,
heartbreak and love.
And it also had a big bloody battle at the end,
because when you have a cover with a guy with a shotgun over his shoulder
heading in the hell, it makes certain implicit promises.
And I like to think I always keep my promises, because you know,
I am professional.
The book came out in 2013 from a small but prestigious publisher
and I sold it at the San Diego Comic Convention.
There were some people who read it as genre fiction
and some people who were intrigued by the cover
and there were some people who had followed my work since the late 90s.
But that was about it.
The conventional wisdom about publishing is that
if a book doesn't hit in about a month or two,
that's pretty much all that she wrote,
But for the first time, that didn't matter to me.
Because this book wasn't a stepping stone to anything else.
This was a book that for once, I put my own ideas onto paper.
And if it there were ten people that read it and like it, that's fine.
I had a professional career to fall back on.
And if this was just going to be just a cathartic blip,
on anotherwise work-a-day journey in my professional career,
well, now that was just fine.
But then something really weird happened.
Reviews began to trickle in.
First there was some good ones,
and then there was some great ones,
and then was some embarassingly hyperbolic ones.
The book started popping up on the best of the year list,
and then it was on the best horror comic of all times list,
and then it became on the best graphic novel of all times list.
It starting to winning awards. It won best graphic novel of the year,
it won me best cartoonist of the year.
This sloppy, bloody,
this was a work that was done, at least as the outset,
as a lark : one hour per page.
Just slapping together scenes in minutes before I had to draw them and
the worst lettering that I had ever done.
This sloppy, bloody, depressing, pulp novel, had very modest ambitions,
was quickly becoming the defining work of my career.
So did it make me famous or rich?
I can assure you it did it not, but...
for a professional cartoonist, what it did was is made my name synonymous
with one work of quality that what was all my own.
In so doing, it let people know what I would do if left me on my own devices.
And because of that, it could move the needles ever so slightly,
in terms of how much of my own work I could do, who I could do it for,
and how much money I could do it for.
Because all of asudden, publishers were interested in me.
And publishers that were already interested in me,
were more interested in me. (Laughter)
And for once they were all interested in me for the right reasons.
Clients now wanted what I brought to the table.
Now, no one wanted a solid run on Batman from me.
No one wanted a script [unclear],
Publisher wanted something that I had wholly created.
And reviewers wanted me to comment on ideas that were important to me.
And readers, who are the most important clients of all,
they wanted a story that would invite then, sit you down,
tell you a little something about the author's inner life.
Because everyone wants a little bit of honesty,
And as it turns out, no one wants something that that is just [unclear]
under budget and exaclty what was asked for.
No one wants something where all that is, is professional.
Thank you. (Applause)