Preface:

Hey Friendos, long time no see. It wasn’t anything personal; most newsletters die after their first two posts (or is that podcasts,) and also my computer broke, which in turn stymied a number of my creative endeavors (read: not just this one.) It’s been maybe a year and change, and if you’re not reading this in real time/living under a rock, boy was 2025 a doozy, and wow is 2026 not looking any better. That said, I’ve got a keyboard again, so…

003 - Investment

I’ve been a cartoonist all my life, and professionally since 2011 when I first made a buck slinging my xeroxed comics at MICE. A lot of that career’s early momentum came from the determination to succeed/not die and misunderstanding how being an indie cartoonist worked at a fundamental level. I don’t claim to understand it now, but I have learned in time that it is not just about making good work, but also about sharing work, and designing time. Sharing work is getting the things you made into the hands and eyes of people who can feel what energy you’ve put into it, or it can be sharing the work of others you love, and making that available for others. Designing time is the development of structures that help you share that work, be it the social media pipelines that carry the work downsteam, or the backend of a blog or newsletter that frames the work and adds metatexual adornment. Juggling these elements is a full time job, but historically it has been worthwhile on both a production level and a self fulfillment level. When you make a comic, you invest so much of your time in the making that it only seems fair to honor it by putting in the work to make sure that it is available to others. The transfer of energy from creator to audience can be like sharing the warmth of a campfire, “this kept me warm, and I hope it keeps you warm too.”

One thing about cartoonists though is that many of us are multidisciplinary, and one of my other disciplines (although much less developed than being a cartoonist) is Animation. When you’re a cartoonist, you have inherently made a deal that your time and the time of a normal person will never be the same. You will spend hours drawing and writing and coloring and refining a page that will take someone 1-5 minutes to read. When you’re animating at 24 frames a second, you feel that time discrepancy stretch even further. Your time is concentrated for the consumption of others, and although that can feel incredibly isolating and devaluing, it’s also understood and normal. If it took as long to perform a medical operation as it did to learn how to perform one, we’d be in more trouble than we currently are. That said, operations can still take quite some time, but for the patient, maybe no time passes at all because they’re under anesthesia so they can receive the benefits of all that concentrated time that their care professionals have devoted in preparation for these moments where it matters.

That all said, the time dialation of our historical moment has me feeling things. When I think about the disparity of time as it relates to daily life in the 2020’s, I think about second screen viewing, and watching video-essays about things that I think I’d enjoy, but hesitate to make time for. I think about generative AI shortcutting self expression and creativity, and people breaking their time down into dollar amounts where if you don’t earn at least x, or enjoy yourself y, then why do the thing? It’s not worth the risk, to put yourself out there and invest your time in something with uncertain outcomes, so experiences and expressions are kept at arm’s length. These are the cynical vignettes of life in this age, and they make me worry about what would happen if there’s no deviation from the devaluation of human expression. In the race to the bottom in late/end-stage capitalism, who should hold up their end of the deal? If the audience wont participate, then why should the artist try?

Because we’re invested, and because the shortcut circumvention of human play and trial and error and triumph… it’s not warm. Many of these experiences thrice removed, of creation and consumption, do nothing to fulfill or engage or enrich, and as mental junk food leave us feeling just as bad as the twelfth Twinkie. Eventually we will be sick of the insincerity of it all, and hopefully the shills and conmen move on to the next plan to cheat mankind out of its culture, and we chart our course away from the colonization and hypermonetization of our minds, bodies, and souls. It is the duty of the human, to dream of better for ourselves and our fellows, and someday I’d like to live a life where taking a break doesn’t put you in financial jeopardy, and where the stakes are lowered to where I can enjoy a book instead of letting a stranger on the internet tell me it felt like to read it thirdhand.

XXX

Thanks for tuning in, and until next time

stay safe, good luck, don’t die.