Heavens Decoded

Cartooning isn't pinups. Cartooning is storytelling. I love pinups & gorgeous covers, too. But a cartoonist has to eat the frog. Do the hard part. That cityscape 27 times per issue, the newsroom with the people sitting & talking around the table, the car chase. Tell the story.

So you get people who have portfolios full of really pretty pinup art, and these people sometimes grumble at folks like me who have career longevity and maybe not as much flashy pinup art. And that's because the writer KNOWS I'm an artist who will tell the story as written.

I could be here all day going over stories of writers who have had their scripts butchered by artists who decided the script was too hard to draw, so they cut a six panel page and made it into a splash, both to make it easier to draw, and easier to sell.

Your portfolio may show lots of cute pinups of hot chicks, but you are going to get a story with a car chase in it, tons of gritty city backgrounds, and a crowd scene in a restaurant, and the fun's over, man.

One of the things that is really hard for people trying to get into comics to understand is you don't just get to draw what you want to draw. You have to draw what the story requires. Things you don't like. Things you're not good at.