The Path
I’ve seen a lot of creators come and go in my time. A lot of them.
They came in, not saying they wanted to create comics, but that they wanted to work for Marvel/DC. That was their only goal.
Marvel and DC have long been closed to new writers, and artist portfolios are much easier to look at. Getting work done at other places instead of just knocking on the one door isn’t something these creators wanted to do.
They gave themselves only one path in the tangle of paths open to them, knowing full well there was a wall in front of them, but unwilling to even consider that the wall may not be scalable with their current skillset. So, they fail, and that failure pushed them out.
There are few who make it to the show, their path and their skillset allowing them to climb the wall.
And there are others whose path started them toward Marvel/DC, and when they met the wall, they changed their path to accommodate their new knowledge. (You can’t travel on the path without accumulating some knowledge. It would take a total lack of awareness to navigate the path without accumulating some knowledge.) That change has led to success in different ways.
There isn’t any one path, and that path is very often long, winding, and rarely ends up where you thought it should.
Also, the path only ends when you say it does.
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Category: Columns, The Daily Dose
