Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, sol comics

Punching An Ogre In The Face

Project Title: Sol Comics. Creators: PATRICK TRAHEY – Writer, LUIS SUÁREZ – Artist (The XII), MARTÍN "MAGNUS" PÉREZ – Letterer (The XII), SEBASTIÁN PÍRIZ – Artist/Letterer (Murphy, A Dish Best Served Medium Rare, Immortality), DIOGO LANDO – Artist/Letterer (The Harlot). The XII updates Tuesdays and short stories update Thursdays. Available now at sol-comics.com.

"Succeeding in comics," a friend told me one chilly drunken night, "is like punching an ogre in the face."

Now that might not make a lot of sense quite yet, but let's talk about building a career in comics as a writer, and see if the metaphor becomes a bit clearer.

Why would anyone who can't draw try to create comics? It's a question I've asked myself countless times over. Why not write prose? Or poetry? Or a travel blog? At least then I could justify a trip to Japan as "research."

But I chose comics.

It's hard to say exactly why. I preferred writing scripts to prose. I preferred the pretty pictures on the page to the ones that literature conjured in my head. I preferred a medium that views a self-publisher as someone with gumption. Some combination of the above led me to comics despite a complete inability to draw and, at the time, little to no knowledge of the business.

But here I am, writing comics.

It's not easy getting started as a writer in comics (although to be fair it's not easy getting a start as a writer in any field). You come up with an idea, you write a script, then what?

Everything I know about making comics comes from a simple process of trial and error. Try something, fail at it, try again. Fail, try, fail, try, fail try. Repeat until you succeed. This process applies to every aspect of creation, from writing a character with depth, to hiring a reliable artist, to pitching your work to Bleeding Cool.

Your successes mark your achievements, but failures define who you are. More precisely, your ability to learn from and move past your failures is what matters. And if you want to succeed in comics (or in anything) you learn to embrace the failure.

Now you may have heard this somewhere before and it does sound a bit like a motivational poster (despite being completely true), but you've never heard it with the colorful imagery of an ogre being punched in the face.

"Picture a big hairy, snarl-toothed ogre," my friend told me. "That ogre represents the obstacles you'll face in your career. If you want to succeed, you have to keep punching that ogre in the face. The ogre may never fall, may never falter, but you keep punching it. It may even punch back, and knock you down, but just keep punching."

"What if the ogre smashes me with its mighty ogre club?" I asked.

"That's a risk you'll have to take if you want those precious ogre-experience points."

I'm Patrick Trahey. I write webcomics. I've spent the past few years building a website called Sol Comics. Sol Comics is the home comic short stories of various genres, styles, tones, as well as The XII, a post-apocalyptic series about a clandestine group of killers building a true metropolis in the ruins of Chicago.

Sol Comics is my ogre, and I'd like to invite you to punch it in the face with me. I've done quite a bit on my own, but if I'm going to put a bit of wobble in its knees, I'll need the combined fists of many faithful readers.

There are many ways you can lend your fists: including reading the comics, following on Facebook and Twitter, and purchasing my comics from Indyplanet. But the single biggest blow you can deliver (a brass knuckled haymaker if you will) is to support Sol Comics on Patreon.

If you're not familiar with Patreon, it's similar to Kickstarter, except rather than donating once towards a single goal, you pledge to donate on an on-going basis, monthly in my case. There are the same behind-the-scenes perks you've come to expect from Kickstarter and the like, so plenty to offer.

Sol Comics is in its awkward teenage phase, desperately seeking attention and in need of money for new shoes, so go donate. Fall in love with Sol Comics, take it to prom, and look after it, because there are ogres out there.

Thank you in advance for your support. Go find an ogre of your own to punch. They're big and scary, but a persistent fist will win.

A note to Bleeding Cool Readers: I've added a goal to my Patreon campaign just for you. It's an idea I've been floating around with friends for quite some time, but I'll actually do it if you help me crack the $100 threshold.

I would like to create the first in a series of videos in which I dress up like Christopher Nolan's Bane and read children's stories. If that's something you'd like to see, please donate. I do a mean Bane impression, and I'll let you choose the book.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!