Steven Grant makes sure that you will never want to become a comic creator:
Getting projects done is always something of a horror show; it’s like viewing World War I from a trench as the shrapnel whizzes by. Whatever grand design initiates whatever design, once work really begins it’s hard to dodge tunnel vision, the tendency to focus on small moments of the story at the cost of the big picture, and to start making adjustments and compromises just to try to tame the beastly, amok thing, whatever project it is. I know for a lot of talent, regardless of the field, projects seem to move at only two speeds despite all plans and intentions: glacial and runaway train. At either speed, focus is difficult to maintain, and it’s easy to fall into the rut of dealing with each little problem as it comes along, of changing the material to fix the problem rather than adjusting the problem to fit the material. Because the former is a lot easier than the latter, until the weight of the changes pile up and take the whole project down.
…The plodding pace at which everything moves makes it difficult to get any new projects off the ground. You can’t sell series based on having artists attached – unless they’re artists no one else wants, in which case you’re unlikely to sell it with them assigned anyway – because the process takes so long they’ve always committed to something else just to put food on the table by the time approvals come around. Or the publisher/editor you’re pitching to offers your artist a “high profile” (i.e. company-owned) project instead, sometimes as a come-on to ultimately make your project more appealing to their audience (hot artist!) and sometimes in spite of your project. I’ve seen it done both ways. Any story or concept that requires a tight and concrete time frame is pretty much doomed nowadays, because virtually no one’s got a system in place to get anything out fast, even if there’s obvious money to be made on it.
