Welcome to Ignition, my humble attempt to light a fire under the comic book industry. My name is Bon and I’m the Director of Editorial and Publishing at Harris Comics. That’s a somewhat fancy way of saying I do a lot of everything, from editing scripts and art, to dealing with the printers and distributor to marketing to retailers. But I don’t want to talk about me. I want to talk to a particular person, the type of person who has always wanted to create comic books but never actually tried.  I want to talk to you.

What the comic book industry needs more than anything right now is YOU. Your ideas. Your story. Your unique voice. Your way of doing things. While the industry has seen a welcome explosion in diversity this decade, it still has miles and miles to go to be as rich and varied a medium as prose novels, music and film.

A quick glance at the graphic novel section at your local Barnes and Noble will find more comics for sale than would once thought possible at a B&N. Yet I doubt with rare exceptions these stores have more than three or four bookcases devoted to them, and probably the vast majority of that space dedicated to superhero comics and manga. Think about it: an entire medium housed within such a small space! That’s where you come in.

We should not have just one Fun Home, one Mouse Guard, one Bottomless Belly Button, one Arrival, one Scott Pilgrim, etc, etc, etc. We should have dozens and dozens of each. Apart from a high level of quality, what unifies the above works is an unquestionably unique authorial voice. Each one results from a particular author’s skill set married to his or her obsessions and ambitions and each is distinctly his or hers. It’s difficult to imagine anyone other than these authors doing those books.  Every medium is built on such individualized voices, but too often potential comics creators don’t trust their own voice and don’t even begin the creative process.

Several years ago at San Diego Comic-Con, a man walking around in a wet suit, approached our table. He wondered how he could get into comics and lamented how hard it was to do so.  He spoke as if there was a magic curtain separating he and I and not a simple draped table with comics stacked on it.  I told him there was no magic involved, that we weren’t any different than him, that we were fortunate and worked hard and took advantage of the opportunities presented us. Anyone can do that.

What keeps YOU up at night? What stirs your soul? What disturbs you, inspires you, makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you cringe? We need those comics and we need them now.  If you don’t do it, who else will?

So what’s stopping you? Make some comics already. People are already waiting.

Till next time…

Bon Alimagno is Director - Publishing & Editorial for Harris Comics, publishers of Vampirella.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 10:20 am and is filed under Creators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.