After many long years of laying idle on the net, I finally took down the websites for my two webcomics in 2021. I started Millennium and LOVEFEAST in high school and college, respectively, with a huge passion for comics (specifically indie and manga) and a newfound love for the fantasy and action genres. They were ambitious — TOO ambitious for a single comics amateur, and a far cry from “Untold Tales of Phantasia” (an even earlier attempt at making regular comics, that one based on a video game series).
While I’ve been exploring many ideas for the past few years, some of which involve written short stories, artwork, visual/kinetic novels, or comics of a different (and much shorter) nature, my thoughts linger on these two. They linger on how they didn’t pan out the way I wanted them to, and how they could happen someday in the distant future.
The Fate of My Comics (Or: On Stretching Yourself Thin)
Millennium was originally going to be a simple gag comic in a faux-anime-chibi style. That didn’t last long, as I saw emerging webcomics getting better and more elaborate with art. This spurred me to attempt to better myself as well. (Plus, drawing chibi-style wasn’t saving time, anyway.)
While it always had a lofty plot, what happened surely enough was a form of scope creep in which each page had to outdo the last. Finally, I had arrived at 115 pages before a hitch was thrown in the whole gearworks: leaving college and entering into the workforce (theoretically — 2008 was quite a year).
There is almost no time for this.
Perhaps due to its subject matter, LOVEFEAST (originally conceived as an 18+ “BL harem” and quickly scope-crept into world-spanning death god drama) gained more attention more quickly and with less effort. This isn’t saying much — both of my comics, running parallel to each other, had a very small fanbase. In retrospect, it’s strange that it gained any amount of traction, as what exists of the actual comic is a complete mess, but detailed concepts were on the website for quite a while. And I indeed had most of it planned out.
Another epic.
An opening that falters, and years upon years of build-up and promises… Two simultaneous comics with no ends in near sight. Especially when I conflated the ideas of animatic, comic, and movie, how did I expect to ever pull this off?
Art Work
To be an artist in life these days, even unprofessionally, it’s easy to become…overwhelmed.
Not only do you have access to equally-inspiring art by others around the clock, but informationally you also have access to everything else simultaneously. This means you have to focus! And to focus, you have to have discipline! Not only do you need discipline, but you need to be able to apply it to what you do in specific instances!
When I met Guy Gilchrist a few years back, this is more or less what he told me: that in order to make either of these comics, I would have to choose one of them. I denied it at the time, but this was very much true.
The realization came yet years later, when it came time to choose between being able to make anything for myself outside of these comics — which, even after being cut down plot-wise and even execution-wise, were still very long and very detailed. The realization came that I’d have to choose between making comics and living life normally.
The Choice
I didn’t want to make comics for money. It’d be foolish in my case; I was certainly no professional. I wanted to make them for fun. Unfortunately, like all of us, I also had to make money. (And a decent bit of it, for personal reasons.)
I couldn’t do what some of my peers were doing and bend my life around one creation. I couldn’t put all my eggs in that basket. Happy as my characters make me, the mental/emotional/physical investment wasn’t going to pay off overall. Not when I couldn’t live life as normal. At least, that’s how it felt. Not to mention that I was putting the cart before the horse in a lot of ways, experimenting with Zazzle shops and limited advertising when the comic must have had 20 dedicated fans at the most.
Of course, I don’t regret having done it all — even miss it sometimes. The friends I made are some of the best, and I learned a lot from them. Webcomics still serve as a constant font of inspiration.
I just don’t know what to make in 2022, after all that’s occurred. I was already questioning this years ago as my comics began subtly sunsetting. How do I, as an artist, make something important to people’s health and wellbeing? Give them a moment of respite? Offer a small, genuine adjustment to worldview that reveals something that was always there?
Life
Here, now and pretty much since 2018 for personal and other reasons, I still find it difficult to focus (again, with everything going on), even with improving health and mood and work ethic. It’d be one thing if art were my sole job and ability, certainly, but it is not — and I quite like the job I have now. Thus, the struggle for balance continues. You schedule your own life and make sure to hit the key points, not missing anything along the way. Forest and trees.
The key, I suppose, would be to take it all bits at a time. Like learning a language in Duolingo for five minutes. Doing a few yoga stretches for ten. Practicing chords for fifteen. Drawing for thirty. There has to be a rhythm, between all the work, commuting, news, eating, sleeping, socializing, gaming. There’s a happy rhythm waiting.
There was potential for my art in both comics to have grown exponentially by now — obviously it had improved a little between the time I started Millennium and ended LOVEFEAST. Yet I’ve grown in other areas of life, necessary growth in order to get back to any artistic endeavors.
Highs and Lows
Looking through what little fraction of my epics that I created, again, makes me nostalgic for a time I was willing to make art, regardless of its quality. There’s a raw power in creating for the sake of it!
Let’s walk through some of my favorite best/worst pages of them both…
Millennium
I was riled up by manga and webcomics. The internet was entering the broadband era, and I could finally browse sites in a relatively fast way. At one point, I was reading over a hundred webcomics concurrently — varying levels of detail and skill, myriad genres, all sorts of creators. It opened so many worlds of possibility. I wanted in on the fun!
It turns out, however, that fun takes its toll. Even the simplest comic panels take a great amount of effort to make in a way that effectively communicates to the reader! That image in your head, even simplified, may never even show up on paper! These dear characters live on in my head to this day, and though evolve they have, it humbles me to look at their beginnings once again…
Lovefeast
The dream back then was to have someone love your silly little comic enough to make a TV Tropes page about it. Instead, this one got posted on a hate forum! As if it had any potential for growth or influence, it got torn down for the utter mess that it was by people of no particular note. It was a real lose-lose-lose situation.
The comic itself, what existed of it, was barely coherent and poorly-paced. I don’t think I ever possessed the right mindset or skills to pull it off. Still, looking at these pages now really takes me back to a time where I was braver… These were some of my favs!
Thank You
I’m grateful to the fans and friends who read my comics over the years they ran. Thank you so much!
Millennium is a story that I adore. I hope to shorten and retool it as an illustrated novel someday — if only just for myself. LOVEFEAST was planned to reboot as DEATHLESS, its drawn-out, somewhat ensemble-cast story truncated to just the highlights surrounding its main character. I hope to someday run at least a few short stories and/or zines involving them.
I thank you again for the support!
