I got hurt feelings.

I want new issues of Nowhere Men to be good and I want the book to succeed, for a moment I was excited about seeing new pages with these characters drawn by someone else. But. I got hurt feelings. I want to move on, I want to do something new and create something fun and connect with people again. But… I got hurt feelings.

I can’t shake this sadsack beat-on raincloud hanging over me. It feels like my brain has a lump in its throat and it is really bothering me. I don’t know what to do about it other than face it and try to work it out and that’s what this is. This is about emotions and this is long and I’m not going to apologize for either one.

Nowhere Men #7 was almost done, for over a year. I was told so many times to take shortcuts and stop putting so much into everything but I never did. I had every opportunity to turn in work that I knew I was not happy with, work that I knew was not to the best of my abilities, work that was done quickly just for the sake of being done but I refused to do it. I could have been done with issue 7 a year ago, nothing had to happen like the way it did but I chose to take longer. There were many chances to hurry and slap things together and I didn’t take any of them. I just want to make that completely clear, that what happened was because of the choices I made, because I refused to settle for good enough, I could have finished the issue at any point but I did not.

The book was hung up by problems from its start, the first three issues were drawn in Golden Age format and it wasn’t until a last minute decision was made to print it in standard format that the artwork was modified to what we know it as today. A lot of life problems cropped up, the book became a huge success, we had eaten up our 3-issue head start and I was falling more and more behind. The pressure became untenable. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.

After all of that, after all the problems, after the enormous wait, issue 7 had to be worth it. It had to make up for everything that went wrong before and explode into the world with the fanfare of invincibility, that all of those things could not stop this book from coming to be. That is what I wanted. I didn’t want perfection, I didn’t look for problems where there weren’t any. I just wanted it to be honest, my raw, naked best effort. I knew when to stop, I knew when pages were done. The work for which I had been nominated for an Eisner would be shit by comparison, I would blow my past-self out of the water.

I worked so hard. I killed myself over and over, every panel, every face, every wince of pain, every wrinkled nose, every furrowed brow, every quivering lip. Over and over. And it was all for nothing. No one will ever read that issue. I feel like I was away fighting in some war and came home to find that nobody knew the war even existed. The isolation, the struggle, the loss meant nothing to anyone else. That is hard. You can volunteer yourself to suffer for anything if you believe it is going to be worth it, but knowing that you conscripted others your fight against their will, knowing that you harmed and injured others because you thought in the end they will see you had noble intentions, that is the hardest part to come to terms with. I deprived Eric of his book, I deprived Jordie and Steven of paying work and continued work on a project of which they were extremely proud. I deprived the three of them of continued success and recognition for their amazing work. I deprived my girlfriend of the stability of a certain future and the stability of a consistent income. I deprived readers of what happens next for over two years. It was all going to be worth it, they would all see that what I did was worth it, everyone would see that. Now all they can see is someone who held Nowhere Men hostage for two years and has nothing to show for it.

I feel discarded. I can’t help it. Even if I knew what the rest of the team was thinking I would still feel this way. While I was away torturing myself for what was supposed to be the best thing I’d ever done, the book They’re Not Like Us was coming out. Eric and Jordie and Steven were putting together a successful book, six issues, monthly. They enjoyed all the accolades they deserved to receive working together on Nowhere Men that they weren’t getting because of me. This is what life would be like for them if I wasn’t in the picture holding them back. They were collaborating and connecting with each other, and connecting with others, and I had isolated myself, by choice, locked up in a small dark place wringing myself into contorted shapes. The shape of self-indulgence. The shape of obstinance. The shape of vanity. The shape of fanaticism. The right thing to do would seem obvious, They’re Not Like Us was the clear proof, they would get on quite terrifically without me. So, I feel replaceable when I thought I was irreplaceable. That assumption is perhaps the core of the problem here, if you design yourself to become a linchpin in some system, all of your failings become liabilities because if you fail the entire system fails. The system with any lick of self-preservation will act to offset that crucial weakness, by creating a redundancy or replace you altogether. Therefore, in spite of whatever portion of “me” I thought was integral to Nowhere Men I was also the book’s greatest threat. Some reptiles have muscles in their tail that contract to sever the tail from the rest of the body. The investment of calories, protein and fluids in that tail are lost in exchange for a chance of survival. The tail grows back, and although it doesn’t have the same bumps and creases and scales as the old tail, the reptile is still alive.

To be very honest I would have to admit that I am to some degree angry in a very general and radiant sense. Reason would show that the only person I could be angry about in this situation is myself. It wouldn’t be reasonable to be angry with Eric for not continuing to wait for something he had no guarantee of ever occurring. It wouldn’t be reasonable to be angry with Jordie or Steven for taking his side either. I am angry and therefore I can only be angry at myself because I have unknowingly manufactured this outcome. I am angry because for the past five years the bulk of world-building and character design has been for story elements that have not yet come to pass and now they never will. Ideas for devices and architecture and fashion and cultural landmarks that have so far only existed in my head, stored for future use. Sketches for covers that will never see print, diagrams of Dr. Kurt McManus’ new physiology, drawings of paintings made by Daniel Pierce’s much older sister. I used to know what was going to happen to Dr. Susan Queen, but now I do not. The worldline where those things happen has closed off, the future where they were part of the story winked away into nothing, they were not destroyed but never occurred in the first place. So I am angry that, through my actions, the years of creative euphoria and collaboration where I felt anything was possible were torn away from meaning and crushed into nothing.

I got hurt feelings and they’re keeping me from moving on. I feel completely lost. Life has been taking a series of dumps on me lately. The other day I was run off the road and blew out a tire. A few days before that my Cintiq inexplicably stopped working. Last week I broke a rib. My girlfriend and I lost our jobs in the same week. We can’t afford to resign our lease next month and don’t know where we can or should live. There are other things that are kind of personal but intensely hurtful. It feels like the entire world has turned its back on me and is pretending like I don’t exist. Why would the universe care about what I did to myself by choice? Why would anyone feel sorry for me for being successfully self destructive?

I have 30 ideas for what I could do next, two months ago I couldn’t stop thinking about writing my own tabletop RPG book, before that a video game about a wizard with amnesia, that has always been my problem, TOO MANY ideas. But now there isn’t any strategy to deciding which one to choose. All of them are going to be a struggle uphill to finish, none of them are going to make me any money, all of them are going to take so much time, none of them seem like responsible decisions. They seem now to all be equally of no consequence. If I need help, coloring or lettering, because doing it all alone is a guarantee it will never be done, I don’t know how I am supposed to convince anyone to work with me, a reputed failure. To voluntarily throw their time and effort into a bottomless pit and cross their fingers that it pays off somehow or that the rebuilding of my self-worth is charitable enough of a cause. I’m scared that any one of them will be the wrong choice, that I will be putting my future and happiness in jeopardy again.



Do you draw things for fun? I don’t remember what it is like to draw something for fun. I can’t think of the last time I finished a drawing that was just for me, that I didn’t owe someone else or that wasn’t for a job. I look at other artists posting their sketches and progress photos of pages and they all look like they’re having a really great time. And I am really, really jealous of that. I wasn’t able to afford to like Doctor Doom enough to draw him. I don’t really know what has happened. Have I been traumatized against comics, against drawing? Do I have some kind of life-passion PTSD? I used to be so excited about my new ideas that I couldn’t shut up about them when I was supposed to be working, but now the thought of doing character designs just turns to ash in my mouth. I want to move on because I don’t have time to sit still. I don’t have time to be wounded and directionless and discouraged because my life is falling apart and I have to do something.

If I had to compare this feeling to something else, I guess the conclusion I would arrive to is that I am heartbroken. That seems accurate. Everything hurts but it is different from depression. Depression stands in between you and the outside world like a filter and corrupts how you perceive external events and react to them. This feels like it is standing between me and my inner self, how I view myself and how I respond to my core beliefs. I feel like this has reached the center of who I am and ripped it all to pieces. I’m shellshocked and numb. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know what I want, I don’t know what to do. I got hurt feelings and I’d really rather I didn’t.