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SGTDF #9: Making Cool Shit With Your Friends

I really don’t want this newsletter to be about getting into the weeds of writing or ~PrOcEsS~, because blech, you know? But I do want to stray slightly from the usual material objects/experiences this time.Though, I can’t wait to write about the stupid and completely avoidable drywall project I just had to undertake as a direct result of my ongoing toy journey, but I will offer this update:

I know, it’s a lot. I know, dusting is going to be a pain. But they bring me joy now that I can see them. Anyway, this issue is about figuring out what I want to do with my life when I’m not organizing action figures. 

Climb that ladder

We do not have a lot of time on this Earth and I would like to spend as little of it as possible doing shit I don’t want to do.And I was stuck doing mostly bullshit for a long time, until the universe intervened with a wakeup call that gave me the space to reprioritize my goals.The corporate world is a miserable place for a creative person. It’s a persistent, from-the-top devaluing of art into “content” and watching loads of people, plenty of them talented and cool, flounder in a vortex of buzzword jargon.I was constantly saying words that meant nothing to me. Out loud, in meetings, and on the page. I could not find any creative joy in the work whatsoever. It was contributing to the degradation of our experience as human beings and our perception of art, and yet I relied on it for survival. It made me truly, deeply, hate myself. It was paradoxical and depressing, and I wish I had Jerry Maguire-d outta there on my own but I was too afraid of the change and how it would impact our lives.But somebody forced the change, and ultimately, I am thankful, because there is not a single thing about it that I miss.I do not want to live to serve the algorithm. My time in the miserable corporate world was an unintended experiment, a tangent in the timeline, but it self-corrected and I’m back to feeling like myself again.I forgot what it felt like, and as it turns out… it feels pretty good!

  You gotta hold your tongue

At the same time this massive change was happening to me, one of my comic book projects, THE PEDESTRIAN, co-created with Sean Von Gorman (of Comics), got the greenlight at Magma Comix. I met Sean in 2012. I was working on a project called PAWN SHOP and was looking for a collaborator. Two babies meeting in 2012.Sean’s work caught my attention immediately, but when he chained himself outside of a comic shop in New York City to promote his recently released comic, The Secret Adventures of Houdini, I knew he was gonna be fun to work with. The guy will do whatever it takes to make his comics happen.The first time I met him in person he was escaping a straightjacket in the middle of Artist Alley at New York Comic-Con.He’s got the showmanship of a magician that I adore about him, but behind the scenes, takes the work very seriously. At that time, we were both pretty green and the project had some difficulties, probably because our personal lives were in shambles, but we got through it and PAWN SHOP eventually got made. People seemed to like it, but nobody bought it. Its publisher, Z2 Comics, then pivoted their entire line into music-adjacent vanity projects, and POOF! Our sincere little book was dust. I don’t even know if you can buy a digital copy anywhere these days. We put together more pitches from 2015-2019 or so, but nothing landed. In 2019, I was feeling kind of discouraged about comics/writing in general. PAWN SHOP had been directly responsible for me getting accepted into the 2017 DC Comics Writers Workshop, which was a great experience and ultimately gave me my first DC credit, but it’s tough when some of your peers board the rocket ship and you're stuck at ground control. It wasn’t jealousy, it was, oh no, maybe I AM a hack, actually? 

Better turn a blind eye

And I let it get the better of me for longer than I should have.It’s a common problem for a lot of creative people and you have to work through it, because it doesn't lead anywhere good or productive. Sean’s the one who shook me out of it. He built my confidence back up. It was March or April 2020, and we were talking about the end of the world.The end could be imminent, and for the last five years we’d been trying to get people to say YES when we didn’t even need to ask them for permission in the first place. Talking about THE PEDESTRIAN with Sean reminded me that nobody needs approval from anyone other than themselves to tell the stories they want to tell. One of the most beautiful things about creator-owned comics is they are really, really fucking hard to make. Every page is a goddamn miracle by all involved. The fact that it even exists at all is a testament to the fact that the creators NEEDED to make the book, otherwise why would they have put themselves through the madness of it on top of whatever else they’ve got going on in their real lives outside of comics?When we started talking about THE PEDESTRIAN, it felt like that. It was a book we NEEDED to make, if only to remind ourselves that we could. THE PEDESTRIAN #1 Cover by Sean Von GormanKind of our “fuck you” book, the one with everything in it, as weird as we wanted, structured how we wanted, the one we just did because we knew we had the skill to, and not worry about the rest of it until we did what we wanted. So we started working on it. We just did it and didn’t show it to anyone for a very long time. I think this helped us go weirder, try some stuff, and make smart decisions when it came time to try and find a publisher.We’d already signed the bad deals, made the mistakes, so we made sure we landed somewhere that was the right fit, otherwise why bother? There’s plenty of avenues to publish ourselves, and if the publisher wasn’t going to be a full partner, an additive part of the process, why go through the trouble? Been there, done that, no thanks. But now it’s coming out August 7 from Magma Comix, an exciting new company with an ethos I respect, other books I love, and staffed by comics veterans whose work I've long admired.Sean likes to say that when we started THE PEDESTRIAN, the right publisher for it didn’t exist yet. Magma coming on the scene changed that. THE PEDESTRIAN #1 Variant Cover by Dean HaspielI’ve also recently been doing some screenwriting with another friend/writer/director.We meet once or twice a week and talk through story, characters, emotional beats, all that stuff (plus lots of asides about pro wrestling), then go our separate ways and write our pages. It’s a highlight of my week, has made us better friends, better collaborators, and both scripts we’ve worked on so far started with the germ of an idea I couldn’t quite crack on my own, and ultimately became something so much more fun and interesting because of the constant back and forth of “wouldn’t it be cool if…”There’s nothing better than that. True collaboration with no ego, best idea wins. All of this is to say, it’s helped me figure out what I really want to do with my life, finally.And it’s easy, it’s what my goal has always been, even if I was distracted for a little while: make cool shit with my friends. THE PEDESTRIAN #1 Variant Cover by Mike Allred 

Before they take your other one

My predominant professional desire is not to climb a corporate ladder and sit in meetings listening to numbskulls repackage an idea somebody else pitched the day before.The goal is to have a life of hanging out with my friends in the ever present glow of the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” This has always been true, but I lost sight of it for a while. I’ve talked before about my first non-coffee shop job out of college being at Ringside Collectibles, which evolved into creating their YouTube channel and working alongside one of my closest friends making videos about action figures that were increasingly insane and bizarre but so much fun to make, because we were doing it together. One time, one of my best friends and I spent an entire evening recording a terrible album in his basement on a whim, with things like an all-vocals cover of “Eleanor Rigby.”It was dawn before we were finished. We were so proud, we documented it with photographs. It only exists on one CD that I still have right here. It's like that one-of-one Wu-Tang record, but probably even better. Nobody outside of our close friend circle has ever heard it, and even they were like, “what the fuck is this?”It was because we said, “wouldn’t it be cool if…” and it was one of the best nights I ever had and I’ll never forget it.Growing up, we used to make all kinds of stupid videos, choreograph lightsaber fights, Photoshop dumb shit, write stories, record shitty demo tapes, put on magic shows, play music at parties, all with little to no consideration of anything other than entertaining each other.But at some point, my focus got pulled in the wrong direction, away from stuff like this, the stuff I love doing. 

Something to fall back on 

I went to film school, and like most people who go into arts of any kind, “just have something to fall back on” becomes a mantra you did not want nor ask for. If a kid in your life tells you they want to pursue the arts, please do not give them this advice. Trust me, they already know it might not work out, they don’t need you to tell them.It will only serve to distract them from their goals, at least in my own experience.The true irony is that working any sort of job is just as unpredictable as working as a creative person, save for maybe being a mortician, but I bet a mortician might have a good argument about why this assumption is untrue.So I did find something to fall back on, which was more “practical” writing/editing. “Content,” before it became a word used to devalue the artist, a word that makes the skin crawl off my body and leap into an open flame, a word that implies something so throwaway, tech assholes think machines can do it.(Not-so-fun fact I read recently: every 5 or so AI prompts is the equivalent of wasting 16 ounces of water, so if someone is using ChatGPT/Midjourney/etc, they are not only actively stealing from artists, they are also speeding up the death of our planet exponentially with every dumb inquiry. I am convinced these people have no brain.)I realized the “something to fall back on” mentality was so beaten into me I’d prioritized stability and traditional career paths over making creative work my career, whatever form that may take. I didn’t take a lot of risks in the years I should have.From a signing at Midcoast Comics in Brunswick, Maine last month. It was great!I’m grateful for the path I did take, because it undeniably led me to where I am, personally speaking, which is truly a position I never thought I could be in.That path led to Amanda, our friends, our pets, our house, and Maine. We do not and will not have children, we live in a (comparatively) affordable place, so our lives are structured in such a way that I can prioritize creative endeavors. In retrospect, I understand I spent most of my adult life so far seeking some semblance of emotional stability and personal happiness so that I could finally really take the risks I was too anxious or ill-equipped to take when I was younger.I understand now that I needed to figure myself out first, get myself a house full of soulmates, before I could figure out how to keep myself creatively fulfilled.I can finally just focus on making cool shit with my friends, to tell stories that we’re interested in reading, or watching, or playing.I am realistic enough to know it will not always pay the bills. That’s okay. It is okay to do what you love and not have it be your primary income. It would be nice if it was, sure, but I will do what I have to do to pay the bills.It just won’t be stewing in another self-fellating corporate environment.You make shit because you have to. Because you can’t imagine not doing it. Because you fucking love doing it. Because doing it is the fun part. So I hope you’ll check out THE PEDESTRIAN, because we’re very proud of it, but also because I have this project to thank for reminding me why I started down this path in the first place. -JoeyThe babies all grown up. P.S. — Pre-orders are CRITICAL, like life-or-death-of-the-book and your-shop-might-not-order-it-unless-you-pre-order critical, so if you want a copy, please, please, PLEASE tell your local comic shop (find yours here) or place a pre-order at an online retailer like Midtown Comics, Third Eye Comics, or Golden Apple Comics!!!! P.P.S. — A friend was recently dealt a hand that no one should be dealt, yet another disrespectful layoff after ten years of hard work, followed by a diagnosis of a rare type of blood cancer. He’s got a GoFundMe to help with these absurd costs to try and stay healthy, so it’d be great if you could kick a few bucks. P.P.P.S. — Growing up, my best friend was obsessed with the Resident Evil franchise and I could never really get into it because the controls were so off-putting. Capcom recently released remakes of RE 2, 3, and 4 with modern control schemes and quality-of-life upgrades and now I am IN DEEP. I just finished all the DLC for RE7 and I’m midway through RE8 and the giant baby monster fucked. me. up. 

THE PEDESTRIAN on sale August 7 from Magma Comix! You'll believe a man can WALK! Check out our awesome trailer for THE PEDESTRIAN with original hand animation by Sean Von Gorman and original music by

Sal5000

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What a twist, huh? For the parents out there, I wrote a couple issues of SESAME STREET, with #1 coming in August from Oni Press with art by Austin Baechle! It's all about Grover being the best, because he is. Yes, there is a monster at the end of this book.