Thank you for this moment... :)
If I may be permitted a moment to ponder next week, and the release of my long-gestating dream project from Image, StarHenge, then please indulge me!
It was a risk on so many levels. I've never been able to complete a project by doing it over years in the background on top of my regular work. As you'll have likely noticed, my work is detailed, and my output has not slackened for years. My free time is extremely limited. To do what I do I had to give up some things. I stopped making music and writing songs. I've not been in a band for over a decade now. I've barely painted a thing. I've written very little prose. This was all a conscious sacrifice, because there comes a point - for those still fighting their way up - where everything becomes imperative. It's a now or never kind of reckoning. You either take it seriously and dig in, or you risk losing momentum, and worse - your work suffers and you stop making deadlines. Ultimately you fail to be as good as you dream of being.
So no, I did not - could not - create personal work in my spare time. I had no spare time! And that meant that the only way I was ever going to do a creator-owned title for real was to face it square on, take it seriously, step into the risk, and hold my breath!
When you do your own book there's no page rate. I won't get a penny until two months after StarHenge comes out - and then only if it sells enough, which it thankfully has! That (bar a handful of covers) has been all I've worked on for over six months now. So it was the KickStarter that enabled us to try this. It gave us a little ballast, and just enough to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. Without it I don't see that I could have ever done it, without the risky move of taking an advance. So a risk either way!
But more than that, once I was going I thought - what am I doing?!!? This is insane! It's painted, it's vastly complex, it's not remotely mainstream. I'm also not a 'name' writer. I have nothing to judge it against, because I can't think of a single comic it reminds me of. To use the David Bowie analogy - creators should be in the sea up to their nose, on tiptoe. Just at the edge of their comfort zone. I confess, there were moments the tide dragged me much further out, and sometimes I couldn't even see the shore!
So it was a huge relief when a few of the great and good from my industry took the time to read it, and proved more than kind in their responses. Similarly with all the early reviews I've seen. It's astonishingly cathartic, vindicating, and just exciting! I've been awash in my own head, caught in a storm of visuals and ideas that often threatened to overwhelm me. This has not been an easy journey! Taking old passions, and reshaping them into something even I didn't see coming, has been both terrifying AND exciting. It's also been a worry, because I genuinely didn't know if anybody could become invested in it, or if my preposterous lunge for the stars artistically could ever land in a favorable way.
It seems, now, that it might! And if if people stick with it, then Book Two seems much more possible, and indeed likely. I certainly hope so!
I pushed myself. As hard as I could, within the timeframe I had. It has changed, and grown, and shifted and blossomed. As with so many of my favourite things, it threw up fully-formed surprises seemingly out of nowhere. I'm doing the last two issues back to back, jumping between them, tweaking them and nurturing them as I go, and it is STILL throwing up surprises.
The first issue arrived a few days ago, and I have to say, Image Comics did an absolutely BEAUTIFUL job with the production and print. It's gorgeous. You can see all the details in the shadows, and the colours have lost none of their vibrancy, so I was and am absolutely delighted. I usually feel some disappointment when my printed comics arrive. This was a rare exception!
StarHenge hits the shops on Wednesday, July 6th. I hope you enjoy it!