Why I read comics

This is sort of a rambling news post.

First off, I have been examining my old works, and I will, hopeful, put the lessons learned into my next post. I'm probably just going to give up on flat perspective comics. They aren't as much fun and they never look organic. Also, they get really busy really fast, meaning that backgrounds need to be left bare. I like treating the background as a free space to fill in whatever environment I want, so it is back to perspectives for me.

OK, every so often I read a comic that forces me to say "this author just plan gets me." Recently there have been a number.

Such as this GSW and this PhD Comic. Note: I do not endorse all (almost any) behavior portrayed by GWS)

The big thing about these is a very simple theme in graduate school. The base level response of most frustrated scientists when they are stuck in a tedious long-term project is to do something creative and unrelated to their fields of study with instant gratification (The other response is to go to football games.) Baking is an awesome escape, and we can still use our analytic ability, but we also have to trust our instincts. I think QC put it best.

Of course, since dissertation projects are so long with an extended feeling of impending doom, we craft fantasies that our escapes will somehow be awesome if they become are our full-time jobs. Isn't chasing a fantasy what got us into gad school in the first place? We ignore that we are taking the stress of working for the approval of our peers, finding funding, deadlines, and the overall success of the project,  and trading it with with the stress of trying to meet the approval of the masses, trying to thrive in what is inherently a luxury industry, and being self-employed with a very low cash-flow.
Now, most graduate students want to find a way around this. We say that our career goals are to marry someone rich and open a restaurant. I am not joking about how often I have heard this.

(If you are a rich woman with some good child-bearing years left you can contact me. Actually, I am desperate enough that I will not take financial accounts into account.)

 The point is, that because we are stressed and feeling hopeless we look to our escapes to figure out what we want to do, even though being a rocket scientist is pretty freaking awesome.

What does this have to do with comics? Well there are two fantasies that comics offer. The first is the fantasy of the comic itself. The escape world that it offers. I want to be a baking scientist. I want to fight bad-guys. I want to cause random trouble in the name of enlightening the world.

The other fantasy is that I want to be the artist. I want to add to what other people have done and contribute to the great comic movement and culture. That being said, I know that I do not want to be a self-employed artist. Part of it is because I don't like the idea of charging for my work. (I'm going to put everything I do under a creative commons soon unless otherwise specified).  The other part is that if I am going the self-employed route then I am going to use my other set of skills that I have been developing that will make me a whole lot more money. I either need to be independently wealthy, or do this as a hobby.

So that is a little thought about comics, creativity and escapeism, but I woudln't take it too seriously.

I mostly just read them because they are visually stimulating and funny with good characters. Why else would I read them? I love pretty pictures that tell stories.

-Crow