REJECTED

It seems even poor Eric here knows what it's like to get trashed when you're just trying to get ahead, dear Meat-Heads (I know, I know I know, I'll play myself off the stage)!

So to follow up from my last post, what happens when you've put all your time and effort into your comic, packaged it in an accessible format, sent it off to some potential publishers, and are firmly, yet kindly (hopefully) slammed with rejection? Do you give up? Do you throw in the towel? Well as far as this blog is concerned, it can best be summarized by Dr. Peter Venkman:

(You can stop the video at 1:42...unless you just feel like watching Ghostbusters)

As I stated in posts previous, I am pretty late to the game in terms of the genre that I chose to set my story in. It's overflowing with all sorts of stories about walking corpses, etc, but I'm behind the story enough to not let that stop me. Also, as far as some publishers are concerned, my art is not quite their cup of tea. These things, and I'm sure other factors, made Dead Meat less than appetizing for major publishers. That's fine! I understand! Luckily, we live in the 21st century, and it's possible (as I've said before) for someone to take the project they love and publish it independently as they see fit!

What I'm getting at here is that acceptance and recognition from big name publishers is nice, but it is by no means the end of the world, nor is rejection for that matter. If you believe in your project, then don't let someone else tell you it's not good enough, or that you can't do it.

As far as being "not good enough" goes, art is art, and what's great to someone is inevitably going to be crap to someone else. This is just how it goes. However, if you see areas of weakness in your own work, producing your own comic is a great way to get better. Why just sit on your thumbs waiting for someone to come to you and give you work when you could continue to grow as an artist while also producing your own story? No matter what your level of expertise, as blues-guitar master Albert King once eloquently said to one Stevie Ray Vaughan:

"You gon' be better than what you is."

As long as you keep working, keep drawing, keep creating, you gon' be better than what you is. SO JUST DO IT.

Until next time,

Eat Dead Meat!