How to Self-Publish Your Own Comic Book in a Decade or Less

Sometime in 2004, my friend Jack called me up and told me an idea he had for a comic book. It would be the story of a group of super-talented child prodigies who make astounding scientific discoveries. In the dramatically changed world brought about by these remarkable children, the kids come into conflict with themselves and with the various adults who are attempting to guide and control them. Jack and I decided to develop the idea with the hope of presenting it to a publisher. After submitting our proposal for Whiz Kids to one of the larger independent comic publishers and being met with deafening silence, we opted to just go ahead and produce the first issue ourselves.

I figured creating my very own comic book would be one of the more DIY-able creative projects out there. It would certainly have to more feasible than, say, making an independent film on a modest budget of “only” a few million dollars or assembling my own aircraft carrier. Because a comic book is essentially just ink on paper, I imagined that mere months would elapse before Jack and I would be taking our places alongside Stan Lee and Alan Moore in the hallowed ranks of published comic book writers.

Writing the script was relatively easy, but we soon encountered our first minor setback: neither of us could draw more than a game of hangman. Accordingly, we sought an artist in that virtual hive of scum and villainy, Craigslist. There, we were extremely fortunate to find a talented Filipino artist by the name of Rowel Roque, who as a bonus was willing to work for the dismal wages we were offering.

And thus the project truly began in earnest. As Rowel’s pages started to roll in to my inbox, I experienced that moment that many folks in the imaginative fields of endeavor surely experience: the moment when the vision in your head begins to be realized. Mostly, it is a moment to be savored, perhaps the highest point of actual enjoyment in the entire creative process. But it is also a moment of strange unrecognition, because the completed dish never fully conforms to the recipe.

After the artwork had been both penciled and inked came the lettering stage. An attempt to hire a letterer came to naught, so I decided to letter the book myself. Aided by a copy of Adobe InDesign that I had lucked into, I began a journey up the steep learning curve of computer lettering design. Though I am hardly an expert, our captions and dialogue balloons are legible and hopefully free of spelling errors.

The end was in sight. Bundling the finished page files and sending them off to an on-demand printer, we soon (six months later) had in our proud hands our copies of Whiz Kids #1. Nearly ten years had gone by since Jack and I had first begun the project. In the time that had passed, I had bought my first condo, gotten married, and bought my first house. Jack had left the Army, graduated from law school, and the Mayan apocalypse had come and gone.

So what took so long? Or, perhaps a better question, why did we continue to trudge on for all that time? We certainly labored under no illusion that anyone was clamoring for our work. Here I will only speak for myself, but the reason I never gave up on our comic book was because I felt I had no choice. I had to do it. Through all of the procrastination, the wrangling with endless delays and details, the losses of faith, and the palpable sense that the best possible reception Whiz Kids could hope for was that someone would read it only to promptly forget about it when the next distraction rounded the bend, what kept me going was the unshakeable feeling that I needed to see it done for my own satisfaction.

Art is a selfish pursuit.

And keep watching the newsstands, faithful readers! Coming sometime in this geologic age...issue two!