Creating Independent Comics

Rabid Rabbit's C.M. Butzer asked me to do a lecture for his 'Creating Independent Comics' course at SVA the other night. I was worried about being able to fill the hour he'd requested, but I somehow ended up flappin' my gums for about two and a half hours (the class is three hours long, and they had a critique at the end).

I don't know that I was in any way inspiring, but I tried to cover all the boring but important stuff they didn't teach me in college. Promotion, distribution, production, all that jazz. I hope the students took at least a few helpful pieces of information away from it. Seems like "the kids" are much more prepared than I was at their age. The fact that there's a cartooning/comics program at all kind of blows my mind. I majored in illustration because it was the closest I could get, but the illustration field kinda dried up in the mid-nineties. Or, at least they stopped paying as well as they used to.

Each student will have a finished comic at the end of Butzer's course, and from what I saw at the critique they're gonna be fantastic. I hope they all apply for the Xeric grant, because that was such a helpful learning tool for me in learning about publishing & distribution.

Now I'm thinking about trying to get a teaching gig at SVA. The catch is that the course couldn't overlap too much with either Butzer's class or Choi's (which focuses on storytelling in comics). I'll have to think on it. I suppose I could seek out another college that doesn't have a course in creating comics, but I've always admired the quality of both the teachers and students at SVA.

P.S. Pick up a copy of the new Rabid Rabbit. It's awesome.