Why I Write Weird Comics in a World Obsessed with Safe Bets

In comics, there’s an unspoken rule. If you want to make a living, you write what sells. You follow the trends. You attach your most popular character. You pick the genre of the moment be it NSFW, zombies, dark fantasy or whatever’s peaking on Lunar and Penguin’s charts. And you make something that can be easily pitched in one sentence to a publisher, a reader, or a convention-going editor who's already juggling three tote bags and nursing a caffeine crash.

I’ve seen it work. I’ve done it. I respect the hustle. But I just wanna say: I don’t want to do that anymore.

I want to write weird comics. I want to write comics that have proven they don’t sell well.

Not weird for the sake of being quirky. Not random, not ironic. The kind that doesn’t always sell at first glance because it doesn’t come with built-in nostalgia or a guaranteed fandom.

But the type of weird that lingers. It warps your expectations. It makes you think about what comics can be, not just what they’ve been.

We’ve all seen the books that blow up on speculators' lists. First appearances, events, tie-ins, reboots. Every few months, someone’s running the same playbook with a different coat of paint.

And the truth is? That playbook largely works. Until it doesn’t. Until it collapses. Because the market is fickle. Readers burn out. Publishers pivot. Your “hot property” becomes dollar-bin clutter in less time than it took to write or draw a three panels.

Weird comics don’t chase that spike. They don’t exist to be flipped or optioned or pumped for variant covers. They’re built to last, not to pop. They dig in. They accrue meaning with time.

I’m not saying every weird comic is automatically good. I’m saying they matter. Because they come from a place of vision, not just calculation and accounting.

The weird is where personal stories thrive. It’s where you can talk about grief and identity and fear through a sentient root system or a mask that grows into your face. It’s where the boundaries between genre, symbol, and feeling blur into something more raw, more honest.

You can make a story about cosmic alien parasites and still have it be about generational trauma. You can use folk horror to explore memory loss, body dysphoria, or religious guilt. You can build an entire universe around themes no publisher asked for. But readers feel in their bones when they read it.

That’s what weird comics do. They don’t just entertain. They connect on frequencies too strange for The Algorithms that power The Machine to catch.

Then there’s the other side of the coin. If you build your work around what the market currently wants, you are creating for a moment that’s already dying.

By the time your book hits shelves, the wave has moved on. Readers might pick it up eventually, but will they remember it? Will they come back to it in five years and say, “This changed how I see things?” Or will they flip through it once and never think of it again?

Safe comics get forgotten. Weird comics get remembered. Even if they take longer to find their audience.

And yes, the waiting sucks. The obscurity sucks. Watching lesser, lazier books outsell yours is frustrating as hell. But that’s the cost of making something with a spine.

In a culture addicted to franchises, formulas, and feedback loops, choosing to make something original is a quiet act of rebellion. It’s saying, “I believe in stories that don’t fit neatly into market boxes. I believe in risk. In failure. In evolution.”

It’s also saying, “I trust the readers. I trust that some people out there want to be challenged.”

If you’re one of those people: Welcome! You’re my kind of reader.

And if you’re a creator stuck between playing it safe and making something strange, let me tell you this: Go weird. Go specific. Go uncomfortable. Let your comic be the one that editors don’t know what to do with, but readers won’t stop thinking about.

Look at the comics that became cult classics. Look at the ones that reshaped the medium. Look at Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing. Doom Patrol. Sandman. Hellboy. Monstress. Gideon Falls. Ice Cream Man. UltraMega. Saga.

None of those books played it safe. None of them were designed by committee. They were weird. They were risks. And they worked. Not because they were guaranteed to. But because they were worth it.

And speaking of weird comics, Moonspawn might be the weirdest one yet. And we’re bringing it to BackerKit’s Printopia campaign next month! Follow the prelaunch here for a free goodie after you back once it’s live.