Making comics is a blessing and a curse

Hi Friends,

In a TikTok conversation the other day someone said making comics is a blessing and a curse. We kind of agree.

It’s a blessing because you’re lucky if you have a calling, thousands or more read your stories, and you’re part of a community full of people who are all passionate about the same thing. To us, the comics and children’s book communities are like a second family. If you’re REALLY lucky, you might even make a living from it.

But it’s a curse because you’re chained to the desk: deadlines, massive workloads, bottomless marketing (unpaid), social media content creation (also unpaid). Seeing friends and family becomes tricky, especially if they’re far away (Sandra’s family is in France, so we can’t see them very often). Holidays? If you can fit one in (but also unpaid). Illness? You’ll often have to work through it, or hope you don’t get ill, because deadlines have to be met. Also, no sick pay. But taking time off is necessary for your health, so these days we try to listen to our bodies a bit more. Anyway, not complaining.

And then there’s the financial side. We often wonder how other writers and artists manage. We saw this post on Bluesky the other day:

Reading the comments, most people in comics have some kind of a day job, or a spouse with a good job, or have a spartan lifestyle. We’re in the third category. We live together and both work together. It’s uncertain and precarious, you’re never sure where the money is coming from or when it will come in. We have no kids, and no car and for decades didn’t have a washing machine. Someone asked us the other day if we ever get anxious about money. Of course we do. In the past 15 years we’ve managed financially and have even bought a flat, and realize that’s very unusual. We also don’t know what the future holds. We’re glad we’re not renting anymore, because that’s become very unreliable, with landlords evicting tenants to put rents up routinely (this happened to us), and rents in cities going higher out of reach. Plus, these are uncertain times, for everyone. When you make comics, you need stability to finish projects. But we live in a privileged country, in a time of general material comfort, and are lucky to be able to choose to follow our passion, even with all its ups and downs.

Thanks for reading :-)

John & Sandra