New Beginnings
Ninja High School, PMBQ's First Published Work!
There’s been a trend in my comics career. Typically, I draw a title intensely for a few years, and then disappear for 3 years. This occurred when I used to draw contributing stories to Antarctic Press‘ Ninja High School anthology series, and more recently with my creator-owned work Tea Club. It’s not a trend I’m proud of, but as I’ve done it twice I’m forced to acknowledge my own history.
However, these hiatuses are not without good reason. Primarily, they occur when I’m forced to prioritize an issue that comes up for most of us: living expenses! Yeah, you know how your parents always try to discourage you from growing up to become a comic artist? There is definitely truth to it. Whenever I’ve sacrificed time to draw comics, my finances have pretty much always suffered. To offset this, I usually freelance doing some sort of graphic or web design. (Side note: I am totally an advocate of an artist needing to suffer in order to further her/his craft. That’s a topic for a separate blog, though.)
Occasionally I have taken full-time jobs, which is how I met my current partner-in-crime, Mervyn. To those of you who have followed my past work, you’re probably surprised to see me actually collaborating with someone. I’m pretty much like every other control-freak artist, where I don’t like to compromise or give up any control. I certainly never looked for nor aspired to work with a partner.
My last day job changed all that. Although the company I joined was rather dry and technical (they manufactured and marketed network analysis devices), I was impressed by Mervyn’s unconventional thinking and ambitious strategies. I found myself going out of my way to support his projects and points of view with whatever graphics and illustrations he needed, and generally putting in far more hours than I had planned for in any day job. (After all, my passion is, and always will be, illustration.) The more I worked with Mervyn, the more I discovered how much we had in common—growing up in the Bay Area, collecting comic books, attending anime/comic conventions, even going to the same comic book store chain. It was pretty amazing that our nerdy paths had not crossed until last year.
Recently, our company closed its doors, but our friendship remained. Over the past several months, we both tried other gigs and employment, and went through many interesting experiences. We continued to meet for coffee, still brainstorming and trying to figure out what our next half-baked venture might be. Occasionally, our former colleagues would join us and share their own colorful tales of life post-employment.
During one of our coffee sessions, I mentioned to Mervyn how I’ve always wanted to tell the story of my characters, Ninja Panda and Samurai Panda. I had concrete ideas of how I thought it would play out, but Mervyn easily saw that I had been clearly overthinking the whole thing. Thinking of our own and friends’ recent experiences, as well as the current economic times, wouldn’t it be fun to make a comic about that? Combine that with my love of drawing comics and pandas, we just might be onto something…
And that’s why we’re here.
- PMBQ
