The "game changer"

I don't know how many of you have followed my career since the beginning, but if you have you know that I started out as a cartoonist (Which I define as a person who creates their comics on their own). Lately I see folks using the term Writer/artist, which I'm not fond of as it defines it's self by this separation duties that is uniquely the creation of an editor.

After being a good father, and person, being a cartoonist is my dream. I hire myself out as an illustrator because it allows me to do what I love while providing for my family. But it's not my end goal. Although I respect what he's accomplished as an artist and businessman, I have no aspirations of being the next Jim Lee. I always wanted to be the next Wil Eisner.

However, somewhere along this path I went astray. I focused more and more on doing work for other folks and less on my own projects. It wasn't planned, but with three children to provide for I had to be more practical then I would have liked. I'm not ashamed of that, but it wasn't my plan.

I always balanced my work-for-hire comics with my creator owned comics. For every 'Queen & Country', there was an 'UMBRA'. For every 'Machine Teen' there was a 'Hysteria'. For every 'UN-MEN' there was a 'Sturgeon River'. But I still wasn't always"cartooning". And when I was, as in the case of Hysteria, the projects often failed because I couldn't really and truly focus on them. So I decided to change that.

I had the opportunity to pitch a book to my long time editor Jon Vankin at Vertigo, and after more then a year of writing and rewriting, laying out re-laying out, I've started the principal pages of my new book with them. This new book marks my return to cartooning, something I 'm so excited about I could burst.

This one is a game changer for me, much like self published Hysteria of 1998/99 which started my career and body of work.

I can't give you any details yet, other then to say it follows a family's history much like One Hundred Years of Solitude or The Brief and the Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao. The story's scale is big, but intimately told through this family - specifically it's flawed Matriarch and her equally as flawed son.

I can tease, but I can't give you full pages. So, enjoy and be ready to get your socks knocked off in a year or so ;)

Best,
mike