Monday, March 23, 2009

The Lesson


This is a page from "The Lesson," a comic book story that I did a couple years back. I submitted it to Eros Comix, an erotic comic book publisher, for an anthology series they were producing ("Blowjob") and it was accepted. A friend even took me out to dinner to celebrate. This was going to be my first published story!

Strangely, I didn't hear back from the editor for quite some time and then I saw a solicitation for the new issue of the series in the Diamond Distributors "Previews" monthly catalog. The artist's name was similar enough to mine and the description was somewhat similar to the premise of my story that I sent a note to the editor asking whether it was my story. He got back to me and told me that not only was it not my story appearing in the solicitation but they'd decided to cancel the book and that they were changing their publishing plans to only printing translated erotic manga from Japan. So, my story would not be getting published.

He was very nice but I was still a bit mad that he'd accepted it but then it was only when I'd contacted him that he bothered to tell me the bad news. Plus, they ended up putting out at least 2 or 3 more issues after that (maybe more) so it sucks they couldn't find room to slip it in before the book folded though I do realize that they could have had those issues "in the can" and ready to go and decided to push those out the door before folding the book for book.

I tried another company and was rejected (despite them producing books with very amateur art- I guess that shows what they think of my stuff) and then tried yet another tiny publisher that never even bothered to respond despite one attempt at a follow up which was handled by a lackey who simply told me to wait. The funny thing is that anyone who's read dirty comics knows that a lot of them are shit. Mostly, the art sucks and the stories seem pretty lame. I thought I'd written a fairly decent story, which was based on real life events told to me by a female friend. It certainly was not great but at least had competent art and an interesting story that had some decent jokes and wasn't overly degrading to women like so many porn comics (maybe that was the problem).

I had hoped it would be a stepping stone to better things. Instead, it was a major heartbreak which still frustrates me. I'm still holding out that some day it will be published but as time moves on so do I and those hopes diminish. The market has changed drastically and most porn comics are either manga reprints or or on-line and in color, many of them simply being parodies of famous cartoons doing nasty things. I even tried out for a gig drawing for a popular one but the artist works in a "Disney" style and despite trying to draw like that and doing a credible job I didn't end up with that gig either. At right you can see a penciled page that I submitted (from their script) which is darkened so it shows up better.

I'd like to think there's still a market for erotic stories for adults in graphic novel/comic book form. But then I think a lot of things despite evidence that not enough other people agree with me. This blog is called "The Secret Room" because this was originally going to be the blog for an erotic series with that title but the market seems indifferent to what I'd like to do and so I just turned this into my erotic art blog. Maybe I should just plug ahead and do what I want but when I see past labors die without even a whimper it doesn't give me enough hope to spend the time I'd need to do it right and see any kind of reward for it. I don't expect to get rich or have people worship me as a genius but I guess I'd like more than 5 people to see it.

I've avoided writing much on this blog and I generally shy away from discussing "the business" in public, but I guess I'm hoping maybe somebody sees this and thinks the art looks decent and wants to see the rest of the story and maybe even publish it. If you do, drop me a line- my email address can be found in my profile. Thanks for reading and I hope to start posting some more art soon...