Idea Debt (The Citytown Crisis)

Idea Debt is an interesting term to explain a vital concept that all creatives need to know and understand, and here we go…

Idea Debt is “When you spend too much time picturing what a project is going to be like… …And way too little time actually making the thing.” - Jessica Abel. (Click here to read her full post on the subject.)

The term, was coined by graphic novelist and living legend, Kazu Kibuishi, and later expounded upon by indie comics queen and even more legendary, Jessica Abel. It is essentially a way to describe a fallacy of sunk costs inherent in creative work. Time and creative energy is spent on a concept of a work that the creator is unable to execute right away. The more time passes without the concept being executed, the larger the concept grows in scope and the larger it’s psychological significance looms in the would-be artists mind.

Both Lady Abel and Master Kibuishi recommend that the idea debt be recognized for what it is, a sunk cost, and abandoned immediately. That amazing epic a creator came up with in their adolescence would take years if not decades to execute, but now that the creator has grown into someone with better skills and know how to tackle it, the concept has aged poorly. That self-same creator has grown in maturity as well as skills, and most likely has new stories to tell. Better stories. But The Debt looms large and if it is not cast aside, if the creator does not forgive themself, the debt will eat them. Years at a time.

Great advice.

Essential.

I highly recommend it.

I didn't do that.

The Citytown Crisis is Idea Debt that I, not only held on to, but that I paid down.

Possible cover for the print version.

Possible cover for the print version.

In 2013 I came upon the brilliant(ly naive) idea to quit my webcomic shenanigans and begin writing and drawing full graphic novels. One a year. I wrote and completed the whole script to my first full length Original Graphic Novel, “Purgatory Pub,” by the middle of that spring. At the time of this writing, that was 8 years ago. To date, I have only been able to execute 3/4 of the story. (I split the story into 4 separate books. The final book is due about 18 months from now.)

The long days and weeks of working on this one story has lead to the accumulation of back catalog of new story ideas stuck in my head and various notes around my computer. "The Citytown Crisis” was one of them.

In essence, it was my love letter to The Powerpuff Girls and all the Cartoon Network cartoons of that day that helped to shape me. Also, my daughter was almost school aged at that time, and we watched a lot of these cartoons together. I wanted to make a cool book that she would like and want to show off to her friends. I wanted to be cool dad.

I wrote out the outline and put it somewhere and that was that.

It sat there for 6 years.

Several other stories sat in the same place, but I heeded the exhortation to forgive those creative debts and abandon them there. However, that one story with the giant monster and the jokes? Can’t throw THAT one away.

In November 2019, I completed and kickstarted Purgatory Pub #3. It is the best drawn bit of comics that I have ever made, but it came a mighty cost. I was burnt out REAL hard on that book and those characters. All of its files were finalized and sent to the printer. It wasn’t due to be in my possession for shipping to backers until sometime in February, giving me a free vacation of 4 months. Ivy was in 4th grade, so time was short, but not impossible. My brilliant(ly naive) idea was to knock the book out in three months and have one left over for safety. I would finally make this fun book and present it to her and her classmates and be the coolest dad ever!!!

Two things stood in my way.

1) It took 6 months. Not 3. (WHEN WILL I LEARN?!)

2) Covid 19

All the kids went home and have not yet gone back to school in person yet. (Not mine, anyway.) At the time of this writing, my child is finishing elementary school from a distance. I have missed my window to be cool dad with cool books. Which is fine. It’s kind of a silly goal in the first place, to show off in front of a child’s classmates. Besides, SHE has my book and seems to like it okay.

Final takeaways from this long diatribe?

1) Idea Debt is bad. Forgive yourself and move on.

2) Don’t make things in order to show off. Make them to make them.

All my best,
-Gabe D.

Journal Comics (Year Three)

Year three of the journal comic was a bit on the tumultuous side. I had fully dedicated myself and the comic to the traditional webcomic format. I was following the formula to a T, was updating the website regular as clock-work, and had been for nearly three years by this point, but to very limited success.

The art continued to improve, and I continued to experiment. Using gray markers to render background elements instead of using photoshop. No longer removing all saturation from the comic. Instead allowing the warm and cool grays to interact on the screen as they always had on the paper.

What’s more, my creative bug was starting to get itchy. I had stories I wanted to write. Fictional stories. After handling my domestic duties as the at-home father, the comic’s format and update necessities left almost no time for sleep. When I was lucky enough to secure client work, there was no time for sleep at all. This didn’t go well.

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For a few days at a time, I would think, “Boy, Ivy has been really a handful for this week. I guess the Terrible Two’s are upon us.” However, after a rare and blissful full night of sleep I would think, “Wow, Ivy is being really sweet today!” It took far too long to put two and two together and realize that my work schedule and lack of sleep were making me a bad dad.

Furthermore, I was growing bitter that my little webcomic was garnering such little success. What few reviews and what little press I could garner always came back positive, for which I was grateful, but they never translated into a wider readership or more books sold. In my naivety, I figured after a few years of following the formula, some measure of outward success, not matter how small, would make itself apparent.

It did not.

That’s not how it works.

In creative work, there are no guarantees.

At all.

It was a hard and heartbreaking lesson to learn, and during this time I was learning it.

I began writing stories again, and began looking at my webcomic with more and more sadness and disdain. One day I decided I’d be better off sleeping than I would making the next comic for the next update. I felt the same way for the next day, and the day after that.

The journal comic never had a conclusion or a nice bow wrapped on it to signal I was done. I just stopped making it. However, I didn't stop taking notes for more journal comic entries right away, and I always reserved the right to pick it back up again.

I still do.

In the meantime, enjoy the rest of the journal comics here.

These never made it into a book, so this is the only place to read them.

Share and enjoy!
-Gabe D.

Journal Comics (Year Two)

The journal comic was up and I scratch-built a wordpress-comicpress website to house it and give me a place to post it.

The journal comic was begun as an exercise in drawing and story-telling, but after Ivy was born it became a precious document of a very serious and pivotal moment in our lives. It also had the jokes and silliness inherent in our lives, which made it only more special. So I kept it up and, in the second year, rededicated myself to it.

I gathered photo-reference, drew from life, and experimented daily. My art and my abilities grew very quickly, and I was able to find a certain stride between the end of year one and the beginning of year two. (posted here)

Being deeply uncomfortable with the quality of my line art, and my early phobia of spot-blacks, I began to make up for the visual short-fall with marker shading. It was a tremendous revelation to me and my love affair with alcohol based markers has persisted to this very day. It was a revelation in another way as well.

As a boy, filled with adolescent fantasies, I could not shake the constant feeling that if I could simply get my hands on the “right” art supplies, I’d finally start getting good, or I’d finally be a “real artist.” In high school, the best of the best coloring implements were Prisma Colors. The colored pencils and the markers specifically. All the cool kids and really inspiring artists used them, but they were expensive, and the “cool kids” definitely came from much more liquid households than I did.

As an adult, I reached the point where I needed to experiment with them to grow. I started with only 4 of the precious Prisma things and the experiment was a resounding success! Being colorblind, I limited myself to gray markers.

By halfway through this second year of comic making, I had run through and fully killed a case’s worth of Prisma color markers. The time had come for the Super-Legit OnlySuperRealArtistsNeedThisStuff Refillable Copic Markers. I ran a small fundraiser and was barely able to afford the 12 pack of copic Cool Gray markers and their refills (things were lean in our house at this time).

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I still use these markers regularly today, 10+ years later.

In rededicating myself to this comic, It became no longer an extended exercise, and instead became The Thing I was making. I began the process of trying to turn comic-making into my long term career on the back of this journal comic. An uphill battle to say the least. I began to lose even more sleep.

Experience is always the best teacher, and I learned a lot this year.

A lot happened as well. Moved back to Megan’s hometown (a stone’s throw from my own) and I lost my childhood dog. The story is in the middle of the batch and acts as a pretty severe gut-punch to most people who read it. Thus this warning.

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I had to put that dog down more than ten years ago. I haven’t had a dog since. I can’t. At the time of this writing, I am a 35 year old man, and I still think of and miss that animal at least once a month. Filthy, fluffy, and dumb as a post. She was a 40 lbs. of clumsy mongrel, but yet also so sweet and loving as to give the coldest heart faith in goodness itself.

Anyhow, Enjoy this second batch of journal comics!

All my best,
-Gabe D.

Journal Comics (Year One)

It was spring 2009, and I had chosen a new course.

Two more years of school.

I was graduating with my degree in English a semester late and I had decided that I would stay in school for two more years to get another degree in Graphic Design. Seemed like a good idea at the time. I figured it would pay off in the long run. So far it really hasn’t. (Not monetarily anyway.)

I didn’t know anything about Graphic Design (didn’t really know what the term meant). I figured it would secure me some white collar work so that I could live somewhat comfortably (nope), afford me some spare time, and give me some pretty essential skills in what I did want to do: Make Comics.

That’s why I got the English degree as well. I wanted to get better at telling stories so I figured a degree in writing would help. (It did kinda.)

I was upset because two more years of school meant two more years of living in a small and not at all appealing town (sorry Greenville). It meant two more years before I could really persue my dream and “start my life” as I kept saying. I felt like I hadn’t started anything and that I was somehow holding my wife back. She assured me that I wasn’t, that I was already living, and to stop thinking of myself as stuck in some cosmic transition.

As usual, she was very right.

Taking her advice (and some of her money) I went out and bought a pad of Bristol board, some ink nibs, and some ink. Then I started drawing.

The first thing I drew is the first page in this batch of journal comics.

Actually, this was the first comic I drew with the new nibs.

Actually, this was the first comic I drew with the new nibs.

Being a young writer, the fantasies of adolescence still fresh in my mind, I had no shortage of comics stories to write, but very few skills with which to draw them. Art school, up to that time, had done it’s level best to grind the comic-making bug out of me. It didn't succeed, but my art skills were none the better for it. I needed valuable practice, and I needed it right away.

Journal comics were the obvious choice. It would force me to draw from life (the quickest and most powerful way to improve) using reference material that was readily available. It would give me small short snippets of story to tell at any given time so that I could amass a body of short works quickly (second quickest way to improve). It would keep me from spinning my wheels at a word processor. The biggest part of the writing would be done for me.

The instant I began drawing was the instant my outlook on myself, my life, and my over all mood improved. I started very slowly. I would complete one comic page per week at first, but I was doing it. Finally. I was doing the thing I had said I wanted to do since I was a boy.

One page a week turned into two. Two pages turned into three. In my first year I began to post my comics online in what had become the classical webcomic format. One update at a time with a navigation bar below and an archive system. I managed to update twice a week with multiple pages, and then three times a week. Most of the webcomics at the time followed a newspaper format. Strips of 3 to 5 panels. I followed the comic book format. Pages, with establishing shots, environments (as best I could draw them) and sometimes more than one page to tell the joke/story.

My 3 updates per week goal was ambitious and I began losing sleep. Luckily this was during the time in my life where the loss of sleep was kind of invigorating. I was working hard at something I always wanted to work hard at. I was also a full time student working a minimum of two part time jobs and a maximum of four depending on marching season. (I had minored in Percussion, and I taught high school drum lines.)

Then Megan got pregnant.

It was planned, as much as these things can be planned. We had discussed that we wanted to be young parents and we were overjoyed. I was overjoyed and terrified. No dad is ready to be a dad until they are.

The implications of my humble little journal comic changed drastically at that moment. It became a contemporary document of what Megan and I were truly like as young people in the world on our own. It also became a living document of Megan’s pregnancy. Later it became the document of our daughter’s first year and my first year learning how to be a father.

Megan compliments me by saying I “took to Fatherhood like a duck to water,” but the truth is, Ivy was the world’s easiest baby. She then grew into the world’s easiest toddler, and at the time of this writing, is the world’s coolest kid. But she was still a newborn. I began to lose more sleep. It stopped being invigorating. But the comics persisted.

The first year of results is Linked Here.

Share and Enjoy!
-Gabe D.