Ask a Creator: How Do I Launch My Comics Career?
Indie creators Ngozi Ukazu and Taneka Stotts offer advice for emerging comics creators.
Indie comics creators Ngozi Ukazu (Check, Please!) and Taneka Stotts (Beyond Press, The Beyond Anthology, Elements: Fire) know a lot about building comics careers outside of the traditional avenues. Below, they share advice with comics creators who are just starting out.
—Maura M. Lynch
Ngozi Ukazu, creator of Check, Please!:
Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. It’s such a vague, almost-trite thing to say, but that literally means you need to put your art online. You need to share it with audiences who you think will respond to it well. It’s not something that you should do — honestly stay within your comfort zones but you can’t, push your comforts a little bit. It’s not something that you can say, Oh, I’ll wait until I have five pages done. I’ll wait until I have a chapter done. I’ll wait until… Just start.
Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. It’s such a vague, almost-trite thing to say, but that literally means you need to put your art online.
—Ngozi Ukazu
When I give advice to undergrads, I become “Monster Ngozi.” I’m just like, “Where’s your Instagram? Where’s your Twitter? Why aren’t you posting? Why haven’t you posted? Why aren’t you posting right now?” You just have to put yourself out there, and that will snowball into an audience. That audience will snowball into supporters. That’s something that eventually will continue to grow you as you go up.
Taneka Stotts, creator of Beyond Press:
Engage with the community that you want to belong to. Be it in social media, be it actual real life. Go to your local LGBTQ centers, go to your local creator-of-color meet-ups. See what comics shops around you promote these sort of things and, if they don’t, ask if you can create them. Ask if you can utilize that space to foster something in your community that presents awareness and gives you a foot in the door. People see these things. These are the pulses that we look for; these are the current trends of how communities are rebuilt.
Engage with the community that you want to belong to.
—Taneka Stotts
Also, make yourself aware of what things are available to you online and offline. Offline would be schooling or querying professors or current comics creators in your area. Ask politely, see if they have the time. Don’t force it.
Look at who’s in your general vicinity or area and make friends with them. I mean actual friends, not just like fair-weather friends. Get to know them and see how they survive and thrive. Being able to get assistance from them with your own career is a really nice push and start. Nobody wants to see anybody fail, and you never know what that might bring forth. Be it collaboration or be it just a project you do together.
Last but not least, there are a ton of online resources. These things are run by comics creators. They are made by people who also write about us. Knowing these little steps can get you so much further in more ways than just publicity can provide.
If you are looking to get into comics, we have the creator resource that I come from, Comic Opportunities. There’s the Queer Comics Database. There’s the LGBTQ database for creators and there’s the Cartoonists of Color database by Mari Naomi, who is a very splendid, wonderful queer creator of color who wants to see not only the questions of, “What other black creators do you know?” or, “Can you name five lesbians for me to put in this book?” Or, “Jeez, I’m not quite sure about this panel. We only have one of you.” (Thanks, I love being a token.)
It’s more than just me. There’s more than just you. There is a vast creative field that is surrounding us, so be aware of it. Be unafraid to dive into it.
Read their conversation on the business of indie comics here.
