I'm pretty sure Robert Crumb was the first real indie artist and underground comic book artist. He was a cartoonist on a drug trip. I used to find his work so very ugly, and I always liked stuff like Bone, Tank Girl, Jhonen, Chynna-Clugston Major, Adam Warren, Sam Keith, Evan Dorkin, and Jim Mahfood better, truth be told, but looking back, seeing who he influenced with his comics and animation, it's tough to hate on him.
Off topic: No one buys houses anymore. No one can afford to. The benefits of home ownership don't apply to kids nowadays.
People like Jhonen, Robert Crumb, Jamie Hewlett, and Jim Mahfood taught me something valuable about my career. It's real. It doesn't pay, but I DO have a career and work. I'm an UNDERGROUND celebrity. Like Jack Kerouac or Robert Crumb. But much like them, I'm not comfortable with mainstream fame or press coverage. The Machine. I don't trust that, so I sort of ended up a recluse of sorts. Which is different than a regular celebrity. I function outside of the mainstream field and press. Webcomics are the new indie comics, and I own that arena. This blog is pretty big. End Times is pretty big. Not Hollywood big, but big enough to be considered public (How can it not? It's the World Wide Web).
I like trying to emulate stuff like Tolkien and Star Wars. But money-wise, it's definitely not the same thing. It doesn't make any money, and therefore gets no love from the mainstream press. That's also the political reason people like Jim Mahfood and Evan Dorkin aren't all that much more famous than little old me. It's a financial thing. None of us are all that famous because we DON'T make all that much money, especially me.
People like Jhonen, Robert Crumb, Jamie Hewlett, and Jim Mahfood taught me something valuable about my career. It's real. It doesn't pay, but I DO have a career and work. I'm an UNDERGROUND celebrity. Like Jack Kerouac or Robert Crumb. But much like them, I'm not comfortable with mainstream fame or press coverage. The Machine. I don't trust that, so I sort of ended up a recluse of sorts. Which is different than a regular celebrity. I function outside of the mainstream field and press. Webcomics are the new indie comics, and I own that arena. This blog is pretty big. End Times is pretty big. Not Hollywood big, but big enough to be considered public (How can it not? It's the World Wide Web).
I like trying to emulate stuff like Tolkien and Star Wars. But money-wise, it's definitely not the same thing. It doesn't make any money, and therefore gets no love from the mainstream press. That's also the political reason people like Jim Mahfood and Evan Dorkin aren't all that much more famous than little old me. It's a financial thing. None of us are all that famous because we DON'T make all that much money, especially me.
-JM
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