Comic Creators Are Human Too

Stemming from a blog entry at Cognitive Dissonance about the bad behavior of a particular comic pro. This kind of stuff always makes me wonder when exactly I realized that comic creators were human too.

Sounds silly to many I'm sure, but for the longest time I held the people that made the comics in the highest regard. I didn't really understand what went into making comics. So the seeming "magic" that these individuals were able to do, made me think there had to be something more to them than other people.

Yet once I got online and began interacting with many of the pros, and luckily enough even becoming friends with a handful. My opinion began to slowly but surely change, from sheer awe of what they were, to an understanding that just as with anyone else what was important was who they were.

I saw that they, as with everyone else, could be petty, harsh, funny, smart, stupid, ignorant, informed, arrogant or shy. That while they could often offer an insight that many outside couldn't, they were not the absolute authority on everything comic related.

Realizing that comic pros really did live and breathe as you and me, was a double edged sword of awareness. On the bad side realizing how awful some of them were, made me aware of the type of people behind some of the books I liked were. Which changed my opinion I'm sad to say on whether I should or shouldn't support their work.

If you know a pro is a sexist jerk, who is insulting to any and everyone around him. Then it can be hard to separate that from his work and want to do anything to offer him support.

Yet on the good side, was I became more aware and forgiving of mistakes that people made. Not thinking they were these almost perfect beings, I came to realize that they were people trying to do a job as best they could. Which being human meant that things at times could slip by, and to be understanding of them in part.

Not to be accepting of sloppy work of course, but just to realize that those are real people behind the names on the creator boxes not robots.

Which has led me to a different feeling about the way I look at comics. Where I focus more on the quality of a story, rather than who the characters are instead. Because I'm aware now that the people behind the characters are more real than the characters themselves.