Have any of you ever published your own comic?

I'm currently working on a few different stories, illustrated by a friend of mine. I'm looking to get it printed and distributed at a few places, along with putting it up on barrylutz.com (or maybe a new standalone site). I considered starting a thread to ask if anyone would like to contribute their own work to it, but first I thought I'd just see if anyone else has actually tried to get their work "out there" or if everyone just has a bunch of half-finished panels scribbled in a decade old dusty notebook in the attic.

I figured there would be a thread on this already, so if there is can someone kindly redirect me?

I've done this a few times and am sort of convinced now that just throwing things out there in a vacuum is a very bad way to go about it, given how incestuous and tight-knit any kind of comics audience is. You should definitely either find some more pals to go in with you, so at least you have yourselves as an audience, or try and ingratiate yourself into some already established collective. I don't think you'll have a problem with either strategy: your animated gifs are awesome!

Thanks, Philip, that's really nice!

I'm kind of torn about what to do. I realize that throwing out things into the "black hole" (consigning at places like Quimby's in Chicago, Atomic Books in Baltimore, along with a few record store owners I know) is probably doomed from the start. But at the same time, I know that any time I've done anything that was remotely successful, I fell down on my face repeatedly at the beginning until it was embarrassing.

I'm definitely hoping that from the beginning I can get a couple of other people to contribute work to it, just 1-3 page stories. The plan is to publish 3-4 times this year, and then, if the quality is high enough, collect a "Best of 2010" and possibly get it printed up at Just1n3's press. Then, at that point, I would either be on the cover of Time Magazine, or a tad more realistically, I would have a body of work substantial enough to work as a portfolio and maybe attract the attention of other comix writers.

Then again, I can't shake the feeling that I may be approaching this like an 8-year-old!

i actually published a (TERRIBLE) mini when i was 16 w/ a friend. we got a table at the first spx (in...1994?) to sell it. i cringe now to think that i actually handed this monstrosity out to other creators (inc. mazzucchelli arrgh) and rightly destroyed the rest of the print run at a later date.

(also i started a webcomic back in '08 as larf for me and some of my friends to read but i proved to not even have the sticktoitiveness to keep it going as larf.)

seriously though i'd suggest setting up a website by which to sell and/or view the thing, sending review copies to comics bloggers/reviewers who you think might be sympathetic to yr thing, strike up relationships with cartoonists/collectives with a similar vibe for link-swapping/anthology-inclusion-swapping, hit small shows in yr area (not sure where this is), look into the (remaining) d.i.y. distros, consigning at stores, etc etc. i'm not sure, other than the internet making networking/selling (theoretically) easier, how different the game really is in 2010 than it was in 1994. i assume it's still a very slow build coupled with a very hard grind, through as many potentially fruitful avenues as possible, to even get to the "respected but not as widely read as we'd all like to believe" level of all our favorite indie cartoonists. but yeah, getting it out there in whatever form > keeping it in the trunk, as far as building something goes, however long it takes.

though i've given up on my lifelong dream to ever write comics -- unless any marvel eds are reading this and want my she-hulk pitch -- and am far too cackhanded an artist (excepting my ms paint jerkoffery) to ever bother with doing my own comics, i do sympathize: the grind of sending short stories into the "black hole" of the lit journal/zine circuit is starting to do my head in.

its been my experience that its pretty good to find a small pond to be big fish of to get going. it has the advantage of a) giving u much needed encouragement at first and b) making it so that you have a few plaudits to your name when you push beyond

altho this has nothing to do with comics, just life in general

oh, z_s, the other thing i should mention is that we plan to have (half) a table at next year's APE show in san francisco, and possibly the SF zine fest, so we're hoping to really get some work done before then that we can showcase. so think of that as another outlet for getting noticed!

Oh wow, that's great! Oct. 16-17 is ON the iCalendar.

Well, I've been messaging back and forth with an illustrator friend of mine who will be my co-captain on my own stuff, and I'm working on getting another comix-nerd friend of mine to help me out, but if an ILXor would like to contribute something, please feel free to click on my name and send me ILX mail.