I’m planning to write a series of autobiographical comics about my life in Seattle in the late ’80s and early ’90s. (To learn more about me, read my bio.) I’ll be illustrating the stories myself using various trendy digital art applications. The stories will be posted on this site for online viewing. (I may eventually offer print versions for sale, but that’s not something I want to focus on right now.)

I’m trying to get into the habit of updating this site often and extensively. At minimum, I plan to write in my blog regularly. However, I would really like to complete some kind of new comic strip soon, however unambitious it is.

There are three relatively long stories about my life in Seattle that I am ready to tell. However, I want to get started with something short and manageable. I plan to start work on this shorter story sometime in 2004.

Once I satisfactorily finish one or two shorter “warm up” stories, I plan to get cracking on the stories below:

1. “Rock Bottom”. (Title is tentative.) This story begins right around the time I decided to leave graduate school and ends shortly after I began work as a political fundraiser for nuclear waste cleanup. It’s a story in which I have my dreams for the future utterly crushed and have to reassess who I am and where I’m going.

2. “Heart Dysfunction”. (Title is tentative.) In the early ’90s, I was an ex-graduate student and ex-bookworm trying to reinvent himself, and I very much wanted to have a serious girlfriend. This is the story of my first romantic relationship following graduate school. It’s about a woman who was a child therapist and had become one because she was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. Things didn’t work out between us, but the whole experience caused me to think about a lot about the issues children from dysfunctional families face in their adult lives.

3. “Channeling Bill Gates”. (Title is tentative.) This story begins when I’m working as a political fundraiser for nuclear waste cleanup. I’ve worked there for about a year, and I’ve met some great people. I’m not making very good money though. I’ve been advised by a number of people that I would make a very good salesperson and decide to start pursuing better-paying sales jobs. I’ve been reading a bit about this Ivy League dropout who could be a bit like me. He used to work for George McGovern’s presidential campaign. He became a very capable salesperson and he was definitely a tech-head too. You may have heard of him. His name is Bill Gates. This is a story about selling software in the Seattle suburbs and adjusting to corporate culture after being a Seattle lefty.

I’ve also thought about doing what is known as a “24 Hour Comic” and posting it on this site. A 24 Hour Comic is simply a complete story that a cartoonist forces theirself to complete in 24 hours. A story like this is often unpolished and raw, but it can also be a brutally honest reflection of a cartoonist’s priorities and abilities.

I’ve been more than a little frustrated with my inability to create any new stories over the last few years, and a couple of 24 Hour Comics would probably be helpful in “getting the ball rolling” again.

I’ve become a big fan of The Morning Improv from webcomics guru Scott McCloud. Simply put, Scott spends an hour every day cartooning and puts whatever he comes up with on the site. As I understand, the idea was borne out of his frustration with his inability to get some new stories going. Obviously, this is a feeling I relate all too well to, so it’s quite possible I may try something like this in the future myself.

I’ve been spending a lot of time worrying that my earliest webcomics would be soulless and emotionally empty exercises in digital art techniques and webcomics page design theory. I’ve gotten a lot of new digital art toys to play with over the past couple of years, and I’ve become fascinated with the ways current webcartoonists are presenting their work. Shortly after I got a PC, I became fascinated with flashy webcomics like Argon Zark, The Haunted Man, and Scott McCloud’s online Zot! story. After checking out these comics, I couldn’t help but think, “Man, I want to do what these guys are doing.”

After careful reflection, I realized there is a big danger in doing this. I don’t mean to imply that these comics are “soulless and emotionally empty”, and I congratulate the creators of these comics for what they have accomplished, BUT … I’ve come to realize the dangers in emulating them too closely. The biggest danger is that I’d be telling A BAD STORY that was technically innovative, and I positively DON’T want to do this.

I want to tell stories that would be great stories regardless of the medium they are presented in. At minimum, I want to tell stories that are brutally honest reflections of what makes me tick.

The autobiographical stories I’ve outlined above are stories I trust myself to do a good job with. They’re stories I want to tell to quite a few people at some point in my life in some form. Quite frankly, they make me very emotional just thinking about them.

I’m a big fan of online comics “portals” like ModernTales.com for a variety of reasons. (Modern Tales really is for online comics what the old MP3.com was for musicians.) At some point, I may choose to allow my work to be available through such a portal. However, I want to focus first on finishing a few quality stories in a timely fashion. Once this is accomplished, I may look into some form of syndication. (I’ve learned a lot about website promotion over the past few years, and I know it’s very possible I could build up a large audience for my comics using this site alone.)

– Ben Adams, March 13, 2004