I freelanced for a few years, worked full-time for a few years, and then went back to freelance. I was selling enough comics at conventions to cover my expenses. Sometimes I even turned a profit. I wanted to see if I could develop an ongoing series to increase the number of return readers I had coming to my table at the shows. I decided to further develop Super Duper Ham: Day One into a more sophisticated narrative with more engaging characters. I covered a wall in my studio with rows of posted notes, each representing a character arch that would weave in and out of the others.
I also decided to draw the entire comic book page at once, instead of drawing the panels individually and putting the page together in the computer, to see if this would streamline my process. I still created the panel/page compositions in Adobe Illustrator, but I printed them out and then drew in the panel art. It didn’t work for me. Wanting everything to be drawn perfectly the first time added a lot of pressure and I was frustrated when one panel wasn’t as good as the others and needed to be replaced.
I self-published the first issue in 2013, but found myself reconsidering some of my characters, world-building and my illustration process. The comic felt like a false start. I knew that I could do better by this material, so I decided to put the project aside until I am ready to do so.
