I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but it seems clear that I'm definitely not doing something right. I've been chipping away at this comics shit for a couple years and, despite people telling me how good my work is, I can barely muster the scantest interest in anything I do. Yes, I know I have failed in getting my work together with consistency, and have had my problems with putting it into peoples hands. I understand that. I'm sure that would help, maybe even inch me further toward my vague goals of doing more of all the creative work I want to do. That isn't really what I'm talking about.
Comics are supposed to be a collaborative genre, but anywhere that I've gone looking for community among creators I end up being iced out for reasons I don't completely understand. I've had people pull rugs out from under me, manipulate friendships, court me with unfulfilled promises, and straight up insult my work to my face. It doesn't help that this local community is full of loner mavericks who simply don't waste their time with their peers; or, if they do, explicitly consider me persona-non-grata in this scene. I've been told I have a reputation of "being difficult to work with" -- people skirt my offers for collaboration so much, I've finally stopped asking.
I've even started dialogues with individuals outside of this town that started out promising, and then promptly turned sour. The Rochester comics scene is thriving, but when I approached the community there I was all but cut out of discussions between people that (I am supposed to believe) coincidentally "co-opted" my contribution while conveniently forgetting from whom it came. In short, I've been nothing but excluded from all of that which I've tried to be a part. I'm not sure entirely where I earned my shitty reputation, but I've got a few ideas.
To be sure, I am not without some friends and partners here. But the momentum, effort, and productivity has certainly not increased over time. I am not sure what it is about me that inspires so little confidence. I think people are overly credulous of my bad reputation partly because I'm not here to disabuse anyone of it; if you're that willing to listen to whispers and gossip rather than make your judgments by, you know, *actually* interacting with me, well, then, in short, fuck you. I'm not going to plead my case in a court where I must prove my innocence. That you want to ascribe to me sleights that I haven't made, or just simply not give me the benefit of the doubt, is, at this point, too high a demerit count for me to work off. And I'm not going to try. I am perfectly willing to make an enemy of anyone who has made an enemy of me -- if I wasn't clear the first, time, fuck you. I am no sycophant.
If this community has found me so unsatisfactory, then how should I be satisfied with it? Why grovel before it? As far as I can trace it, the black cloud of my reputation originated out of a misunderstanding at best, and at worst either a malice or incompetence I had not earned. I came looking for collaborators, community, solidarity, shared interest, and at the end of the day, just good, innocent, stupid *fun.* And I'm still looking. Though not as accomplished as some, I'm highly capable, talented, hard working, and loyal. I do good work. My best work is still ahead of me. Its utterly bewildering how unwilling to associate with me everyone has become. Whatever it is I'm hoping to find, it isn't going to be found in Buffalo, or maybe even in Western New York at all.
But clearly I'm doing something wrong.
If you've got some idea about what that is, don't be shy. I'll hear you out.
