"I Must Conquer"

An original short comic ... plus, my adventures with Comics Experience

Anyone who’s interested in learning about the comic book industry should check out Comics Experience.

Comics Experience offers online courses that cover a range of topics, such as writing, visual storytelling, coloring, and so on. A few classes are about to start this week, which is why I’m sharing this now. (UPDATE 1/25/23: Those classes have now started, but I still recommend checking out Comics Experience at any time of the year.)

I have no affiliation with Comics Experience. I’m merely recommending them as a past student and forum member. However, for full disclosure, the Comic Book Law for Creators instructor, Joe Sergi, is my uncle, but that’s not one of the classes starting this week.

Comics Experience was founded and is led by Andy Schmidt, a former Marvel Comics and IDW editor. Andy edited some excellent series, including X-Factor and Alias. Since 2007, he’s combined his industry knowledge and teaching ability to create an active community where aspiring and working comics professionals can develop and further hone their skills.

I was a member of the CE Creators Workshop forum several years ago, and I found it to be educational and enjoyable. I ultimately decided to concentrate on prose novels, though I’m still better off for having spent some time with Comics Experience.

My favorite part of the forum was the critique exchange. I don’t know what the situation is like today, but when I was there, we would critique four or five scripts that our fellow forum members submitted, and then we’d be eligible to post our own scripts for feedback. And this feedback often included one professional critique from an experienced comic book editor or writer.

While my critiqued scripts never turned into comic books, they were an early iteration of what became my novels, The Flying Woman and The Silver Stranger (and before the comic scripts, it all began as a play I wrote in college, but that’s a story for another time). Those novels might not exist if CE hadn’t motivated me to dust off and improve my old characters.

I also took the Introduction to Writing Comics class in 2017 and Professional Freelance Writing in 2019. Andy taught the intro course with assistance from Paul Allor (who has written Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and G.I. Joe comics, as well as his own independent comics), and Paul taught the freelance course (he’s now leading the intro course).

In the intro course, we went through the process of developing scripts for five-page stories. And let me tell you, writing a complete, worthwhile story in five pages—especially five comic book pages—is not easy. Pulling it off feels like quite an accomplishment, and it gave me a new appreciation for the medium.

In the freelance course, we had to choose from a list of licensed properties, come up with a few pitches for our assigned franchise, and then develop a five-page script based on the pitch that Paul selected. And then after we developed and polished our five-page scripts, Paul threw a different curveball at each of us, and we had to enact major last-minute revisions based on those curveballs.

My work from the freelance class will never see the light of day, as we were all working with other people’s characters for educational purposes only (and it was educational!). But the story I developed for the intro course is entirely my own. And better yet, it was actually produced.

Normally, the intro course ends with final revisions to the script, and then everyone’s on their own. At the time, however, Andy was piloting a project management type of program in which he guided a few of us through the process of working with artists and letterers to develop a finished product. And that was another excellent learning experience.

The story was almost included in an anthology, but that book fell through (understandably, as anthologies are a tough sell). By that time, I was deep into prose projects and had nothing else in the works comics-wise, so I let the story languish on a flash drive for the past few years.

But enough languishing. I’ll share it here as an original webcomic. (The five-page story wound up becoming six pages thanks to a suggestion from the artist, Joshua Flower.)

So please enjoy this short story, and then remember to give Comics Experience a look if you’re interested in learning more about the world of comic books.