I usually dislike submitting anything to a contest. I end up doing work I probably wouldn’t do or do not feel ready to do. There’s a lot of compromise: something I imagined in color or sepia tones must be in B & W, page size, page count, … even language.

This past week I prepared material for a contest. True to my nature, I left everything till the final week: cover letter, full synopsis, 3 pages of final art in gray tones and 2 pages of pencils. Thank God for Thanksgiving or I’d have to do all of that while working a regular 4 day week as a dentist. Never underestimate the stupidity of a superhuman procrastinator.

This is what happens when I enter a contests: I bust my hump, do not win the contest and my level of bitterness skyrockets. Surprisingly, trying to make it in comics is much like dating girls: it’s full of rejection (who would have thought that girls and comics had anything in common? Someone smarter than me once wrote something along the lines of “comics is what you do when you can’t do girls”).

Something different happened this time. I do not know if I’ll win or not but it matters less to me now. Don’t get me wrong, I want to win, but I’m so satisfied with the work I did that I’m just happy to have created a few pages of comics. In the past, after knowing that I’ve lost another contest, I’d abandon the project I started, feeling that I catered to certain demands and if I’m going to make comics for fun and for myself, I only want to cater to my demands. This time, whether I win or not, I’m happy about the comfort level I had while drawing these pages. I used to worry a lot about not being ready for longer stories, about the flaws and weaknesses of my draftsmanship, about the feeling that I really do not know what I am doing, …, now I think I’m a short story or 2 away and I’ll be ready for a 30+ pages comic.

I couldn’t have made the contest’s deadline without help from my sister and an old-new friend. Thank you to both of you.

-zombie DVH