Posted by: Josh Richardson in Process
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My relationship with comics has been rocky, to say the least. So let me just start at the beginning

At first it was all laughs. Comics and I would chill under the tree at the playground We’d go for long bike rides looking for a good place to spend some quality time together. When I was sad, or scared, Comics would always be there for me to take me away from it all. Comics showed me the world could be a better place and I loved them for it. I was determined to give something back to the medium I loved so much, so I made a commitment: I would create comics.

In the Year of Our Lord 2005, I got my first gig in the industry as a color flatter for Image. I’d get the black and white line art and seperate out all the indiviual areas that needed to be colored in Photoshop. Grunt work that earned me the equivalent of $1.87 an hour and a credit in a real life comic book. Briming with enthusiasm, I was encoraged by my pals at Isotope Comics to start an article on being an up-and-comer in the industry. There are interviews all the time with writers and artists, but when do you hear from the print production guy? The letterer? The guys and gals on the front lines of the comic industry, sweating away because their passion won’t let them do anything else. And so “In the Trenches” was born on Millarworld.

Every week I’d do a new post my experiences as a newborn in the comics industry, which would eventually catch the eye of AiT/Planet Lar publisher Larry Young, and land me a job as his “creative executive” in early 2006. It was here that I learned how to complete many facests of comic creation and where I met many of my friends from Writer’s Old Fashioned (including lettering Jason McNamara’s Continuity). I’d sweat and I’d work, and when a book would come in from the printers that I had helped make a reality, I would glow inside and know that I was doing right by comics.

Then I thought I could write one. And that’s where everything fell apart.

To be fair, none of it is Comics’ fault. In 2006 I took a job with SEGA as a QA Tester, and the hours were long. As my day slowly began to be eaten up more and more by my day job, I began to neglect comics. I wasn’t taking on as many jobs for AiT, my graphic novel script Brawler had sat untouched for months, and stacks of books I once couldn’t wait to devour would sit unread for weeks. Once I got a job working for LucasArts and I began consistently working 70-80 hours a week, comics and I had drifted far enough apart that we decided it probably be best if we spent some time away from one another. We kept in touch, hung out on the rare opportunity, and I would always talk well of Comics whenever the subject came up.

Fast forward a few years and few major video game projects later, and I’m now working at a small and highly creative video game developer in San Francisco. I still work insane hours occassionaly, but over the last couple of years  I’ve started to learn a bit more about who I am creatively, and I’m starting to feel that old itch come back. The sirens call of comics has once again ensnared me in her grasp.

This time though, I want to create something that is 100% mine. From the art, to the lettering, to the stapling of the pages, I’m setting out to create my first mini-comic. And I want to show you how I do it. I’ll tell you right off the bat that I am no expert. This effort will be fraught with mistakes, false-starts, and lofty goals. But for the foreseeable future, every other Monday I will present a look into how I’m putting together my first mini-comic, with a deadline of APE 2009. Holy crap, that’s in October!

Looks like it’s time to gear up, buckle down, and prepare to head back “In the Trenches!”