Well, as the writer for the comic I got into webcomics back during the early 2000s when I was doing clerk work at my dad's law firm in a small rural winter-struck town. D&D 3.0 was the order of the day, so browsing the D&D galleries led to me discovering Order of the Stick and that was an interesting ride back in the day. I remember the smell of the room I was in, it was old and the books in it were old; the computer was a few inches above the heater in the room so I had to lean weird or burn my chest. I think from there I spiraled out into other fantasy comics going on at the time; RPG World was quite fulfilling and is one of the stronger self-aware comics I remember reading. I remember Keenspot back when it was something special, and man hearing about all the screwed up stuff that went on there now really does make it seem like I was innocent once.
I didn't think much in terms of comics.
In high school I did read more comics. Donjon, Journey into Mohawk Country, and a lot of the old Conan comics. I was big into Robert E. Howard, and I still stand that he's superior to Lovecraft in terms of writing prowess (and that people like Lovecraft for the wrong reasons and completely ignore Conan/Solomon Kane/Boxer stories...that's another point, I'm rambling.) But comics did not really hold all that much for me. I wrote stage plays, I had one of them put on and it was enjoyed. I wrote stories; one got published and it was a Western. I'd say I did not respect comics as a medium.
And years later, best buddies with an art student who specialized in comics; sort of feeling the same way. There's an issue of crippling minimalism going on in a lot of comics; and then there's people who go head over heels in details and everything blends together. Finding the magic medium is a challenge, and I won't say I've hit it; I'd say it's the thing to strive for and a lot of people don't by my reckoning. Story cohesion and theme often fall by the wayside, and some people let their personal politics color what they can and should create.
The artist and I are working, and it isn't easy; but considering our main work is a multi-person intimate point-of-view work concerning a tried-and-true genre in literature---it just wouldn't work as literature proper. I wouldn't write it that way. Structurally it wouldn't work. We've branched out into dumber things, or applying formats we appreciated when we were starting out. But I've been told by numerous people in the field that if I want respect, I ought to go back to writing short stories.
It isn't hard to keep motivated though. I have a production bible; the people who read my work seem to enjoy it, and frankly I appreciate how the story is being told. My words and how the artist decides to portray them changes up the narrative a bit. Erin was supposed to be a bit less human as a character, somehow she's come across as a bit more scrappy and cute. Scott was supposed to come across as more ambiguous to his purposes and a bit more dreary as a human being; so it was also nice to see him come across more as "cool gay math dad." Conrad's character changed a lot, to the point that while originally he was written to obviously hint at his purposes; now he's sort of basking in it.
I appreciate those things. I'm just the writer, the artist is the director and the actor. And it goes into interesting places.
Maybe I sound a little burnt out and a little jaded. I'm one of those guys with a backlog of half-finished products, things we know will never see the light of day but we could whip out in a second if someone wanted to buy them or see them. And it's the lag that kills. I'll produce a full hundred pages of script content and research, artist will do a dozen pages; and then we'll see it isn't panning out. It takes time; for both of us, and by no means I'm saying I put in more time than him (honestly at the end of the day I'd say he works more in the long term on a project); but it can burn you out quick.
Still, as far as motivation goes I've found that research gets me going. Kind of wish we were further ahead in the Sisters. Researched hard core "this is what they were scared of in the 80s" Satanism for like six months, and aside from the nightmares we haven't really benefited from it yet.
