Why Webcomics? Part 4: Independence.

If you find a job in print comics, the chances are that you'll be writing or drawing new stories for an existing title. For reasons mentioned previously, print publishers generally stick to their established characters and settings, because that's what their readership wants. For a lot of comic creators that's OK - these are characters that have been around for decades, and being given the chance to present your own take on a favourite iconic character is like a dream come true, the culmination of the hard work and diligence required to get into the industry in the first place.

For others, though, it's not really what they want - rendering someone else's character doesn't appeal, and they'd much rather present their own creations to the world, establishing their own title and fleshing out their own original settings and characters. In the print comic industry that's pretty challenging - the publishers aren't going to want to take a chance on a new title unless it's mind-blowingly good, or you've already built up your reputation and credibility through years of diligent work on other people's titles - as an example, Mike Mignola drew other people's stories for fourteen years before he got the opportunity to start writing and drawing Hellboy.

There is the point that "paying your dues" by working on someone else's titles for that long means that when you finally do get to work on your own stuff you'll be able to bring all those years of experience with you - years of experience for which you'll have been paid to hone your comic-making skills. On the other hand, if you took a day job and started a webcomic in your spare time you could have been spending those years working on your own stuff and putting together a body of work that's yours, building up your readership to the point where you could leave the day job and become your own boss. It's possible. In fact, in some ways it's preferable, because it means you're in charge of your own artistic development.

Having worked in the corporate sector (not comic-related, but certain aspects of corporate culture are pervasive regardless of industry), there is one harsh truth that every would-be employee should bear in mind:

Your employer does not care about your personal success.

Whatever you do for a living, as the employee of a corporate entity your role is to act as part of a machine and the purpose of that machine is to make money for those who're running it - shareholders, directors, whoever. Your individual success is of substantially lower priority than the success of the company as a whole. If you become successful or popular, it is only of concern to your employers as long as they can tap that success to serve the company's interests. Your happiness is only considered if it significantly impacts your productivity. It's not a case of companies being staffed and run by soulless drones, mind - more that it's staffed by lots of people with their own concerns and priorities, not all of which will align with your concerns and priorities.

The main determinant in how much the person who decides whether or not you get to keep your job is likely to care about your needs is how close a working relationship you have with them, and thus how likely they are to empathise with you. It's emotionally pretty easy for the CEO of some mega-corporation to order the cost-saving layoffs of hundreds of people he's never met. It's a lot harder for the cash-strapped proprietors of a mom-and-pop store to render jobless a cashier who they've worked alongside on a daily basis for years.

As such, if you're working for a small company where the staff all know one another and regularly interact with one another as human beings with faces and voices and feelings and fears and aspirations, things can be OK. There's that personal touch, an empathic connection between considerate, compassionate human beings. However, once a manager or director is dealing with enough people that you fall outside their Monkeysphere, your personal feelings and welfare don't matter to them - you're just another name among names, a faceless blog in whom they have no emotional investment at all.

They won't care if you want to grow as an artist or whether you feel validated in your role. They only care that you make their job easier by continuing to reliably produce the content they want on-time and to an acceptable standard. If the numbers don't look good for a few months in a row they'll make cost-saving staff cuts, and while they might feel sorry in an abstract kind of way that you're suddenly bereft of an income, their concern is more with the state of the company (and thus their own income). It makes sense from their point of view, because they're running a business rather than a charity.

Ultimately, then, the only person who'll look out for your needs and work towards your success is you. This is perhaps a rather cynical attitude, but you're the person who has the biggest stake in your success or failure - if you don't pay attention to your own welfare, who will?

Working for someone else, you're effectively putting your fate in their hands. If you can strike up a rapport with your employer, things can be good. If you can't do that, though, things are a lot more risky. The idea of "a job for life" is sadly outdated, and when the economy gets shaky people on the payroll are no more secure than the independent freelancer. It's very easy to find yourself unemployed through no fault of your own.

Working for yourself, writing and drawing and promoting your own creative output, is a way of taking control of your own success in a way that's impossible when working for someone else - your fortune is entirely dependent on your own efforts, and whether you sink or swim is decided by how much you put into your work.

Taking responsibility for your own destiny is a big burden, and not for everyone. But if you're up to the challenge, it's a freedom like no other.