Nima Yousefi's Equinox of Insanity

5 Lessons I Learned From My Failed Webcomic

Shortly after starting the blog I had a nifty idea for a webcomic about a pair of insects living in Heaven: Angel Ants. I started posting the adventures of Grayson Eleanor Antly and Redford Javier Antington III — or Gray and Red to their friends — here in March, and by May I’d spun it off to it’s own website, angelants.com. For a while it even looked like Angel Ants might supplant this blog as my chief means of poisoning the world expressing myself creatively.

Well, fifty-eight comics into it’s run and I’m officially putting the kibosh on it. This is partly because I think the last comic I made makes for a dramatic and perfectly tragic ending to the series, and also because I’m creatively bankrupt. I’m sure the 20 regular readers the comic found over its lifetime will be crushed, but soon move on to better things.

But, as the title of this post suggests, I’m not writing this as a public obituary or an invitation to a failed-webcomic-pity-party. I learned a lot while doing Angel Ants, and even more as it crashed and burned before me. I hope my utter and complete failure can assist you somehow in some way ((If so, please send me money.)).

1. My Sexiness Is Limitless, My Creativity Is Not

“Meeting With the Big Guy”

Having the two pictures on God’s desk, and of those two people in particular, was probably the best thing I did in the entire comic’s run.

When I first started doing Angel Ants I loved it. It was a kind of writing I’d never really tried before, but one that I quickly found compatible with my own personal sensibilities. Also, it let me tell religiously-inspired fart jokes.

At the height of Angel Ants I could conceive, plot out, and even write out in my head an entire strip while driving to work. It became a fun activity I could do while doing other, less fun, activities, and there really wasn’t a noticeable increase in pedestrian deaths in the area. Heck, I didn’t even need to wear pants! And I think during this time I came up with a lot of really great characters, like Robot Kenny Loggins and Dr. Dread, and stories, like Red doing theater.

The problem was that around the end of August it stopped being fun. What seemed to be a bottomless well of ideas went dry, and how. I think part of the reason for that was my creative focus was being pulled elsewhere, but for whatever reason making the comics became work instead of a joy. Instead of eagerly awaiting the next Tuesday or Thursday to post the comic I’d made days before, I found myself dreading those days, knowing that I would have to go home and clobber together some piece of crap.

Here’s the thing: life is short and I’m already up to my balls in things I don’t love doing. If I’m going to do something else I don’t love, then I’m at the very least going to need to get paid to do it. Ideally, I’d like to get paid doing something I love to do, but that’s a separate issue. When the comic stopped being fun, I needed to stop doing it. I only have a limited amount of creative energy, and I’m not going to waste it on hard work. What little creative energy I have is expensive, in spite of its generally low quality.

That’s not to say the subsequent comics were bad, but it became struggle to make them, and the more I struggled with Angel Ants the less I could energy I had to focus elsewhere. I had to weigh the costs, and Angel Ants became too expensive.

2. Working Around a Weakness Can Be a Strength

“Danger Zone”

Robot Kenny Loggins is probably the creepiest robot ever, second only to Michael McDonald.

I’m not an artist. At least not in the “drawing of ants” sense. I learned that in my first, very pathetic, comic strip. I knew that if I wanted to do more comics — and I did — that I would have to work around my weak art. So, like many hack artists, I went digital.

What evolved was a mixture of bad hand drawing, bad vector art, and bad photo-collage, resulting in what I think became a really good looking comic. Granted, I think some of the comics turned out better than others, but overall I became really happy with the look of the comic, and in some cases the art became the primary draw to the strip.

Just so we’re clear, the art wasn’t that good, and there were a lot of things I couldn’t do because I couldn’t figure out how to make it look like I wanted it to, but I also want to be clear that I didn’t stop because of the art. The art actually helped keep me on board, because it let me make strips that didn’t work solely on the basis of the writing.

I’m still not a good artist. I still couldn’t hand draw a comic to save my life. But knowing that limit, and finding inventive ways around it, ended up giving me a powerful tool to use.

3. When Mistakes Happen, Fix Forward

“So What Did Happen to Morty’s Payot?”

The ant-face close-ups hold a very special place in my heart.

A glaring graphical mistake lead to what turned out to be my favorite strip. In the comic “Suboptimal Q & A” Morty, the Jewish ant, invited the great Optimus Prime to visit Red’s theater group to give them some acting tips. This was around the time of the Michael Bay Transformers film, and I think it’s kind of a funny comic. However, the morning of the comic’s posting all I heard from readers was, “What happened to Morty’s payot ((Those awesome Jewish hanging curly hair things.))?”

What happened? I totally forgot to draw the payot when I put the comic together. It just totally skipped my mind, and while I didn’t notice the omission, everyone else in the world did.

My first reaction to this news was embarrassment, because as bad as my art is, it certainly isn’t sloppy. Now, all the webcomics howto websites say that you should edit your comics to fix any mistakes so that you’ve always got the best versions of your comics up. I think that’s pretty sensible advice — I wouldn’t leave a post unedited if I found some spelling mistakes in it. Fixing it was the sensible thing to do.

So I fixed it forward.

That is, I didn’t go back and change the comic to include Morty’s payot, I created the next comic to explain, logically, why Morty was missing his payot in the first place. “So What Did Happen to Morty’s Payot?” not only answered that specific question, but it also presented a logical explanation for why Morty would bring Optimus Prime in as an acting coach in the previous comic, and it allowed me to ape the hilarious video of Michael Cera supposedly getting fired from the film Knocked Up, AND it allowed me to do a callback to Red’s infamous ability to squirt fire out of his nipples (aka “blazing teats”). Win, win, win.

You can’t always fix forward — for example, when you punch your girlfriend’s dog in the face — but I think in most creative endeavors you can, and I think you’ll find yourself with a better product in the end. I think I did.

4. Friends Can Help 40%, You Have to Make Up the Rest on Your Own

“First Date”

It was in talking with my buddy Jake that I got the idea to have Red in the Vader mask.

I got more that a few ideas for comics from my friends. In some cases my friends gave me a small nugget of an idea, and in others I was given a great deal of help, but ultimately your friends can only help you so much, and you have to always remember that it’s up to you to make the magic happen. Contrary to what one might think, comics don’t just write themselves, draw themselves, or rethink themselves to make sure they have a proper punch-line (or two).

At the end of the day it’s just you and the work you’re doing, and it’s up to you to make it the best you possibly can. To that end, you’ve got the walk it alone. Unless you get someone else to do your work for you, which is kind of a dick move. Unless you give them credit.

It is, though, really reassuring to know that your friends are there to help as much as they can. I think that kind of personal support is really necessary for making art (or what passes for art in the digital age).

5. Not Everyone Knows Who Admiral Ackbar Is

“A Hiro’s Calling”

Future Hiro Nakamura and Party-Time Admiral Ackbar meeting face to face — a perfect storm of geekery.

I thought introducing Party-Time Admiral Ackbar was an absolute stroke of genius. I patted myself on the back until my arm was sore, for sure. So imagine my surprise the day of publication when half my regular readers expressed to me that they “didn’t get it.” Didn’t get what? It’s fucking Admiral Ackbar!

Well, the truth is not everyone knows who Admiral Ackbar is, shocking that may be, and if you don’t know who Admiral Ackbar is then there’s really not a very strong joke in that comic. That is, Admiral Ackbar showing up in the comic is the joke.

The lesson I think most people would take away from this is, “Know your audience, and cater to them.” I don’t think that’s the right lesson to take away from this, though. Instead, two strips later I tried going down the same sci-fi character-cameo route, to a much more positive response.

So what was different? Clearly, NBC’s recent (at the time) marketing blitz of “Save the Cheerleader, save the world” was much more accessible to non-sci-fi fans than a character from a 24 year-old movie, but more over the key difference is that in second comic the joke doesn’t depend on knowing any of the geek references. Hiro could be just some time traveler, and his catch-phrase could be something I made up. The joke isn’t about him, it’s about Red’s reaction to him, and then Hiro’s subsequent reaction. That it’s Party-Time Admiral Ackbar that Hiro turns to in the end is, I think, extra funny, but it could have just as easily been Gray he turned to (that was the original idea, btw).

The trick is to know your audience, but as long as an accessible base is laid, you can add layers of content to address more narrow types of people. Your audience is served, and you retain the creative freedom to explore the more geeky sides of your personality.

All Good Things…

“Angel Ants VS Dr. Dread”

I’ll miss this.

You know, stopping Angel Ants has been a really hard decision, especially in light of recent renewed positive reinforcement from (get this) my parents, but I really don’t feel like continuing it. My stint as a cartoonist was short, but for a while it was extremely enjoyable, and, you know, I think some of the work I did wasn’t half bad. Would I do it all over again? You betcha! Would I do it again in the future? Possibly. Would I ever want to make a career out of it? No. Would I recommend someone interested in giving cartooning a try to do so? In a heart-beat.

I’ll miss Gray, Red, and the gang. I’m going to leave the site up, as a record of what I did accomplish, and the fun I had, while it lasted.

Let me finish by thanking everyone who read and supported Angel Ants. If it made you laugh, then it was all worth it. Even though no one ever sent me any money for doing it.