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This was written a few years ago, but Ten Things Your Boss Hates About You is still on point!

Since I just spent a couple of months meticulously researching yet another project, gathering hundreds of pages of images, reading multiple books on the subject, and filling two shelves with piles of source material, it looks like nothing has changed much for me! However, I am once again working with Joan Hilty who is accustomed to my slow build, and who knows once I get going, it’s all pretty smooth from there.

The kind of research I do isn’t really possible on a monthly comic: and it’s expensive. Consider I don’t get paid to research, I get paid for the finished work. The more time I spend gathering info, the less time I have to draw. But for the type of period work I am doing, I doubt I would be able to do a convincing job had I not taken the time to do the ground work.

Someone once referred to me as a “method cartoonist”: I “get in character” on every job. That’s probably why my work varies stylistically from gig to gig so much.

Anyway, on to the article.

OK, this is interesting: a list of the top ten things that drive bosses crazy.

I am guilty of too much initiative. I have the absurd habit of over-studying, over-thinking, over-referencing and over-analyzing just about every single solitary thing I do. Getting started is tooth-pulling trauma. I can’t begin until I have data and reference and mood music at the ready, and have spent weeks immersing myself in the project by reading every possible book on it.

For a four page story on Joan of Arc that would pay me no more than $1,000, I spent over a week just READING books on Joan of Arc. This turned out to be handy, because when the writer depicted Joan as killing men in battle, I was able to inform the editor that Joan had never actually killed anyone. Go me!

But all this initiative also meant that I had spent so much time researching the project that it actually COST ME MONEY to do the project. Moreover, my client didn’t hire me to obtain encyclopedic knowledge of Joan of Arc, they hired me to draw four pages and get them in on time.

Another classic example of this is all the time and effort that went into designing Reign of the Zodiac for DC Comics. I spent four months just designing the damned thing. It lasted eight issues.

I have now learned to inform my editors to expect a slow start from me on every single thing I do, then to step aside and watch as I rebound and get on schedule with accompanying cliches about dizzying speed. The editor is pulling their hair out wondering what the heck I am up to until then. My old clients are used to this. My new clients fear me until they learn not to.

With reference files in hand, and all my thinking thought out, I comfortably settle into a routine and produce quickly and smoothly. But too much initiative is my curse. Or my editor’s curse.

Here’s one of the top ten I thought could use spotlighting:

Although none of the managers came out and said that they hated their staff for talking over them in meetings, pointing out their errors in public, or preventing the bonus-related project coming in on time, Mann says it’s a major issue.

OK, I have had to give this some serious thought, because on the internet it’s easy to gripe and moan about everything that ever happened in your entire career. When you do, it’s not over a drink with a few friends at dinner, it’s in front of thousands of people.

I can’t think of a single freelancer who would appreciate it if all their professional gaffes were aired in public on a daily basis by their editors, but it does seem that the dopiest and pettiest of difficulties with editors and publishers (and other creators) are quickly and openly discussed. The vast majority of this stuff ought to be settled in house, not in public.

If a client is making a habit of not paying freelancers it’s one thing to go public (it’s a service to your fellow creators, in my humble opinion), but it’s another to go gonzo if there’s been a minor trafficking error, or someone didn’t get a photo credit, or some editor didn’t say hi to you when walking by at a convention.

I don’t know if creators realize how much damage they do to themselves with the public airing of the little stuff, and how unfair it is to dish it out when there is no way on Earth any of them would take it. How would freelancers feel if there was a public forum where editors posted every time freelancers missed a deadline? Or had to redraw something because they didn’t follow directions? Or made a list of the dopey lies freelancers tell?

c

Comments from the original article follow:

Kneon: “How would freelancers feel if there was a public forum where editors posted every time freelancers missed a deadline? Or had to redraw something because they didn’t follow directions? Or made a list of the dopey lies freelancers tell?”

Why CAN’T there be? If freelancers are contractors, essentially their own businesses, why can’t there be a board or something set up to warn other customers (publishers) about potential problems? You know, like the BBB. Hell, even eBay’s freelance service and Guru.com have feedback areas for transactions. Why not comics?

That would end a lot of the whining REAL quick, methinks.

Colleen: You know it would.

We all blow deadlines. I blew three in the last two years.

Editors screw up, freelancers screw up. If you want your editor to cut you some slack once in awhile, you have to return the favor.

Word eventually gets around about the screw-ups out there, but even the worst freelancers can skate for years before editors finally give up and stop hiring them.

Give it a few years.

There will be a new wave of editors, all past bad deeds will be forgotten, and the freelancer gets work again.

With any luck, whatever problems the freelancer may have had in the past are gone, and they are reliable and productive and get hired again. Maybe they used to be sick a lot, or had a substance abuse problem. Maybe they just had some growing up to do.

I’ve never known a freelancer who had talent not to be given chance after chance, year after year. It takes a LOT of screwing up to NOT get hired if people like your work.

Editors have editorial meetings and that’s a forum that’s more powerful than the internet sometimes. And some freelancers just don’t get it.

Kneon: “I’ve never known a freelancer who had talent not to be given chance after chance, year after year. It takes a LOT of screwing up to NOT get hired if people like your work.”

Wow. Comics sounds unusually forgiving.

Other areas of publishing and commercial art I’ve worked in, not so much. No matter how good, if you made life miserable for the powers that be, you were out the door. There were 100 folks in line behind you eager to prove themselves.

I think the thing to remember here is that if you absolutely have to dish on someone use common sense and don’t give enough specifics so people can go “That’s so and so!”

Very true!

Example: New penciler publicly complains about, say, an inker he worked with and what a horrible job he thought it turned out to be. Doesn’t name names. But being new, this penciler has only worked with two inkers in his short career. If you’re one of the “lucky” two he’s worked with, there’s a 50/50 chance he’s talking about you, but not really talking about you (especially when confronted!)

Either way, one or both of those guys/gals will probably have bruised feelings and go on to blog about the know-it-all penciler they recently worked with. Being newbies, each has only worked with maybe two pencilers in their short careers… and so the cycle continues.

Kind of like saying “Not me!” when Mom’™s good porcelain gets broken and you’re an only child, huh? Not hard to deduce!

Colleen:

Oh, lord, that is so classic!

Even old pros burn bridges unnecessarily. Some years back, there was an old pro who took exception to something I wrote on my old message board. Why, I dunno, because I was PAYING THE GUY A COMPLIMENT, and actually stated he was one of my favorite artists. Apparently, my enthusiasm wasn’t effusive enough, because a reader cherry picked something out of the post and went right to this artist’s website with the sentence.

The artist blew up and he and his fans said some pretty nasty things about me and my work. OK, so he thinks my work sucks. Fair enough.

A short while later, we were starting up Reign of the Zodiac and looking for an inker. Guess who thought he’d be good for the job? That’s right, Mr. Looking For A Fight on the Internet.

Well, if my work sucked shortly before, what made him suddenly change his mind and decide I had talent? How could I trust this guy to respect my work as my inker when he had been so vile about it online?

Instead, the job went to Bob Wiacek with whom I have worked before and who not only did a great job, but knows how to work and play well with others.

I don’t care how talented Mr. Looking For A Fight on the Internet is, I’m not working with the guy and I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could spring a piano.

I don’t work with inkers anymore anyway, but I have had some bad experiences with them. People don’t see your pencils, they see the other guy’s inks. There is no way I was letting someone who obviously hated my work ink it.

Well, I am sure a few of my clients have some things to say about me, too!

I’ve had some great inkers: Terry Austin, Malcolm Jones III, Bob Wiacek, to name a few. There’s some great guys out there who need work. No reason to hire someone with an axe to grind.

There’s always been a lot of complaining about people only hiring “people they know”, but the point is that people want to hire people they trust. I don’t want to work with someone I can’t trust, and I don’t want to work with someone that will have a public snark meltdown every time a phone call doesn’t get returned, or a photo credit gets botched, or an invoice is a couple of weeks late.

If that’s the kind of stuff you’re complaining about, you have a low pain threshold.

I’ve been pretty fortunate. With one notable exception, I haven’t had any major problems with a client in a decade. I’ve never named the client anywhere. I’ve written about them, but they are not in comics, and if I did name them, the collective reaction here would be “Who?”

Tags: advice, art, Time Management

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 10:29 am and is filed under Blog, Creator Resources, Education, Time Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.