The 40-Year-Old Comics Virgin is still telling me what to do
It’s another day being bossed around by the 40-Year-Old Comics Virgin, that lovable loser who somehow runs my life.
I’ve got his to-do list—thousands of items and tiny details—for current and future me to carry out for him. And yes, I’m still checking things off it like a good doobie, cause I promised Comics Virgin I would. As if I’d have so much more time on my hands than him. As if I wouldn’t be twelve years closer to death than him. But I have to back his play, right—he’s, like, family.
How did I let him be the boss of me?
In 2013 I took a month-long sabbatical from the ER to write a graphic novel based on a weird dream I’d had two years earlier.
I wrote the script, hired artists, made books, found an audience!
And a quarter of my life passed.
My kids learned to ride bikes and to drive cars and became much smarter than me.
I worked in the ER through Covid, went from young doctor to grizzled veteran, lost my mom, lost my mentor, saw medicine get really, really hard.
And through it all, I kept making comics, marching down a path I’d laid out with no idea how much work it would really take.
And still Comics Virgin hounds me with minutiae, and I just have to laugh during moments like today. See, he thought it would be useful to have a cartoon of a chemical action happening in a character’s blood stream in gutters around the physical action in the panels.
It appeared in book one in 2019, but today it needs fine tuning for another spot in the finale. So today I’m shuffling tiny circles in Photoshop because the Comics Virgin thought it would be cool and figured I’d have nothing better to do on a clear spring day in 2026 after a night shift.
Young me did not ask old me if I might prefer to get a Boston Whaler, travel, read Russian novels, or walk outside in sunlight. Selfish prick. My family certainly had no clue what was coming when he descended to the basement to “write a graphic novel” in 2013.
Almost done guys, be up in a decade.
In fact, today this anniversary popped up on Facebook:
That guy, taking bows with 95% of the thing still to do. It’s TWELVE BOOKS NOW, ASSHOLE!
But the 40-Year-Old Comics Virgin was right about one thing:
This project is totally fucking awesome and I still love it. And if that guy hadn’t embarked on this foolishness, well, I’d probably have just played golf. I’d never have gotten this sick page made…
By the Time I Get to Dallas #5 coming soon! Pencils Ben Worrell, Inks Chis Arieswendha, Colors Thaissa Diaz. Banshees shout out to Tim Larsen!
And behold, as of today the drawing of this whole story is basically DONE! Pencils for Dallas #6 by Ben Worrell just need revisions and a cover. Line art for Trinity Project #6 (the prequel series I didn’t know I’d add to the story in 2017) by Greg Woronchak is done, and colors, by my dear friend Jason Finestone (who in 2017 had no idea he’d one day be a comic book colorist!) are also done.
It’s TWELVE BOOKS NOW, ASSHOLE!
I’ve got a stack of eight books we’ve made that make me laugh and cry, with four more so close to being real. After those are printed and shipped I’ll make a hardcover edition and pitch it to publishers again. And filmmakers. And agents. All that shit the Comics Virgin thought might be cool to do if the thing turned out any good.
Because it goddamn is.
And then I’ll do more dumb things, but things 50-something me decides, not the 40-Year-Old Comic Virgin who didn’t know shit about fuck (RIP Ruth Langmore of Ozarks, I wish I’d written you.) This guy, near-future me, will make entirely reasonable decisions and enact them with 100% efficiency.
Just watch.
But you know, I’ve got some concepts by 45-Year Old Comics Rookie that I really dig. He was a little less annoying, maybe I’ll hear him out.
Love,
Colin
PS In the meantime, thank you for watching my 13-year train wreck—it all goes boom on September 1!
Follow said wreck and get a free seven-page preview of By the Time I Get to Dallas #5!
http://pitdocpress.com/dallas5launch
