Dear Creature, Revisited

Today I want to tell you a sad and strange and sometimes heartwarming story. This story is about a book that’s very special to me — my first graphic novel, Dear Creature, which I completed (not published, but completed) just about ten years ago.

At comics conventions, I usually pitch Dear Creature to people like so: It’s about an atomic sea mutant whose poet soul is at odds with his desire to eat people. If the person smiles or gives any other indication that they feel comfortable with that idea, I continue: So he goes on a quest to overcome his monstery ways and find love, but it’s not easy: Everything he knows about the world, he knows from reading Shakespeare plays he’s found stuffed into bottles and set adrift on the sea, mysteriously.

If the person across the table is STILL with me, and yes, SOME ARE, then I finish with: He’s hopelessly out of touch — an Elizabethan brain in a sea creature’s body, dogged by a chorus of symbiotic crabs who never leave his body and want only to feed again. “Stick to what you know,” they say: Eat the people. But the the monster wants more, and in spite of everything against him, he sets out to find love.

And, if a brief cap-off seems in order:

Essentially, it’s what you get by mashing together two old drive-in movies: one part monster-schlock, one part European art house.

You might be surprised how many people stay through the whole pitch. I’m well-practiced.

Dear Creature came out in October, 2011 from Tor Books — the same week, in fact, that Dark Horse published my second work in comics, Green River Killer (GRK). Trade book publishing moves much slower than comics, so by the time Tor acquired, edited, and slotted Dear Creature into their publishing schedule, I’d already completed art on GRK. It was an odd experience, attempting to promote two very different books at the same time. GRK was the higher profile book, and in its true crime shadow, many people looked at Dear Creature, my quirky romantic comedy with a sea creature, and assumed that I loved to tell stories about monsters who kill people. Green River Killer sold well and received an Eisner award, and it was at least three years before I stopped turning down offers to draw more books about murder and murderers. To be sure, I was grateful to receive those offers of work, but I also struggled to steer my career out from that trajectory. It’s difficult to be known for a type of work that doesn’t match your own passion — that doesn’t represent what you know to be your own particular truth. Is that a precious, privileged, and probably exasperating way to go through life, especially in relation to people who want to give you work? I’m sure it is. But the only reason someone risks, over and over, the unstable life of an artist is because they have that very particular truth which they need to express. The human connections, money, or rewards that may come from doing a work of art are beside the point. The point is, even if you’re telling a bunch of lies to get there (as artists do) that you make something that is true.

All told, I spent five years writing, drawing, and pitching Dear Creature to publishers before it finally shipped to bookstores. About two months after its publication, Tor Books decided to make a quick pivot and eliminate graphic novels from their publishing lineup. My editor said there were debates within the company as to whether they should do comics or not. Those that were pro-comics did make a few efforts to promote the book, but Tor as a company didn’t even feature it (or any other of their new graphic novels) at their Comic Con booth that year. The nay-sayers won.

Dear Creature received excellent reviews, but those didn’t translate into big sales, and lacking any significant effort from Tor’s marketers, it sold about 1,000 copies before the rest of its print run was returned. After a year or two, I bought the unsold stock from Tor, and my agent reacquired the publishing rights for me.

Several more years went by. I started a family and worked mostly as an artist on several purely commercial projects, including the (thankfully) bright and cheery Batman ‘66. At conventions, usually there’d be two or three readers who HAD found Dear Creature and came up to tell me how much they’d enjoyed it. Of those conversations, one in particular stands out: A middle-aged woman in Toronto, Canada, said she’d found a copy during her first weeks after losing her husband. She beamed at me, exclaiming that it was so weird and wonderful — that it lifted her spirits in that season of grief. I was so struck by her guts to come and not only share kind words about the book, but the reality of her pain. Not something you always expect in a comics convention, but right up there among the best reasons to keep making art. True is good, but better if someone else finds it to be so.

In 2016, Dark Horse offered to republish Dear Creature. We’d forged a good working relationship on other material and they were fans of the book. They were also interested in giving it the aesthetic treatment I’d always wanted — an understated, ‘60s-inspired canvas hardcover, quality paper stock, and a larger format. A “definitive edition,” my editor said. I’m so grateful for the beautiful job they did, and that they were willing to give the book a second chance both here, and in France via their partner-publisher, Glénat.

If life had gone the way I’d expected, I would have liked to promote the new Dear Creature with a tour, some signings, and a few convention appearances, at least. But in 2016, shortly before the book’s re-release, I lost my son Otis to seizure complications. It was a traumatic experience that left me and my family pretty wrecked. I did almost nothing the rest of the year except hold my wife and daughter and take enough work to pay the bills. Friends and extended family offered huge support that I still can’t believe. We took a vacation or two. Maybe more. In any case, my priorities clearly shifted away from work, and I suspect the second publication of Dear Creature suffered as a result. This book that once mattered to me more than just about anything suddenly didn’t matter much at all.

Now time has moved along again. It’s three more years now, and ten since I finished Dear Creature. A lot’s changed in my life — different dreams, different people, different projects — but I find that this book does still matter to me, very much.

A couple days ago I cracked it open for the first time since I prepped it with Dark Horse’s pre-production team. I came away with two impressions. The first was that I’ve changed — as a writer, and as an artist who makes fewer lines to describe shapes — but the second was that for all its strangeness and niche interest, I enjoyed it. I’m still proud of it. Of the work I’ve produced in ten years writing and drawing comics, it remains my most personal, and probably, best-crafted book.

The graphic novel I’m working on now, Little Monarchs, is different from Dear Creature in basically every way, but both represent me as an artist trying to put my own particular truth (whatever that is) into the world. I actually know pretty much what my truth is, but it’s not good artist-manners to define those things. It’s better if you just let people read them.

So … here it is, if you want to give it a shot.

Thanks for reading.