At the stroke of midnight, 2008, we were consoling Carter, who has a molar coming in, and a cold, and is sick and miserable, when he throws up all over himself and Kim. I sorta wish he would have thrown up on me, too, 'cause that would have pretty much summed up 2007 for me.
2007 was a terrible year.
Know this, when I'm not blogging, it's not because I am too busy, or having too good a time to find the time to blog. I don't blog because I am depressed, and I spent a lot of 2007 being miserably depressed. Sure, I was busy, with a new kid and lack of sleep, and all that goes with it, plus a move and a new job, but, mostly, I was just depressed.
If you emailed me and I did not get back to you, or lagged severely and then wrote something short, that was probably why.
2007 sucked.
2007 saw the release of my biggest selling, most commercial comic, which just so happened to be mired in so much behind-the-scenes bullshit with one of the publishers it completely poisoned the project for me. At the same time, the rest of my comics "career" came to a inexplicable, crashing halt, and the work just simply dried up, and never returned. At the end of 2006 I was juggling five different comics, and I'd been hustling for 5 years to reach that point. When it all just stopped cold, it was absolutely devastating to me. As result, I took a job in the video game industry (funny how the much more lucrative video game industry has been far kinder to me in 3 years than comics ever was in nearly 15.) I moved from my own house, to a tiny apartment, away from a city I loved to a place that is little more than a vast expanse of freeways and stripmalls. I left behind a tight circle of friends, and there's not a day that goes by that I don't miss Seattle, my house and my friends. I got to live closer to my parents, and get a closer look as my Alzheimer's afflicted Dad went from daffy old man, to walking zombie who could not recognize either me or my mother. He had multiple strokes the week before x-mas, and is now in bed, waiting to die, not able to walk, not able to talk, not even able to chew. I went and saw him a couple of days ago, which will surely be the last time I see him alive, and he looked more terrible and wretched then I could ever imagine.
It wasn't completely bad. Carter has turned out to be a pretty fun little kid, and my home life is fine. The cats are in good health, and I finally bought my dream car, a Toyota Matrix. I'm going to start blogging a lot more in 2008. And even though I'm effectively right back where I started as a comic book writer when I went freelance 6 years ago -square one- I'm just going to do my own god damn thing, and get my own book up and running again.
Anyway, come back here often. This blog is back, mother fucker!
The year is 2008, AND THIS IS THE WRATH OF LAYMAN!!!!
3 comments:
One of the things that really sucks about getting old is having years that you look back on and say "Damn, I'm psyched just to have survived that."
Wow, that's... uh... a little more serious than most of the posts on your blog.
Hope 2008 is an improvement for you, and I also hope that you don't give up on comics. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that working on Gambit wasn't a lot of fun for you, but it was a lot of fun for the readers and I hope there's more Marvel work in your future. Your comics work has been great, and please remember to plug all your video game work here too so we can check that out.
Here's hoping for a much better 2008 for you John. No matter how much the year sucked, I was glad to meet you at Comic-Con, and I hope Cryptic treats you right!
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