Last week I published a blog post about graphic novel math, in which I offered solutions to help comic artists and their publishers design healthier graphic novel schedules.

This week a comic artist shared my post on Bluesky to say he “vehemently disagreed” with my point about hiring more artists to ease a solo artist’s workload, and explained his stance in a long thread of roughly two dozen posts. I’ve gone back and forth the last two days about whether I should respond. On one hand, despite being assured that my post was mostly very good, I found the language used in the thread so dismissive and incendiary as to compel me to defend myself and my entire career. And on the other hand, I can recognize that the thread is not about me really, it’s not even about my essay despite using it as a platform, and in the interest of my own peace it’s easier to simply not weigh in.

(I’ll be honest, I hesitated to link the thread here. I’d say it’s because I don’t care for fanning the flames on discourse, but the truth is that I don’t want to create the impression that I can’t take criticism, because artists are taught and encouraged to wordlessly endure all criticism. However, I also believe that an artist must know how to defend their work, and this isn’t a defense really because I feel I explained myself thoroughly enough in Graphic Novel Math. This is simply a reaction.)

It’s obvious I cannot talk about graphic novel labor without a white man—it’s always a white man—hopping into my mentions to tell me what I get wrong about comics. This isn’t the first time I’ve said something about comics that a white man—always, always a white man—took umbrage with.

The terminology I use to discuss graphic novels is wrong. I’m wrong to suggest that expecting a comic artist to draw and color 200 comic pages in less than a year is unreasonable. I’m wrong to suggest that a longer development schedule is beneficial to artists. I’m wrong to suggest that any comic artists are actually making a living from comics. I’m wrong to suggest, at the very end of a very long blog post in which I offer a wide array of options for graphic novelists and graphic novel publishers to consider, that hiring art assistants is an available option that can make publishing a graphic novel more accessible for those of us that would struggle to complete a physically taxing, time-consuming long-form comic on our own.

And I’m just sick of it. It’s not the idea of disagreement that chafes me. It’s the insistence that there is only one valid comic-making experience that these critiques imply. It is the inability of these critics to view the industry from a perspective outside of their own.

No, I wasn’t around for whatever literary wars happened on the road to the creation of a graphic novel industry. I don’t care if the public thinks my books are “churned-out filler entertainment.” I’m a picture book author, okay? If my readers like my book, they eat it. They tear out the pages. They carry it around everywhere they go until it’s covered in food particles and dirt and falling apart. It is simply a book. It will be compost one day. We will all be compost one day.

I’m TV/film trash. I wasn’t collecting comics as a kid, I was recording my favorite movies on the VCR. I work in the animation industry, which acteurs and CEOs openly disdain. I work in children’s books, a market heavily controlled by a population of people who aren’t even the primary target audience. And, y’know, I’m a Black woman. I’m used to existing in the margins, disrespected and misunderstood. It is where I live.

I am not seeking mainstream validation for the art I make. I’m not here to discuss the merits of solo work versus collaborative work, and how many artists it takes to destroy a comic’s literary worth. I was a young artist that aimed herself at the animation industry and landed in comics. I’m not here to debate what does and does not make a graphic novel. I’m simply here trying to convince artists that they don’t have to kill themselves for their art.

Do I think it’s a bad thing if the workflow of comics can be readily compared to film or theatre? No, I don’t. I think that’s exactly the right comparison, in fact. I don’t think it’s a good thing if the public only views the work of singular comic creators as true literature. I think that the sequential art medium is an excessive amount of work for one person, and just because one artist can do all the work doesn’t mean that every artist should. Just because Michel Gagné can animate The Saga of Rex single-handed doesn’t mean that every animated film should be made by a single artist! Some books are singular visions by one creator, and some books require a team, and the readership of comics is vast and varied and has room for both.

And by the way, I directed that last point specifically to publishers because I want to impress upon them the physical and economic cost of making a graphic novel. I wanted to distinguish graphic novels from picture books and prose novels as endeavors more expensive and more time-consuming, and if a publisher is acquiring graphic novels, then they should take the incredible labor, the writing, the layout, the penciling, the inking, the coloring, the lettering, the cover art, into account in their schedules and budgets.

My views are so completely opposed to this comic artist’s vehement disagreement that I must be working in the wrong medium. And that’s fine. I’m tired of trying to be a part of an industry that only cares about boxes and boundaries, because I never mastered the art of coloring inside the lines. But thank you, white men in comics. This is certainly the permission I needed to stop trying and go my own way. I’m just going to focus on taking care of me, which is something I’m not doing enough of.

“Imma do my own thing.”