As a comics reader, and as someone who’s now made them for more than a decade, I’ve been thinking about my limitations.
The first and foremost is obvious – I can’t draw. All my various attempts over the years have taught me ways to appreciate other people’s art, and lettering thousands of pages certainly gives you a glimpse into how pages work on a basic level. But that’s a big lacuna – not being able to actually do the thing that makes a comic a comic.
Second, I’ve had a blindness towards other kinds of comics than American. I’ve definitely dabbled in European comics (grew up on Asterix and Tintin), I have my favourite webcomics and manga. But push comes to shove, these are not media I have an attachment to – not nearly as intense as the American variety.
I haven’t been able to pinpoint to myself why that is. There are some webcomics that are investigating the format of comics in a way paper comics never could,* there’s manga that’ll give you an emotional ride of a depth and breadth that most American comics can only dream of. And European comics have some of the best, most laboured-over art. And yet, I love individual examples of all of these, but the media themselves evoke no passion.
* The Webtoon vertical scrolling feels like something that should fire up my imagination, but I’ve read a bunch and … nope.
I’ve tried to tackle this a few times over the years, and it’s introduced me to one of my favourite comics ever – Pluto – but I suspect this is something I’ll eventually just have to make my peace with.