When I was living in Champaign, Illinois, there was a mini-comic that was written, drawn, and published by a local creator, Layla Lawlor. It was called Raven's Children, and to this day it is still one of my favorite mini-comics series. I had always wanted to meet her, if for no other reason than to just say thanks for putting out a mini-comic that is consistently more entertaining than much of what I get from the big publishing houses.
Normally you wouldn't think it terribly odd that we hadn't met; after all, creators are busy and they don't often afford much time to the outside world, and Champaign/Urbana is a pretty big town. There were more than a few Karmic forces at work though. We lived in the same town. We frequented the same two comics stores, (actually, there's only two) so by default we knew a lot of the same people. To top it all off, I'm a loudmouth who regularly pushed her work on unsuspecting customers with all the aplomb of a sugar-buzzing used car salesman, so I tend to be hard to miss.
It took me two years of pimping her work online and around town before we finally ran across each other in G-Mart (one of the local comics stores.) I came away from that meeting with a newfound respect for anyone who chooses to work in that field.
The people who create mini-comics are amazing, especially those devoted enough to put them out on a regular basis. They usually are their own artists, writers, publishers, PR departments, etc. Unfortunately, much of the mini-comics catalog appears amateurish at best, and just unreadable at worst. Those of us who love the format have a tendency to excuse the sloppy artwork and rushed storytelling. There's a bit of a punk rock esthetic at work here, and we like it that way. It's a sense that anyone with time, inclination, and guts can make their own comic.
Every once in a while though, someone puts a voice to paper that rises above the chattering. A creator will spin silk out of rough-hewn cloth, and we as readers are left with a series equal to or better than anything published by a large company. Every so often a creator will show us unequivocally that it is always a bad idea to judge a book by its cover. Layla Marie Lawlor does this with Raven's Children.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!