I think there are a few differences between the one pagers and my longer work. Most obviously, the longer work is more concerned with plot. Sometimes I don’t want to write “The marquise went out at five o’clock,” but I do enjoy telling stories, and stories are the best/easiest way to get a reader engaged and emotionally invested. I tried to fit some sort of narrative into the one pagers when I first started doing them, but I moved away from that fairly quickly. Derik Badman has described all of the one pagers as being focused, in one way or another, on a moment. That seems pretty accurate. However, just as I think my thematic concerns are the same across both types of work, I think they both address the same formal interests as well. You mentioned abstraction, for instance, and I would say there are parts of the longer works that are just as abstract as the one pagers. Is it too much to say that, if the one pagers are each a single moment, then the longer work is a collection of moments? Maybe. I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. But there’s some truth there.
Hello! I have been enjoying your comicsworkbook one page comics, and have appreciated the more long form works of yours that I have seen too. Is there a central thought to your one page works that you are trying to work through? Something that you have a drive to understand or communicate? What do you feel like you can accomplish through these more abstract one pagers that you can’t through long form works? And what do you feel like longer works can do that one pagers can’t?
Hi! This is a great set of questions. I feel like if I was able to articulately and accurately answer them, my process would be much more purposeful than it actually is; there’s a good bit of flailing around, and failed experimentation, and following instincts that haven’t been thought through in the way I work. I think that’s true for most artists, especially younger ones, in any field. But thanks for asking, and I’ll do my best to answer.
I wouldn’t say there is a central thought to the Comics Workbook one pagers. Certainly there is a set of thematic concerns that crops up regularly in my work, some more conscious than others, but I just see the one pagers as a venue for low-pressure experimentation. That isn’t to say that I’m not proud of them, or at least of the ones I feel are successful, but I do put less time into them than I do the individual pages of a longer comic and am often more actively trying new things. I suppose it’s ironic that more people see these experiments than see any of my other work.