This is going to make me sound like a jerk, but I’m going to be honest here and tell you…
Why I Might Reject Your Comic Idea (Even If I Asked You For One)
- It didn’t make sense.
- It made sense, but it wasn’t funny.
- It was tonally inconsistent with the site or had inappropriate content.
- I already had an idea / don’t like you / any one of a number of other minor reasons.
It has happened that people have helped me develop great ideas that I have used. But in the main, when I ask for an idea I’m dimly hoping that the stars will align and you will open your mouth and say something brilliant, something that you maybe didn’t even think you were going to say. If that happens, great! When it doesn’t I go back to thinking for myself.
Part of it is that I’m protective of my work, and don’t really want people telling me what to do. Part of it is that I have an (enormously varied) audience to keep in mind. And part of it is, like the alt-text says, this is supposed to be a journal comic; if I used everybody else’s suggestions (and these happen more often than you might think) it would sort of defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it? [June 12, 2012]
If I ever start some sort of Members Only Area that you have to pay to get into, and that has like subscriber bonuses and special comics and stuff, one of the bonuses would be the first draft of the comic in panel three. The original drawing turned out to be funnier than the rest of the comic, and you can see how that sort of goes against the point I was trying to make.
(I held on to it just in case)
Ach! Now I’m curious! Pshh!
i have the comic ideas for you. ok, so there’s you… and like, you have this cake. but the cake is made of gold. so, you can’t eat it, you know. anyway, so there you are with the cake and there’s also aliens… but anyway, that’s beside the point. the punchline is something like: “i dont’ even like cake!”