Her fiendish plan worked.

Looking back, what fascinated me as a child were elaborate fictional worlds. I filled my head with the TV series of Gerry Anderson and the encapsulated universes of Marvel Comics, Star Trek and Doctor Who - mashed them all together in drawings and stories, my first attempts at making something of my own by using bits of other people’s work like Lego bricks.

I was about ten when 2000AD and Star Wars came along - and again, here were new worlds to explore. More than the characters and the stories, that was what fired my imagination. Along with my weekly fix of the future courtesy of messrs Ezquerra, O’Neill and McMahon, I began collecting books of design sketches for SF films. I was making sketches of my own, elaborate spaceships, complex interiors, building models of them. Generating comics too, fragments at first, but slowly becoming longer and more coherent, the shite-storm of borrowed styles and ideas slowly reaching critical mass to become something truly personal.

Somewhere along the line I became an Artist with a capital “A.” It’s true; I have the certificate to prove it.

And for all my obsession with films and animation and illustration, I became a comic artist, partly because of luck, but mostly because comics let you build worlds with the minimum of resources. The film director has, by definition, to rely on a crew and a cast of actors to get his ideas across; compromises must be made to secure funding and stay within budget. The comic artist, on the other hand, can weave worlds with a WHSmith jotter pad and a biro. Fewer compromises, much less interference.

Ever heard George Orwell’s definition of democratic and undemocratic weapons? A stick is a democratic weapon, because anyone can both acquire and use one. On the other hand, an atom bomb is undemocratic; only a government - and quite a rich government at that - can afford to both manufacture and deliver one to its target.

Comics are a democratic medium; one pad, one biro, away you go. Photocopying is cheap, access to the Internet becomes easier day by day. The whole world can see your masterpiece at the click of a mouse.

Sure, you need to be able to draw, but drawing, surprisingly, isn’t at the heart of comics; Matt Feazel and Annie Lawson have proved that stick figures can be compelling if you have something to say.

You know how to be an artist? Simply decide. Decide that your ideas and concerns are of value. Pick up your pad and biro and start making something. At first you’ll do it badly. Don’t worry about that. Reflect upon what you do. Continue doing it badly, until you learn how to do it well.

It’s as difficult as that.

I still make comics of my own, between commercial jobs. Little bits of Matt-brain, emptied out onto the page. I’ve been at my current project for three years, and it’ll probably be another two before I’m done. But what does that matter? Once I finish that one, I’ll just start another.

Plus, I delight in saying that I can’t draw comics because I’m too busy drawing comics.

I’m sure it sounds bizarre for someone who makes their living the way I do to say this, but, in a way, it’s a shame that art rests in the hands of artists. It creates the idea of Art with a capital “A,” as something important in itself. Now, I think that art can cheer you up or make you see the world differently, but at the end of the day I know my place; as an artist, that’s somewhere well below the nice people who maintain our sewers for us.

If art, or creativity, has a real value, it’s in what you can make for yourself, and how that affects the way you see the world.

So, I say this; make something. Draw comics, strum guitars, arrange flowers, write dirty limericks, it doesn’t matter. Make something; there’ll never be a convenient time to start, there’ll never be time to continue, and what you make will never be good enough. That doesn’t matter. What matters is to create instead of just consuming.

Add to the sum of the world.

All D’Best!

Matt Brooker Trading As D’Israeli

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