Saturday, June 13, 2009

Letting go of stress


Nia's Last Hurrah by =Dualmask on deviantART

Between battling feelings of needing to be "true to my race" by focusing on black characters, the fact that Nia represents my most complete creative work to date, the fact that my online friends keep clamoring for her return and my incessant indecisiveness, I've come to the conclusion that Nia Black is one of the most powerful sources of stress I allow to get to me.

Enough is enough.

I have to stop letting the people decide what I do. I have to start enjoying my work again. That's why I made up Jet, that's why I enjoy drawing her so much and that's why I'm going to continue to do so.

I'm not purging Nia Black or anything like that, but I'm moving her story to my external hard drive, where I store archival data. It's time to move on, to move forward. Every time I look at Nia, I'm looking back.

2 comments:

hulkdaddyg said...

I personally think staying true to your race in comics is just making sure the we as people are not the afterthought or merely cannon fodder. Also as a creator not representing yourself as solelyanother race. For example Dualmask represents you, but you changed him from Caucasian to Black. That to me is all the truth required. I call my son on it when he wants to create a "cool looking" character with spikey hair. So as long as you don't have self depreciating habits and I know you don't, it's all good. A focus on Jet Dancer is no disrespect to our race or even Nia. It does in fact respect who you are as a creator.

Jonathan Price said...

Thanks for the support. You might be surprised about how some others feel on the subject. I think if I had designed Nia to be a white girl or something, I'd have moved on a long time ago. I personally feel both Jet Dancer and WCL are more interesting concepts, but Nia still retains the strongest fan base--and I'd bet most of her fans haven't even read her story. I don't know what it is...

But I'm delusional to think I can actually really move on. Something's always going to happen that's going to make me think about how much I adore the character again. It's only a matter of time. Sigh. But I am going to try. Just as soon as I clear my plate of my commissions, my focus will be 100% on my Jet Dancer comics.