Panel 2: Behold, quite possibly the Biggest and Poutiest of all the many, many sets of Big, Pouty Lips that I saddled Emp with during Empowered vol.1. What can I say, folks? This was just an artistic idiosyncrasy that appealed to me circa 2006, one that I eventually burned out on and moved away from, though this affectation persisted through a fair number of the early volumes in the series. A decade or so back, I was amused to be accused of “pandering” with the Big, Pouty Lips I was drawing, apparently in a cold-blooded, mercenary attempt to rack up the big bucks by deploying the seductive imagery of Big Poutiness. Uh, no. You may rest assured that I drew characters in this manner because this appealed to me at the time, and not because I thought this would attract theoretical fans of Big Pouty Lips. As the tragically faltering arc of my sadly uneven career displays quite clearly, I have no g-d clue whatsoever as to what might actually sell.  

In a way, I’m glad that American comics remains such a loose, shambling, aimless line of work, in which random spitballing, idiosyncratic pitches and wild stabs in the dark are the norm for project development, as opposed to the of more structured—and strictured— approaches of a more competitive, higher-stakes field. Take, for example, the detailed feedback from the dreaded “reader response cards” that so dominate the lives of mangaka published in major magazines; you have no idea how glad I am to have never endured that particular hellscape of ruthless scrutiny. 

I’m even gladder, really, that no means exists to truly determine “what would sell”—though “sell to whom, exactly?” would be the obvious follow-up question. I shudder to imagine the horrors that would be unleashed if, by some presumably magical method, I could somehow learn what exactly would be necessary to garner me genuine success in the American comics market. Just as well that that Pandora’s Pandering Box (of Comics) could never be opened, right?

-Adam Warren