"Amulet" Creator Kazu Kibuishi's Advice Launched Me On My Comics Path

Sage advice for starting down any creative path

Advice to a Young Artist, Honore Daumier

“Don’t wait for permission.”

These four words from graphic novelist Kazu Kibuishi blew open the creative roadblock that had been holding me back. They gave me, ironically, exactly the permission I needed to move forward.

Last February, I’d quit my job to take some extended time away from the work world and dive into making comics. But I’d been a dedicated public servant up to that point—although I was an art major in college, since then I’d left my artistic practice solidly in the sporadic hobby realm. In other words, I had just the barest of online presence and personal portfolio as a comics creator. I was starting cold and didn’t know what I was doing.

Still, the idea for Phased had grabbed me, and I was going to make it, even if it turned out the only people who saw it were friends I foisted my comic on.

And then just as I was starting my “mini-retirement”, an email showed up in my inbox promoting a talk by graphic novelist Kazu Kibuishi. I immediately purchased a ticket. A little research revealed that I’d seen some of his Copper comics before,¹ but till that point I was unaware of his mega-hit, the Amulet children’s graphic novel series. It came out long after my time as a young reader.

Cool! Kibuishi would clearly have a ton of valuable insights to share about making it as a comics creator. But wait a sec...children’s series?

On the day of the event, I found myself one of the few adults in Town Hall Seattle’s vaulted Great Hall who was not attached to one among the sea of excited children and preteens. I awkwardly sat toward the middle-rear of the hall, feeling distinctly out of place.

During the interview, Kibuishi shared two nuggets from his rise that stuck with me:

1. Winning critical acclaim and Eisner nominations² for Copper and his Flight anthology didn’t translate into commercial success.

2. The first Amulet book received mixed reviews, but gradually built a following that bloomed into a wide readership, New York Times bestselling sequels, and millions of copies sold.

He observed that impressing critics is not the same as capturing a general audience--a key tension that creatives grapple with if they want their art to put food on the table versus be personally fulfilling. (And impressing critics is not the same as personally fulfilling, either.)

Once the book signing started, I hung back to make sure those who wanted Kibuishi’s signature would get their hero’s scrawl.

As I neared the front of the line, an event coordinator came out to tell Kibuishi what time it was and ask if he was ok to keep going.

Crap! I caught my breath a moment.

Kibuishi nodded and turned back to his guests.

Whew…ok, let’s keep the selfies quick and the line moving, everyone.

Finally it was my turn. I approached, an adult without a book in hand for him to sign, a little self-conscious that this made me stick out from fans who preceded me. Whatever, I’m a novice in a creative discipline seeking a sage’s advice (though the stairs to the Great Hall were a little shorter than a mountain). I’m sure he sympathizes.

So I launched into it. I thanked him for sharing his story and the path he took to get where he was, that it was very helpful to me as someone new to making comics and trying to get into the field. This caught his attention as he slightly tilted his head up.

“What advice would you give someone just starting out? How do you grow a readership when publications don’t want submissions to have appeared anywhere else before?”

Kibuishi replied without hesitation:

“Don’t wait for permission. Just start creating and sharing your work.”

He explained how he began by simply posting comics on his website. “Do you know Derek Kirk Kim? He did, too.” As you build your body of work and just go out and share your work, he assured me, you’ll find readers. Eventually, publishers will notice—they’re always looking for new talent.

Kibuishi wrapped up by repeating his admonition: “Don’t wait for permission.”

This was exactly what I needed to hear.

I’d been struggling with the catch-22 of submitting work to comics/literary periodicals where they want exclusive content, but they have Ivy League acceptance rates, meaning creators sit on finished works for months most likely in vain. Comics are a particularly time-consuming art form (though not as much as animation, which takes the cake), making this embargo particularly painful.

Kibuishi’s advice told me it was ok to skip all of that. That I didn’t have to win the favor of the gatekeepers to progress as a comics creator. And that the alternative path still leads somewhere.³

With Kibuishi’s blessing, I launched myself into creating my first comic book and shared it as a serial online as soon as installments were ready, instead of submitting it to journals and anthologies. I finished work on Phased in three months, and did a print run once the story was completed. I started to build a readership on this blogsletter, and was accepted as a vendor at Short Run Comix Festival as a new artist with one book to my name. The UK’s National Art Library purchased a copy for their comics collection. And now, a year later, I’ve finished my second comic, Blood of My Blood.

Had I sought publishers’ permission, I would have had to keep my comic secret likely for all of last summer and fall, and would have missed all of those achievements.

Thanks to Kibuishi’s words, I’ve learned that the path I feared might lead nowhere is actually taking me where I need to go.

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1. Definitely worth checking out. Nice linework, creative paneling, great colors, and a cute dynamic between Copper and Fred. A solid entry in the “boy and his animal companion” genre of comics.

2. The Eisner Awards are basically the Oscars for comics.

3. And although Kibuishi noted that publishers will eventually notice you, your path doesn’t have to lead toward being anointed by traditional magazine and book publishers to be worth walking. As I’ve written about before, engaging locally seems like a more fruitful approach today than everyone competing in one giant national pool for the largest microphone. Fixating on “getting published” by traditional players means focusing on accessing larger microphones that are fewer in number, more limited in accessibility, and swamped with more creators seeking to get in through their gates. Of course, being anointed would be great, too.