By now you’ve likely run into the term “survivorship bias”. The idea is simple; we focus on the winners and ignore the losers, then make broad assumptions about what it takes to survive.
I first heard about survivorship bias from my oldest kid, who’s a mechanical engineer. They live for this kind of stuff because it can mean the difference between making an informed decision that keeps people safe or an uninformed one based on incomplete data that will likely hurt people.
Maybe the most well known story is the one of WW2 bombers that returned from bombing runs riddled with bullets. Your gut says to armor them up where the bullets hit them, but you'd be wrong. The ones that came back with bullet holes taught the opposite. They can take hits there and come back.
It’s the spots not hit with bullet holes you need to worry about. Planes shot there don’t come back.
Image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Survivorship-bias.svg
But I like the dead cat’s story better. It comes from a study performed in 1987, where they found that cats who fell from less than six stories, and were still alive, had greater injuries than cats who fell from higher than six stories. Some folks figured that the cats had time to reach “terminal velocity” and right themselves at five stories allowing them to land more relaxed and less f-ed up.
The problem is that this kind of thinking ignores the dead cats. The ones that don’t survive the fall. No one counts those. They, and the lessons that can be learned from them, are buried.
I’m often asked about how I “made it” in comics, film, illustration, etc. I happily share the info, knowing full well it’s worth absolutely nothing in the practical sense.
Why? Because I “made it”, whatever the means. I’m one of the survivors, and telling you what worked will lead to a form of survivorship bias that may leave a new recruit ill-informed. They often take away the wrong lessons, thinking that if they repeat what I did that they’ll “make it”. They ignore all the moving parts that change the second you look away.
Everyone’s story of “breaking in” is different, and even if there are similarities between individuals, if you dig deeper you often find huge gaps in how their stories link up.
With the one big exception; most of us that have “made it” just kept at it.
I’m going to apologize in advance for butchering this quote, but I read it in an interview and now I can’t seem to find it again, but Spike Trotman said it best, “The industry is full of people that just wouldn’t leave.”
I’ll add, “...till their luck kicked in.”
I teach at an art college and I push the idea of improving one’s craft above all else, but I also add the caveat that there are always people who get rich drawing stick figures so what the hell do I know? Getting good doesn’t guarantee success, nor does knowing the right people, or anything else.
Not if you don’t stick with it till you get lucky.
After folks have made it they will often tell you their success is due to this amazing thing or that, but ultimately most of us just get lucky enough to be given a shot and then stubbornly refuse to leave the party even after the lights have been turned off.
The thing is, I don’t know if that’s good advice to give. I don’t know if any of us that have “made it" have good advice. So some of us pretend we do and peddle a myth that makes us look like our success was inevitable.
Which, of course, it’s not.
I think it’s fine to ask successful people how they’ve made it, but it’s not gospel and you have to balance it with all the data. You have to talk with your peers, the ones trying to make it and struggling. You have to form bonds with these folks who still have tons to teach you if you’ll listen.
When I was first coming up I was part of this online collective called the “Indy Cred All-Stars”, concocted by our fearless leader Jamar Nicholas.
It was a tongue in cheek name, as none of us had any “cred” nor were we “all stars”. All of us had failed to break in at that point, but this community turned out to be the best source of information any of us could ask for. No one could tell you how to get a Batman gig, but they could tell you how to letter your comic. Or how to set up a page for color printing. Or how to draw a hand better.
In the end it turns out that learning all those little lessons is how you get a Batman gig.
So, I guess my advice is find a small group of people that you can learn small things from. Small things that help you make big things. The big things will come if you stick around long enough to get lucky.
Count the cats that didn’t “make it”, learn from them and take advice from the fat cats with a grain of salt.
Good luck. Happy drawing.
BTW - That group of “Indy Cred All-Stars” would go on to produce several working cartoonists, including 2 Eisner winners and our Grand Pooba Jamar himself becoming a superstar Scholastics cartoonist. Not bad for a bunch of goofballs.
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Great topic, something I've been pondering a lot lately. I have this image in my head that we are all climbing different rope ladders up to the "made it" spot. Everybody's on different ladders based on what their version of making it is. Every time somebody makes it, that rope gets pulled up, that path is now closed off or it's harder than ever to climb up because somebody made it work and it won't always work again. Especially since resources are limited, of course not everybody can make it up sadly.
I think what you're saying really hits to the heart of it. That regardless you have to keep showing up. Thats the only way you can make your own luck. If they cut down a rope you're on, swing to the one beside you, prepare your own grappling hook, but whatever you do keep trying.
Thanks for talking about this, there's a lot of ambiguity around the comics bizz. My spirit is reinvigorated.
Thanks, I really needed something like this today. Working in comics (or any kind of freelancer I believe) is not for the faint of heart (specially when you have a family to feed). We go through looks of ups and downs, and specially when it's the end of long projects I feel really anxious about this career I chose. But I just can't work anywhere else, I just LOVE working on this damn pages! BTW, your substack is AWESOME!
Great topic, something I've been pondering a lot lately. I have this image in my head that we are all climbing different rope ladders up to the "made it" spot. Everybody's on different ladders based on what their version of making it is. Every time somebody makes it, that rope gets pulled up, that path is now closed off or it's harder than ever to climb up because somebody made it work and it won't always work again. Especially since resources are limited, of course not everybody can make it up sadly.
I think what you're saying really hits to the heart of it. That regardless you have to keep showing up. Thats the only way you can make your own luck. If they cut down a rope you're on, swing to the one beside you, prepare your own grappling hook, but whatever you do keep trying.
Thanks for talking about this, there's a lot of ambiguity around the comics bizz. My spirit is reinvigorated.
Thanks, I really needed something like this today. Working in comics (or any kind of freelancer I believe) is not for the faint of heart (specially when you have a family to feed). We go through looks of ups and downs, and specially when it's the end of long projects I feel really anxious about this career I chose. But I just can't work anywhere else, I just LOVE working on this damn pages! BTW, your substack is AWESOME!