Cates, Isaac & Wenthe, Mike – A Treatise Upon the Jam

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A Treatise Upon the Jam

Sorry, but I’m much too lazy to type that whole title. You can read it, right? The title sums it up pretty nicely, as it’s a comic which is completely Isaac and Mike talking to some random person about doing a jam in comics and how it’s a great thing for any comic artist to try, and I couldn’t agree more. Way back in the day I did a comic with Jim Roy (and other, occasionally) called Churned Out Crap, appropriately enough. He would draw 16 pages or so of the most random stuff he could think of, while still keeping the same central character, and just leave space in word balloons and captions. He would give them to me, I would take them someplace quiet, rearrange them into an order that looked like a story to me, and start writing. I’m going into that much detail about it because it was a great experience and I think more people should try stuff like that. Many years later, about two of those issues hold up as good (I think), the other ones, well, live up to the title. That’s what these two are talking about here. They can both write AND draw, but it’s much easier to push yourself to work until sunrise if you have somebody there with you. They would actually have readers send in single panels and work from there, or combine them all into a story (I haven’t gotten to the jam comics yet), and say that sure, some of the ideas were horrible, but the thing that helped them grow as artists was trying to turn those bad ideas into something workable. It’s an interesting book, as not many people talk about this kind of thing in this great of detail, and should be seen by anybody who’s interested in trying something like this. Here’s an e-mail, I’m guessing this is $2, but why not ask them and find out?