Bored Panda reached out to Jon Baker to learn more about his creative process and personal journey. The title "Alarmingly Bad Comics" is undeniably intriguing, so we asked the artist how he came up with it.
"When I started out, my drawing skills left something to be desired. You can see it in my earlier work and honestly, even almost 9 years later, I'm still probably never gonna get my work hung up in a museum anywhere. So knowing how the internet can be, I decided to lean into it and wear the title proudly instead," Baker responded.
Baker's art has evolved over time, though the artist shared that these changes weren’t the result of deliberate practice or effort. "It's more of a function of when you do something long enough you just get generally better at it. The writing/themes/etc., however, have been relatively consistent in that I write for an audience of one: myself. I’m thrilled other people like my work, too, but the only thing I care about when making a comic is 'Do I like it' and 'Does it make me laugh'. So long as I'm doing that, I just kinda go where the creativity takes me."
No matter our profession, we all face challenges along the way. For Baker, the biggest challenge is finding the time to create comics. "I always want to do more comic stuff, but I have a day job and a family and a social life that I try to maintain and sometimes that's *difficult*."
When asked what he finds to be the most fulfilling part of creating comics, Baker replied that there are two things: "First, the making of comics (when I have the time for it, that is) is pretty calming for me. My world is chaotic and there's a certain simplicity to the fact that when I put a pen to paper I get a line. The line I drew. I don't have to argue with the pen, I don't have to explain myself to the paper, I just get a line. It’s refreshing.
And the other thing I find incredibly fulfilling is being done with a comic and putting it out in the world. I'm a big believer that the world needs more cool stuff in it, and I like to think I'm doing my part. At very least, I'm putting something out there that *I* would have wanted to read, and I'm hoping others do too."
