At AwesomeCon a few weeks ago there were some very nice people who had some very nice things to say about The Legacy. There were also some very nice people who had some critiques for it, and were very nice about offering them. There weren’t many, but the few critiques said approximately the same things: that The Legacy is very different from the Oracle for Hire years and that it’s sometimes hard to follow.
I’ve been reflecting on those critiques these past few days, not in a revelatory way, but in the manner of a thought experiment.
I imagined how I’d feel if my career in comics failed tomorrow. If there was no longer enough money coming in to pay my share of the bills and/or everyone gave up on this strange kinda-sorta sequel story and stopped reading my work altogether. Obviously I’d feel saddened, but I began to spell out how my story as a comic creator would have ended: “His career ended when he started making comics that were too weird.” And honestly? That wouldn’t be a bad way to have your career fail, given the alternatives.
I feel like everyone is waiting in fear for that news article to break that your favorite entertainer, whether they’re in the fine or performing arts, is an inhuman piece of garbage. That wholesome comedian turned out to be a serial abuser. That once-beloved comics creator morphed into a hideous racist. That author whose work changed your life now spouts anti-queer rhetoric on the regular. The list goes on and on.
As far as I’m aware, I am none of the above.
So if The Legacy were to be the end of it all (which I don’t believe it is because enough of you seem to like it), it would be a fittingly artistic end to my career. I’d much rather have people say, about the end of my time making comics, that “his comics got too weird” than “turns out he was a horrible person all along.”