Welcome to ACES WEEKLY Volume 49, Week Six!

Friends, a while back, when I was fresh to the comics business, I had the good luck to be quizzing some of the best comics pros in the UK - artists who drew to order, for many comics, and without question, the scripts they were given - about what they would really like to do if given a free hand, e.g. initiate their pet project or similar. Some were highly resistant to the question.  The hard shell of the no-nonsense professional doing their job clearly appeared - the guise of the builder commissioned to build and no more, and not be diverted by the fripperies of his own fancies. I heard it and accepted it, but I detected unspoken regret in their answers.  Where would they have gone to with their own thing if the publishers they worked for didn't go for it in the restricted market they depended on for their wage?  ' If it was all too unlikely a prospect to be successful why try it? ' was the feeling I got. Safer to just do the job given and stay on solid ground.  When print and paper was the only choice for a try-out of anything new, that diffidence was an understandable blockage to a gamble. But now, through the cyberspace publishing that Aces Weekly - or any other body like it offers - it's easy for any pro to take a punt on a new idea, to preview something, to experiment even, without any massive gamble involved in giving it breath.  In fact, that's what we at Aces Weekly offer here all the time - freedom from the repression of new ideas by the expression of them. Freedom for art!  By the way, one of those repressed ideas I managed to squeeze out from the one of those fantastic colleagues of mine way back when has still has not been done by anyone, and I'll certainly not be stealing it myself.  It should have been done by him - and I wish it had been...  The message, of course : express it, don't repress it - especially if you're an artist..!  Stay safe, everyone... : )

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