Hi there! My name is Gale Galligan. I’m a middle grade graphic novelist and acting secretary here at CAG.
This post is an introduction to comics mentorship adapted from one I originally wrote in 2019, which you can find here. It is by no means exhaustive or prescriptive! I am writing as a cartoonist who works primarily with American book publishers, so my perspective and goals may not align with yours.
I will also note that there are varying definitions of “mentorship” across the visual fields. The form of comics mentorship I will be discussing can be briefly defined as follows:
- A professional relationship between a person who has experience in comics (the mentor) and a person who wishes to learn from the mentor’s expertise (the mentee); the mentor provides guidance, feedback, and support for the mentee.
- Not for profit.
Some comics professionals offer “mentorship” as a paid service, charging hundreds of dollars for individual feedback, guidance, or coursework. That is well within their right. However, I would personally describe those paid services as they are (editing, tutoring, or consulting, for example), rather than conflating them with a mentor-mentee relationship.
With all of that said – I hope that this provides a useful framework for you to examine your own experiences and consider what might work or not work for your own mentorship (or menteeship)!
Table of Contents
How do people learn comics?
There are many, many paths to learning comics. Some are free, some are affordable, and some cost an exorbitant amount of money. Every path is different and will benefit (or not benefit) cartoonists differently, based on their needs, goals, learning styles, and other factors. These include, but are not limited to:
free
- online resources
- social media
- podcasts
- tutorials
- essays
- webcomics
- comics news/criticism
- library
- comics
- comics criticism
- how-to books
- networks
- internships
- require a time/location commitment
- not always accessible
- not always compensated
- mentorships
- we will discuss this further, obviously
paid
- comics/comics-adjacent jobs
- work which uses comics-related skill sets
- work that allows you to pursue comics more easily (benefits like free printing, healthcare, or free time)
- assistant work like cleanup or flatting
- internships (beautiful, rare, love to see them)
lower cost/time commitment
- online resources (paywall)
- paid tutorials (schoolism, gumroad, etc)
- subscription comics
- books/comics
- conventions/festivals
- time, travel, hotel if attending
- additional merch & table expenses if exhibiting
- possibility of profit, great for networking
- workshops, one-off classes
higher cost/time commitment
- art school
- good for: learning craft, having dedicated time in which to work on the craft, networking, feedback
- bad for: debt
- not everybody has this option
- it doesn’t work for everyone
- it’s not a guarantee of future success
- i have an MFA in comic books and a lot of opinions!!!
In a nutshell,
Avenues of study that are lower-cost will typically offer broader and less personalized information. These will require more legwork on the student’s part to structure their learning and figure out what will help them.
Avenues that are higher-cost (whether in time, money, or other commitments) will probably provide more specific and personalized information, as well as other benefits like networking. These are not nearly as accessible.
What is a mentor, and why are they cool?
A mentor is someone with the experience and time to help others on their path, who can take the benefits of those higher-cost avenues of study and spread them around a little.
How it benefits others:
- direct guidance
- personal critique
- informed discussion of career goals
- resources that might otherwise have been inaccessible
- advice based on experience
- can identify areas for growth
- BUSINESS TALK (taxes, rates, agents, etc)
How it benefits you:
- keep your creative eye fresh and motivation strong for your own work
- help knock down barriers that held you back when you were starting out
You do not need:
- any awards
- a teaching degree
- any specific number of books or years under your belt
You do need:
- to know what you have to offer, and have an idea of who you might be able to help along.
Could I mentor?
Yes! Yes, you could! The first thing I’d recommend is that you grab a notebook or notes app, take a few minutes, and consider the following:
What do you have to offer? Identify your strengths.
- professional experience
- practical experience
- specific experience
- genre
- business
- craft
- process
- areas in which your critical feedback would be helpful
Is it one, some, all of the above, or something else entirely? What do you wish you could have learned or focused on earlier in your career?
What do you want them to get out of it? Identify your goals.
- What tangible or intangible things do you hope your mentees will come away with?
- a physical product – like pages for a pitch packet?
- knowledge they didn’t have going in?
- confidence?
- specific skills?
Maybe your strength is in editing, and you want to help someone pull together a solid story. Maybe you’re great at working conventions, and would like to do a convention mentorship. Maybe you just want someone to know that they’re not alone. These are all entirely valid.
As an example, my approach to mentoring.
When I was first thinking about these questions, I was drawing on my experiences as a mentee, a graduate mentor, and a cartoonist with an MFA in comics and a few years of published experience under their belt.
My experience as a mentee.
SCAD’s sequential art department brings in professional mentors who work with a few students at a time over the course of a school quarter. In 2014, I was one of those students!
We communicated by email about a short comic project I was working on. I sent over my thumbnails, pencils, inks, and final draft for critique from my mentor, and later used the pages in a successful pitch packet.
I’m proud of the work I did and grateful to my mentor, although I regret not thinking to ask them more about their professional experience. The terms of the relationship were only established as “send pages for critique”; it didn’t occur to me to communicate outside of that.
My experience as a graduate mentor.
While at SCAD, I worked with undergrads who were having trouble in classes or wanted extra one-on-one guidance. We met in person and communicated through email about their assignments. I learned that perfectionism, healthy scheduling, and communication were the most common issues these students were dealing with, before any art came into play at all.
My experiences after art school.
SCAD taught me a lot about the craft of making comics – tools, techniques, goals for guiding the eye, all things that I am very excited about and love to think about – but I felt like I had been thrown into the deep end when it came to royalties, agents, basic information about how publishing houses are structured, and so on. Basically, the business and books side of comics. I was so, so lucky to have people that I could reach out to for help, advice, and information. Now that I know more about my specific corner of publishing, I want to pass that forward.
All of these experiences inform my goals and approach as a mentor.
To summarize my takeaways from these three things:
- Right up front, I want to tell my mentees what they can expect from me. I want them to understand that I am there to be a resource for them. I want them to feel comfortable coming to me for critique and guidance – whether that’s the project we’re working on together, or other professional issues that they happen to be dealing with.
- I want to help my mentees understand how to structure their cartooning lives in a healthy way. They’ll need to know how many pages they’re reasonably capable of making in any particular timeframe, how to set up a healthy schedule with room for unexpected changes, and how to professionally communicate about their needs.
- I know a lot about craft and am excited to talk about that!
- Even if I don’t have all the answers, I do have people I can turn to for answers, as well as knowledge of free resources a mentee might not have discovered yet. Adding myself to the list of people a mentee can reach out to when questions come up will broaden their knowledge base considerably.
Writing all of this down helped me decide what would be important in structuring a mentorship, and how I might meet those needs. So let’s go on to the next section!
How to structure a mentorship?
There are a few basic choices that you can make to begin planning your mentorship, and these will all depend on the goals you’ve established – what do you think will serve them best?
Individual or group?
I personally work one on one, though I’ve heard from someone who’s had experience facilitating group chats on Discord – I could see that working well if you want to nurture a positive critique environment and create a peer group that can continue to support itself without your direct involvement. It’s a really neat idea!
How to communicate?
There’s a world of options now! You could go local or online, voice or visual – these, again, depend on your goals, but also your and your mentees’ comfort. Some options take longer than others, or take more effort to coordinate.
I started off doing an introductory video call followed by regular email communication; lately I’ve been incorporating more check-in calls. There’s no right answer here, it just depends on what makes sense to you.
Open-ended, or project-based?
It depends on your goals, preferences, and time commitments!
For the last several years, I’ve been experimenting with project-based mentorships. As we discussed, I personally want to help with schedule management, goal setting, and communication, as well as craft concerns like layout and flow.
Here’s my basic Project Mentorship format:
- Have an introductory video call (when possible) to discuss career and craft goals.
- Ask mentees to make a new short project (like a minicomic or pitch excerpt). Have them start from the very beginning. That way we can discuss craft along the way, before they’ve committed to ink.
- Also ask them to think about what the project will do for them. Will it be for a convention? A pitch? Proof of concept if they’re trying to work in a certain genre or for a publisher?
- Give the project specific time and length parameters.
- Six to eight pages, color or black and white.
- I’ve done three-month and six-month mentorships using this format and think that the shorter version has been more successful. It feels like pages tend to get pushed off if mentees can’t clearly see the end date.
- Ask mentees to consider how long each part of the process (thumbs, pencils, inks) takes them, and to build out a schedule with checkpoints based on those estimates.
- Schedule management! The most important thing is that they’re thinking about this. It won’t be perfect, but they’ll learn more about what’s working or not working as they go, and will have to communicate with me if things aren’t going as expected – one of the goals I mentioned.
- Ask them to pick one day a week to check in by email, regardless of whether or not there’s a deadline.
- That way, they’re more likely to remember that I’m someone they can come to if a question comes up during the week.
- Schedule video calls for checkpoint critiques.
This approach is definitely more time-consuming, as you need to set aside regular time for critiques and other communication, but being able to see a project come together from start to (hopefully) finish can be very rewarding.
The main pitfall of this format is that self-driven projects are the first to be set aside when conflicts appear. It happens! That is part of their (and your!) learning experience.
And here’s my Open-Ended Mentorship Format:
- Have an introductory video call (when possible) to discuss what they’re looking for from a mentor; why they think I would be a helpful mentor; career goals, craft goals, anything they’re trying to work on or learn more about.
- Decide where to go from there. If they want to work on specific craft goals, I might put together a simple slideshow, share reading suggestions, or suggest practice exercises; if they’re looking for feedback, I’m happy to keep an open line.
Do feel free to reach out to people if you know they’re mentoring (including me!!!); chances are they’ll be happy to answer your questions. I basically interrogated Chad Sell, who was so kind with his time, and I also benefited a ton from being able to look at Martin Gee’s mentorship application and use it as a reference point. Thank you both!
How do I choose mentees?
You could put “open to mentorships” in your bio and accept them whenever you feel like it, or you can take applications in a more structured way; it’s really up to you.
Soliciting applications is useful when you’re planning to run mentorships on a certain schedule. Going through them does take time, so keep that in mind. Here’s my selection process:
- Rule out the easy ‘nos’ – people who don’t meet the basic requirements I laid out in the application. (Sorry!)
- SUFFER.
You can see an older application of mine here, with a description up front outlining the mentorship and what I’m looking for from prospective mentees. So if someone applies but says “I don’t have a portfolio,” or “this is for school credit,” that’s an easy no. Then the emotionally taxing part starts. I’ll try to go through in passes – numbering everyone on a scale of 1 to 4 based on how helpful I think I could be to them, then looking at the “most helpful” subgroup and whittling down further from there.
The big questions I ask myself are:
- How could I help this person?
- I included a section for prospective mentees to describe their work, professional goals, and mentorship goals for this reason. If they’re really interested in penciling cape comics, I’m probably not going to be able to help them as much as someone who’s interested in middle grade graphic novels; I just don’t have as much experience in that area.
- Do I just really like their work??
- Sometimes, people with really appealing drawings apply, and it is always so tempting to say yes right away – but would my time be better spent on someone who has a lot of room to grow? There’s a huge spectrum here, with no real right or wrong answers; you kind of just have to trust yourself. Don’t forget that this doesn’t have to be your first and only mentorship, and any experience you have here will benefit your future mentees regardless.
You might find it helpful to run your final options by a friend, and try to describe what your mentorship could do for each of them.
One more important question:
How many mentees should I take on at a time?
This depends entirely on how much time you’re able to dedicate to this and how you plan on structuring your mentorship. Mentorships are a time commitment. How long does it take you to answer an email or provide critical feedback on pages?
I’d recommend starting smaller than you think and then reevaluating when you have more information.
One note on critique.
You’ve planned out a mentorship and chosen your mentees! Great job!!
Just one more thought: don’t forget that you’re there to help them on their path, which might not look exactly like yours.
When you give critique or advice, always ask yourself first: is this something that will benefit them, or just something that I prefer? If it’s your preference, be sure to couch it that way so they can choose whether or not that note is beneficial to them.
In closing!
Seriously, it is wonderful that you are reading and considering this. I know that you might be asking yourself whether you’re ready to be a mentor, whether you have enough experience or schooling or published work. But here’s the thing: there’s advice you want to give to your past self, right? We’re all at different places in our careers. I promise there are people out there who could really get a lot from what you have to say. Even helping them to articulate their goals, or letting them know what options are out there for them, or sharing the experiences you’ve had – good and bad – can go a long way.
So, if you want to, why not try?