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<\/a><\/p>\nHowes\u2019 passion for comics began in early childhood; they cite Robert Munsch\u2019s work, Calvin and Hobbes<\/i>, and Bone<\/i> as their inspiration. Howes believes what makes the creative medium so exciting is a unique quality not found in movies, books, or other narrative and visual mediums.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a really dynamic medium that stretches the brain in so many different ways. I love it because you get to do so much,\u201d says Howes. \u201cYou get to draw it, you get to write a story, and then you get to figure out how these characters look, and then you get to figure out how the scenery looks and how to put in there and how to sequence it in a way that\u2019s pleasing and exciting for the reader.\u201d<\/p>\n Howes has benefited from the program as an artist, notably by sharing a creative and uplifting environment to explore the medium with a collective.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing more beneficial to your art than being able to just do it with other people in a space dedicated for that,\u201d Howes says. \u201cAnd I feel so lucky to have access to this. \u201c<\/p>\n The experience has also allowed Howes to unlearn perfectionism, a habit that prevented them from creating and pursuing comics for the last 12 years. They give credit to the program\u2019s head instructor for developing a comfortable artistic space.<\/p>\n \u201cThe head of the program, Gareth Gaudin, is really fantastic in that he\u2019s\u2026 not concerned with us making really good or great comics, he\u2019s concerned with us just making stuff,\u201d says Howes. \u201cAnd his whole approach is to remove the pressure and expectations that we all already have about our own art, and to just make it something that we can do, and to just encourage us to just do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Gaudin is a life-long local cartoonist, owner of Legends Comics and Books in downtown Victoria, and self-published author of nearly 300 comic books. Over his career, he has seen the legitimization of comics progress alongside him, now moving into what he feels is a golden era of comics being seen as an art form. Gaudin says this embrace has allowed the new generation of cartoonists to prosper.<\/p>\n \u201cMy batch of students that are just graduating, all have come to this class with 20 years of social acceptability of their comics, and there\u2019s manga and anime in their lives. So they\u2019ve just been ingesting how comics are made, so… they are all infinitely more talented than I\u2019ve ever been,\u201d says Gaudin. \u201cSo I think something very interesting\u2019s going on that if you allow people to read comics and don\u2019t turn them into a secondary literature, they\u2019re more free to create them.\u201d<\/p>\n After many years of public comic book burnings and bannings in the \u201940s and \u201950s, superheroes were one of few character types left to rule the industry, a genre that Gaudin feels oversaturated the medium. Now, with Marvel and DC shifting momentum away from comics and onto the continued production of movies, Gaudin says the medium has finally been left alone to broaden.<\/p>\n \u201cComics can be anything now,\u201d he says. \u201cAutobiographies, biographies, slice of life, anything you could possibly want to write about, you can write about in comics. And each one of the students is writing and publishing a new point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n Making a comic book is the first step to making a comic book, says Gaudin; getting the initial, unsatisfactory product finished is fundamental to artistic creation\u2014the second will only exist because the first did.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing worse than a bad comic is no comic,\u201d he says. \u201cSo make comics.\u201d<\/p>\n