FEBRUARY/MARCH 2025 - MEL GILLMAN

Whoopsieeee sorry been spending the last two months in a spiral of anxiety and illness but I'm on new meds, spring is coming, and things are starting to look up. Unfortunately I've been neglecting my website, so we're doing a dual-month artist to cover the missed time :P

Mel Gillman is a comic artist and teacher, who draws wonderful, colourful, and strange comics about all sorts of things! I actually found them through their hourly comics back in February, but then while checking out their blog I realized I had actually seen a LOT of their comics before, including their 24 hour comics and their (sadly on hiatus since 2017) webcomic As The Crow Flies.

Pages from Gillman's webcomic As The Crow Flies

Coloured pencils are quite the laborious process, so it's incredibly impressive to see Gillman use them so expertly in nearly all of their work! They have such a lovely texture and can be layered in so many ways. Whether it's a bright and tranquil nature scene or dark and tense horror story, Gillman is an expert at tone and colour.

I really enjoy As The Crow flies, but I do wish the website for it was clearer about it being on hiatus! When I caught up to it the other day I assumed it was still current, and I couldn't find anything on their social media that clearly stated what was happening with it.

I ended up having to read an interview where Gillman explained their reasoning for putting the comic on hold:

"It’s not that I have decided: “I’m done with that story. I’m never gonna finish it” or anything. It’s more that capitalism is hard and you have to constantly be juggling like eight different jobs as a cartoonist. So there’s questions about which task do you need to prioritize in order to like be able to pay your rent that month? How much stress are you able to put on your hand on a daily basis? That is the unfortunate part of being a cartoonist, that there’s always going to be limits both physically and financially to literally how many pages you can draw in a year. You have to kind of delegate which projects you’re able to work on first or fastest."

Which honestly, this is so fair. It's also a common story, so many incredible comics get left behind or put on indefinite hiatus because the amount of time it takes to make them doesn't add up once you start approaching art as a job. Webcomics make barely any money, and it's hard to get people to pay for them. I hope one day As The Crow Flies will get a proper ending! But more than that I hope to see Gillman continue thriving as an artist.

Pages from the 24 Hour Comic The Next Body

You can find links to Mel Gillman's work and socials on their linktree!

A 4 page comic Gillman drew for an exhibit at the Portland Public Library