THE MARK: WHAT GOES AROUND, PAGE 1

I want to talk about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. I first gave it to myself back in February 1987 while working as a staff storyboard artist on the “Spiral Zone” animated TV series, for Atlantic/Kirshner-Locke. I was allowed to work from home, so I developed the work habit of procrastinating when uninspired. Usually the way this would play out was: I’d have 2 weeks to storyboard half of an episode (industry standard was 3 weeks for 1/3 of an episode). Uninspired, I’d blow off the first week, accomplishing very little. With one week to go, desperation became inspiration and I would buckle down, doing half the work in that week. Sunday morning would dawn with the Monday afternoon deadline looming, so I would work around the clock Sunday night and throughout the day on Monday, usually handing in around 4:00 PM. The upside to this was that, in the final 2 day period, some sort of creative wall was breached and the work would flow easily, without effort, “like water”, as my hero Alex Toth was quoted.

The downside was that it ended up injuring me.

This is page #1 from Dark Horse Comics #15, “The Mark: What Goes Around”, written by Mike Barr, drawn by Brad Rader, published in December, 1993.