My Best Work Is Ahead Of Me: Discussing Jeff Lemire’s Memoir ‘10,000 Ink Stains’

With 25 years of comic book experience under his belt, Jeff Lemire is a force to be reckoned with in the industry. He has either written or drawn – or both – ongoing series and graphic novels including Essex County, Sweet Tooth, Moon Knight, Descender, Green Arrow, and Animal Man. To mark his 25th anniversary as a comics creator, Lemire and Dark Horse Comics have released a memoir called 10,000 Ink Stains. In an interview with Comicon.com, Lemire discussed how he came up with the name for the book as well as what he’s learned from his failures.

Tom Smithyman: In the introduction to the memoir, you discuss that you are still learning with every new book and page you draw. In pulling together 10,000 Ink Stains, what did you learn about yourself and your career journey?

Jeff Lemire: I think I spend so much time looking ahead to what project is next that I don’t stop to enjoy the things I’m doing now as much as I should. Looking back gave me some perspective on that. I think I’m trying to just enjoy the moment more and enjoy the projects that I’m lucky enough to have right now.

Why call it 10,000 Ink Stains?

Lemire: It was just a play on the idea that it takes 10 000 hours to perfect anything. So, for me it was 10,000 hours and 10 000 pages of comics to learn that you can never perfect anything, and you have to enjoy the process, not work to some end goal that doesn’t really exist. You have to enjoy all the little ups and downs along the way.

You’re a pretty private person. But in your book-by-book retrospective, you give details about where you were in life as you were drawing each series. How difficult was taking that approach? Ultimately, did you find it liberating? And do you think your private-person persona will change as a result?

Lemire: It was nice to share some more of myself with readers and to give some more context to the work. I think it opened the door for me to possibly do some more autobiographical work in the future. Ultimately though, I still feel that the work itself is what’s important, and that’s how I interact with the world, I don’t see that changing.

You started as an artist and then started writing as well. Do you consider yourself to be an artist first and a writer second, or do you think about it in a different way altogether?

Lemire: I always think of myself as a cartoonist first. That’s how I started making comics, writing and drawing my own stories, and that’s really still how I spend the bulk of my days and weeks. But I have been lucky to also be able to juggle multiple books and write for other great collaborators like Dustin Nguyen and with all the Black Hammer books and the stuff I write for DC. That stuff is really important to me as well, but at the end of the day writing and drawing my own stuff is still my first love.

You describe the book as a love story between you and comics. What about the medium made you a fan when you were young, and what keeps you working on them as you approach your – gasp – 5oth birthday?

Lemire: I think I fell in love with the drawing. The fact that, even at a really young age, I could see the different styles of the different artists and they were all so unique. I loved that you could tell stories with so many different styles and visual approaches. And that’s still what I love.

I love experimenting visually myself with different tools and styles and I love studying the way other artists approach their work. Comics are so unique in that way. It’s the only popular medium that combines idiosyncratic personal artwork with storytelling.

I know that they are all your babies, but do you have a favorite series or book that you wrote or drew (or both)?

Lemire: I will always have a soft spot for Essex County, as it was the first book that I did that got wider attention and also the book where I really found my voice as a creator. But there are books from throughout every stage of my career that I love. Sweet Tooth certainly, and Royal City and Mazebook as well.

And, in terms of the things I have written for others to draw, Descender, Black Hammer, and Gideon Falls have a big place in my life. In terms of work for hire my Animal Man, Moon Knight and Green Arrow runs.

You also talk about your failures and that they ultimately helped you to create even better stories. Can you give us some examples?

Lemire: Well, a lot of the failures are things that I never published, but I learned a lot from, or I struggled with, but they pushed me into something new. Then there were books like X-Men that were just creatively stifling, and I learned to be much more careful about the assignments I accepted and make sure I had a certain amount of creative control over them.

Let’s time travel into the future for a minute. It’s now 2050 and the second edition of your memoir 20,000 Ink Stains is about to be published. What should readers expect?

Lemire: I really think my best work is ahead of me. The last 25 years feel like training for me to now do more nuanced and sophisticated work. In terms of my career, I think at some point in the next decade I will really reduce the number of books I am working on and focus more and more on my own, self-drawn work.

In a way, I’ll probably end up going full circle. I started just writing and drawing my own personal stories and that’s where I would like to move towards again over the next 10 years or so.

I, for one, can’t wait to see what that future holds for you. Thanks for taking the time to talk about the memoir.