For what it's worth--
A young cartoonist emailed me for advice and here's what I wrote back:
...As far as advice, here's some (not having seen your work--I mean, I don't know what kind of comics you're trying to make?): Self publish your work in minicomics you can sell or give to people. Everything that's come my way--jobs, friends, wife--directly or indirectly, has come from the minicomics I've made since high school. Putting stuff on the web is OK but does not substitute for seeing your own work in a booklet. It makes you re-evaluate and get better. Set deadlines, get things finished, and move onto the next thing. Don't get bogged down in some big nebulous project that never gets done--this is a mistake a lot of young cartoonists make. Set modest goals--a 4 page story, then another, then another--and get them done. If they're lame, it's OK, make the next one better. Then put your work in front of other people, and you'll be able to tell if you're getting across.
The most important thing is making pages of comics, and just arrange your life so that you're doing that often, and enjoying it, and before you know it you're a cartoonist, and things will work themselves out sooner or later. They say it takes 10,000 hours (about 10 years) to gather the skills for any complicated line of work. That seems like a lot, but it's not so bad, and you just have to put the time in.
