Let’s talk about AI, because that’s what the next thing they all want us all to talk about is!
Naw really, AI is being force-feed onto everyone of us so much, almost to the degree of corona vaccines, that it makes me want to reject it entirely and cast extreme suspicion on those who are pushing it so damn hard.
As a writer and an artist, AI is something that just makes me cringe. I don’t need it, I don’t want it, it’s in my way, makes software run super slowly, and all the tools I need to make what I want, albeit a bit slow, I already have. I object to the art theft that was used to teach the models, and I have an immediate “Get it out of my brain; I don’t want to consume this product” reaction to most AI produced things that are foisted upon me.
But when I think back to why I wanted to become an artist and writer in the first place is that I had an idea for a story I wanted to share with the world, and saw that a comic was the best way to present it. I had no choice but to learn to draw to accomplish this goal (writing came more naturally to me)–and I saw art as a means to an end to tell the comic story. It took me a long time and a lot of pretty terrible pictures to get to where I am now, and I don’t even think I’m that great.
I say this now because this all, of course, happened at a time before AI was anything more than just how the enemies in video games act. But If I were a young person NOW, facing the same decision about wanting to make a comic in order to tell my story but having very little artistic skill, the use of AI would be tempting. Would I do it? With hindsight, it’s easy to say no. Because I have faith in the strength of the story I want to tell, and the presentation matters. That’s why it had to be a comic as opposed to a novel, or something. It’s better suited to a comic. (Now some might, and have, argue that a better presentation would be a video game, but that’s a discussion for another time.)
Even though AI is available and I have such limited time to work on this comic anymore, the presentation is more important. The legacy of Adventurers’ Guild is worth more that what AI can do for it.
I don’t object to the use of AI as something like an initial sketch, or something to bounce ideas off of. Use AI if you want, but not in published work. I’ve talked extensively about the use of art to get across certain human ideas and thought that’s it’s near impossible to put into direct words; and when you see something that looks like it’s trying to achieve that same artistic level but there is absolutely none of that intention behind it, how can you feel anything at all except for hollowness.
I lament the thought of the same type of person as I, who has an amazing story in his mind, who then turns to AI to do the thinking for him, never works out his brain muscles, and fails to ever become a writer or artist of any worth in of himself. I may be thinking too much about such a thing, but I’d rather think too much than let AI think too much for me instead.
Updates to Adventurers’ Guild resume THIS Tuesday night, 2/17/26, with the first page of the Season 2 finale: Episode 25: The Spirit of the Animal – part 1
