What can't you do?

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

The shark in here is palpable.

i like feeling the shark

[MariaAndMichelle]

All too often things get to a point where I start baring my teeth at the other person and yelling "WHY ARE YOU RUINING MY WORK?!" over and over again.

Jim North: A pleasure to work with.

[Jim North]

All too often things get to a point where I start baring my teeth at the other person and yelling "WHY ARE YOU RUINING MY WORK?!" over and over again.

Jim North: A pleasure to work with.

THAT QUOTE NO LONGER HAS PROPER CONTEXT

YOU CHOPPED MY POST TO RIBBONS

WHY ARE YOU RUINING MY WORK

[Terotrous]

Oh yeah, schedules suck. I actually managed to hold one for a couple years, but I terribly burnt myself out in the process. I'm only getting back into cartooning now after all this time.

[McDuffies]

I won't disagree with that. I never meant to imply that "How to draw Comics/Manga/Marvel/Girlzwithbigbewbz" books are superior to anatomy books, just that they do have (to varying degrees) some useful techniques in them. And I would agree that they are largely repetitive in what they teach. (If you've read 1 of Christopher Heart's books you've read 90% of all of them.) My problem was with the idea that you would write them off completely as useless.

Eh, it's moot, I guess how much one book is useful depends on what level I'm at currently at, and where I'm going. Like if I was just beginning, every book would be helpful, some more than the others; and then, the problem with most of them was, they weren't getting me to the level which I believed was neccesary - including being able to improvise and not needing references for trickier poses and all that (to remind you, I'm talking strictly about anatomy, not about all the other kinds of knowledge that a book might contain).
I could say that before academic books, my figure drawing was on trial and error basis. Like, I could get a nice drawing, after I've scrapped a whole bunch of bad ones and after I got in the right mood. Nowadays It's a lot less like, well, lottery, and I have a better control of everything. Then there's also getting by on style, style can cover up for many things, which works for many artists, but just seemed limiting for me.
There are a few books that are getting a lot of publicity which I find notoriously pointless, mainly the famed "How to draw comics marvel way".

Of course, that runs into another problem I have . . . I don't work well with others. I've had a couple of successful collaborations before, but they've been the exception rather than the rule. All too often things get to a point where I start baring my teeth at the other person and yelling "WHY ARE YOU RUINING MY WORK?!" over and over again.

That's what I thought about myself, but it was more a matter of finding a collaborator with character to match mine - like, a person who thinks like I do, but still has a different angle on things. When you find a collaborator with whom you work well, stick with him and don't let him go because those are hard to find.
Also, before, I tended to keep my favourite projects to myself and to collaborate on stuff that mattered less to me personally, which would then turn out much better than my solo work. Over time, I got used to the idea that, no matter how personal a work is, it always benefits from a different perspective. Total control over a project seems nice, but at least in my case, I get overwhelmed with a big picture and just neglect many things that could have done with improvement.
I guess easing into collaborative projects by doing things I cared less about helped me get used to collaborations in general - to get out of "lonely comic artist doing things on his own" mindset. Another great thing was building projects from scratch with brainstorming; in general, working on your own has huge benefits, but working in collaboration is just plain more fun!