It's tempting to soften the edge of every shadow with hatching. Stark edges force us to commit to shadow shapes which might be wrong, and we don't want to risk being wrong; we want to waffle.

However, undue hatching looks noisy and lacks clarity. Choose carefully when to hatch. When should you soften the edge of a shadow? When not doing so would mislead the reader about the shape of the portrayed object.

When laying out a complex page, I leave a template open to show possible panel arrangements (6-panel grid, 8-panel grid, etc).

I draw each panel in the center, using as much space as I want, then size and position the panel in the grid according to how it fits best. This way, I'm free to visualize each panel the way I see it best, rather than feeling inhibited by some predetermined size and shape. After arranging the panels, I may squeeze and stretch them into different sizes or shapes. Finally, I collapse the layers and pencil over that.

When drawing repeating objects that overlap, don't draw one and then two halves of the other; this encourages unevenness.(1)
Draw all the foreground objects, or all that lean one way, then draw all the remaining objects on a second layer.(2)
Erase the overlap, merge layers.(3) Related tip: when drawing repeated objects of similar shape, size, or angle, draw them all at once, rather than alternating with other local objects. This gets your hand in a rhythm that can bang out a lot of objects quickly. Alternating with other objects will slow you up.

Non-artists tend not to realise how much labor is entailed by drawing, I think because they compare it to other desk jobs. But the difference of focus and physical activity between art and other desk jobs is staggering. I used to work remotely for an ad agency...

https://twitter.com/reimenayee/status/1295777377050488833

There was a team of on-site art directors (ADs) who designed the advertisements, and a team of remote-working illustrators who drew the final designs. One time, I visited the office, and one of the other illustrators happened to be working there alongside the ADs.

There's a type of person who is smart and gifted, and learns from early childhood to aim for the stars, because "nothing is impossible."

When life's constraints prove otherwise, this person is crushed. Unable to bend and accept flaws, they break.

Comics attract this person. I see so much heartbreak among young people who were taught they can achieve EVERYTHING, if only they work hard enough. When their dreams don't come true, they reach the inescapable conclusion: they didn't work hard enough. Their elders overestimated them. They must be failures.

It's 2019!
Draw your signature legibly and attractively, along with the year, about the size of a playing card, and save it in your harddrive. Then you can resize it and drop it into any art you do in the coming year. Faster than signing every piece. Guaranteed legibility! A TIFF of your signature can be moved around a piece of art until it looks right. You can squeeze or stretch it, or even change the color to suit the picture's color scheme (inverting it to white-on-black is also handy, for art with a lot of black).

The history of American comics is a mystery to many cartoonists, and unfortunately there's no one, comprehensive book to point people to. Various books covers certain areas well, such as RC Harvey's ART OF THE FUNNIES and Sean Howe's MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD HISTORY.