I came to think that nobody from England could draw American comic books, because they were clearly all done b... — Dave Gibbons

I came to think that nobody from England could draw American comic books, because they were clearly all done by this sort of Mafia, all these guys with Italian and Irish names who had the whole thing sewn up. It was actually seeing a comic book drawn by Barry Smith, who was about my age, and English.

Author: Dave Gibbons

Insight: There's something almost wonderfully human about this—a young artist assuming entire industries are locked down by invisible gatekeepers, only to have that assumption shattered by one actual piece of evidence. Dave Gibbons thought the American comics world was a closed shop run by a particular tribe, and he wasn't being paranoid exactly, just pattern-matching on limited information. We do this constantly: assume fields are inaccessible, that opportunities go to "those people," that geography or connections or background are destiny. What's the non-obvious part? Gibbons's realization didn't come from reading a manifesto or an inspirational speech. It came from seeing one piece of work by someone who looked like he could be part of his world. That single counter-example was enough to crack open what felt like total certainty. It's a useful reminder that our sense of what's "possible for people like me" is often shakier than we think—built on surprisingly thin evidence, and vulnerable to revision by just one person doing the thing we assumed was impossible. The recognition that changed everything for him probably took thirty seconds of looking at a comic book. We might all have several of those waiting to happen.