After hours and hours of work and a horrific single-mindedness that led me to forgot all kinds of other important things, BURST REACH #1 IS COMPLETE. To celebrate, I'm taking a break for a day or two before diving back into work on the senior project, EMBRACE INFECTION.

Burst Reach is 20 pages, half of it older stuff and half of it the brand spanking new INTERMISSION and DRZAEM comics. You can see the full front and back covers the thing in the Design gallery, but here's a wonderful picture of the books spilled out all over my bed:

...I may have printed a few too many, yes. And a few people have asked me why the cover is green. These people are fools to ask such a thing, but there is a reason. Two, actually: High visibility so that you could wave down a passing airplane should you wind up shipwrecked on a desert island with this as your only possession, and because I feel the somewhat distressing and extreme lime green helpfully reflects the strange content contained within.

This is a huge accomplishment, I am immensely proud and immensely excited about it. Yeah, it cost more than I expected to get them printed, BUT I DON'T CARE. Seeing my work in a physical object, self published, it's exhilarating. I can hold it up and say "I MADE IT MYSELF!!" Et cetera.

I think the hardest part was the act of downgrading the older stuff to be printed in black and white. I referred to the painful process as "REJIGGERING," and it's not perfect, but I think I got decent results. Take this side-by-side comparison of the second page of Cyberpunk Blues, for instance:

Cyberpunk Blues was so bloody difficult since it has always been up to this point a full-color comic that resembled neon lights puking all over people. Losing that is a hard blow, but the act of REJIGGERING/downgrading it almost makes it dirtier, sleazier, and dare I say it, more punk.

The process is somewhat like taking a wicked little SNES game, with full 16-bit graphics, and having to crank out a "de-make" of it in 8-bits on the NES.

So like I said before, I'll be giving these out to anyone interested at Rob-Con 2011 this Saturday in the Bristol Mall. I have a couple friends who volunteered to help hand them out as well. On top of that, my good friend, comics mentor, and much more talented artist Jeremy Massie will have a table! I will probably be pestering him a lot in between searching for back issues of Heavy Metal and trying to get people to take Burst Reach.

After Rob-Con is over, I'll be putting INTERMISSION and DRZAEM online to be read.

Here's hoping this turns out to be a huge success and that some day I will actually be able to make money doing what I love. I have a feeling people will like it, regardless of how bizarre it is and if nothing else, it'll give people something to remember me by when they leave the convention.

[Brett]