I am proud to announce that Rob-Con was quite the success, with every copy of Burst Reach successfully handed out to friends, professionals, and strangers, with help from my friends Kellee and David. I also had a few people I hadn't seen in YEARS show up for a copy, which felt good, and I really enjoyed seeing them again and getting to chat. Also met some cool guys like Luther Myrtle and a cute girl dressed as Carmen Sandiego. And a dude dressed as Sinestro. And I got Jeremy Massie to draw me an awesome picture of Godzilla and Jet Jaguar doing the safety dance that I should scan. It was absolutely exhausting, walking around the floor for hours with my messenger bag full of comics goodness, but so very worth it.

Now I have to go print more. I'm gonna see if any of the local comic shops will take some to be picked up for free, and I've got more friends who wanted a copy and couldn't get one.

So will this help me in the future? Will my site get more hits, will this improve my chances of making it professionally? Who knows, all that matters is that I pulled off something I never thought of accomplishing before, and there's no turning back now.

I picked up a few cool things at the con too: A volume of Lupin III, a Love and Rockets collection, the first volume of Jack Kirby's the Eternals, and Apocalypse: The Eyes of Doom, which I'm pretty sure was originally printed in an old issue of Heavy Metal. These, coupled with some comics I ordered from Amazon, Jame Stokoe's WonTon Soup, the Woman Trap, and the final volume of Planetary, means I've got quite a bit to sit down and read.

For anyone who didn't get a copy, I put up the two new comics from Burst Reach today, INTERMISSION and DRZAEM. I had so much freaking fun doing Intermission, but Drzaem is definitely the stronger story.

More comic ideas boiling in my head, one of which is the new re-purposing of stupidly old characters from high school. Kind of setting them on the backburner while trying to get more work done for the EMBRACE INFECTION project. One piece is COMPLETELY finished, but I've also started thinking about changing things around, ditching a lot of the narrative content for something more loose and conceptual, and trying to pin down the overall look that will give the pieces more consistency. Some of the progress pieces I already shared earlier are being re-done or just outright thrown out (and in one case, re-purposed into the aforementioned comic that's also re-purposing old characters). It's tumultuous, man.

I've been hearing back from a few friends on their opinion of Burst Reach. My older brother and his friends do not understand it, which is to be expected, but they like the look of it. Others are telling me DRZAEM is the best, which warms my heart. I hope to hear from more people, yes.

On that note, I am exhausted, and should probably go to bed. Goodnight all, and for those of you that I met at Rob-Con, those of you who got a copy of Burst Reach, I give you my thanks. You're all awesome.

[Brett]