Oh, that's right, I have a website, don't I? With a blog, which should be regularly updated with my thoughts and things! I had completely forgotten about that. Forgive me, all three of you who read this site.
I've been kind of busy with this and that. I've made large strides in EMBRACE INFECTION, thinks are gelling together in a way where the pieces I'm working on now look quite different from the stuff I was doing last month, and now I'm wondering if I should go back and re-tweak the three or four pieces I had finished then, and some other pieces that I started on some time ago are looking dull in comparison to the new work too. Also I have drawn a piece with which I actually creeped myself out when I looked at it. I'm quite proud of that. I'm working on 6 pieces at once, all drawn and with the flat colors done, and still have two or three more to actually draw...
On top of that, I have been hired by ETSU's student-run newspaper, the East Tennessean, to draw comics for them. This is huge for me. I'm doing two separate strips since the paper is done twice a week. One of the strips will be weird college-related gags and the other strip is the return of my two old characters, the Distinguished Gentlemen. Reginald had already made his reappearance in INTERMISSION, and Archibald is in an illustration for my friend's chapbook, Museum For Dead Clowns. Which, I would like to add, he finished up and has printed. Yay!
(I still need to get a copy from him. And to get him a copy of Burst Reach)
But yes, I'm getting paid to do comics which will be seen by all kinds of people, in an actual publication, and on their website too. And I'll upload them on here as well. I'm super excited. I am not doing little 3-or-4-panel "strips" like you see in newspapers or like Penny Arcade because that is not me. Truth be told, I HATE newspaper comic strips, with the exception of the Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes, but neither of those show up in papers anymore, alas. The rest to me is just cheap, formulaic dreck that is not funny or interesting. There's no risk-taking, no playing with the form, nothing, just a handful of panels following the same beats, drawn the same way, these dull, lifeless things. And while yes, I understand that most of the people doing newspaper comics now have been doing it for decades and have to churn these things out on a daily basis, I just can't stand it. It's stagnant.
What I'm drawing will look more like actual comic pages, and even then I'm going to try to play with the space, draw the things in whatever style I think will work, and generally just come up with ways of challenging and changing the way people look at comics. I mean, I'm thinking most of the people who pick up and read the East Tennessean don't read comics unless they're general webcomics or newspaper strips, so this is an opportunity to just show them something new.
Also, it will be surrealistic and absurd, with a nice dash of awkward horror and maybe not as funny as I like to think it'll be, but my editor, gods bless her, has put her trust in me to do whatever I want.
As a bit of practice, especially because I'll be lettering these on the computer as opposed to by hand like my other comics, I did this silly, stupid little comic about balls:
My word bubbles need work there, but yeah. Just something fun I drew at work one morning. I want to draw the three-faced dude in the middle more. Maybe I'll put him in the newspaper comics...
Also, Brandon Graham got another Moebius tribute meme kickstarted, this time covering his famous Starwatcher illustration, and Quenched Consciousness has been posting submissions. Here's mine:
I have a thing for brains in jars.
Further random things: This weekend I have watched a few episodes of Top Gear (possibly my favorite TV show ever), Jean Luc Godard's Alphaville, Alejandro Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre, something called Nude for Satan that was terrible, Mario Bava's Black Sabbath, a documentary on Harlan Ellison, and Repo Man. And I keep watching this:
I am one of two, MAYBE three people who is excited for this film. Neveldine and Taylor are filmmaking heroes of mine, with Crank 2 being one of my favorite movies ever. And he pisses fire and vomits bullet! How badass is that?!
On top of these things I finished reading the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, bought and read Patton Oswalt's brilliant book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, read 5 of 6 Moebius collections from the late 80's that I bought last weekend (that's a lot of freaking Moebius...), and started reading Phillip K. Dick's Now Wait For Last Year, which is off to a promising start. I love that the main character's name is Dr. Sweetscent, and he works for a company called Tijuana Fur & Dye, but they make guidance systems for spaceships or something.
Classes start back in two weeks, and it's going to feel weird staying in Bristol and only going down there once or twice a week, but I look forward to only having the senior show, the newspaper comics, and graduation to worry about, especially after this last year and a half, maybe two years just murdered me. It feels good only having to concentrate mostly on my personal work. It makes it stronger, I think.
Also means more time for Demon's Souls, currently violently killing me left and right and making me quite angry.
[Brett]