It always happens. I wind up reading something interesting, like a huge discussion on Elektra: Assassin, one of my favorite graphic novels ever, or I find some wicked cover to a manga, or a gallery of Little Nemo in Slumberland, the best newspaper strip ever. Or a friend tells me about a game called NetHack. I just come across things online that seem to crack my skull open and make me reassess my work. Not always in huge ways, of course, but you know, after getting the scope and insanity of Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz's Elektra: Assassin put into perspective, I get inspired to do something just as big and grotesque. Then I turn around and want to do something as beautiful and whimsical as Winsor McCay's art. I want to do a henshin comic. I want to go back to the weird simplicity I was experimenting with earlier this year when I was doing those vector pieces.

I start putting things together in my mind, the pieces start connecting, I have ideas, and then when I get out of the shower it's all gone and I can't remember any of it and out of frustration I just go on Amazon and order the third volume of Akira, Frank Miller's Ronin, and that Little Nemo porn parody strip thing that was occasionally published in Heavy Metal. None of my work can measure up to any of this yet, and that's a major source of creative frustration.

But eventually, I get over it and go back to drawing and giggle at the fact that I use "FISH'D!!" as a sound effect in a comic strip.

Still, though. I need to find a way to focus my thoughts and really meditate on what it is I REALLY want to do with my art and comics. The simple answer is to entertain and inspire. Even if it's someone saying, "I could TOTALLY do better than this!" and then, you know, going out and DOING IT, that's awesome, that's exciting.

It's also weird and unsettling when you look at the industry you're wanting to break into and seeing just how bizarre it is at present, with DC doing a complete relaunch that feels almost like an act of desperation and people scrambling to figure out how to make digital comics work. And then, on the other side of creativity, learning in horror about how George Lucas is making MORE changes to the original Star Wars trilogy in a stupefying attempt to close the gap between it and his glossy, vapid prequel trilogy.

Ah yes, to be an artist and to worry about things like this as opposed to, I don't know, more real world problems. You're brooding again Brett, stop it.

Anyways. I went ahead and put up the first two East Tennessean strips in a gallery on this here fine site. And for the hell of it, here they are on ths blog so you don't have to click that:

Mantises and a giant screaming hellbeast. These are things that I am all about. I have this problem where I start drawing something and think to myself, "how do I make this WEIRDER?" And when you're doing a strip about a professor who's a bear, that's a stupid question to ask, but I draw a waterbear too, just for kicks...

...People probably won't get that one when it's published.

Anyways, that's where my head is today. I'm trying not to play Demon's Souls today because criminy, that game is a crippling addiction. I should find something else to do...

[Brett]