HAPPY YEAR OF THE RAT, EVERYONE!

January 2020 has actually been going alright so far after a rocky, emotional start.

I'm making good progress on issue six of Slimepunk, and I'm hoping I can have enough done so I can start posting again next month. The pages that are finished so far are being shared on Patreon with folks who are subscribed at the $5 tier, if you want a headstart on everybody else.

My first painting of the year, depicting a bellydancing friend in an inflatable Godzilla costume, can be seen over here. I also did my first real fanart work last week, my own attempt at drawing Shin Ultraman:

And I've posted another weird, personal, NSFW painting on my weird, personal, NSFW account End of April, if you follow that, with some words about my figure drawing friends who appear in it.

Speaking of figure drawing, the first Defining Bodies meetup of 2020 was this past Sunday, and it was absolutely what I needed. I've updated the figure drawing album on here with some recent work, but it's time to promote my Patreon again by reminding you that $3 subscribers get to see EVERY drawing I do at our monthly meetings, no matter how bad or ugly they are, along with rambling about what I was trying to do.

The Shin Ultraman and NSFW painting went up over there first, too. Basically, most everything I do now goes on Patreon at least a few days before it goes anywhere else. Even just a dollar a month gets you access to a bunch of process posts and things!

It's also where I first revealed Ninel's return in a two page dream comic I made called Another Dream: Mutual Friends. The comic itself is up on Other Sleep's website now, but patrons got to see the full process for it, from the original thumbnails and scribbled dialogue to the finished pages.

So yeah...not a bad way to kick off January, I guess. I have several other, more personal goals I'm working on this year too. Last year I managed to keep track of my spending habits, and this year I'll attempt to do a better job of saving money. I've decided to stop drinking alcohol for at least this year, just to see what it's like. I made the decision to quit last month, so I already have a good head start.

I had some other, bigger goals last year that I never managed to pull off. Rather than try again, or double down and try to make up for it, I'm trying to think a little more modestly this year. My big exercise goals always fall through, so this year I'm scaling it back to just a little light jogging and/or some pushups here and there each day rather than trying to stick to a demanding routine. Washing my face daily too, it's a small thing but it's reasonable, and I can build off of it.

I dunno, I'd read something last year that talked about how, if we try to make a bunch of changes all at once, we're doomed to fail. It's better to start small, build a good foundation that you can later expand on. I've always felt like I'm super scatterbrained, and maybe there's no way to completely rewire myself out of it, but I realized last year that part of the reason I never feel like I know what I'm doing is because I never really spent time building any foundations.

Studying anatomy for months last year was a good, solid thing to do. I didn't feel super productive when it came to making finished work, but it helped me regain at least a little confidence, and I want to keep at it this year, relearning and better understanding what I'm doing with my art, how I'm doing it, and how I can improve, rather than sitting paralyzed and directionless.

Things aren't stopping: I will be printing the first collected Slimepunk volume this year for sure. There will be more dream comics with Ninel. I'm working on a cool project with my friend Mark O. Stack that will have a Kickstarter next year. I have so many paintings I want to do and I'm getting a clearer understanding of how to make them. I will be at KapowCon in May and RobCon in June. Defining Bodies will continue to meet monthly as long as I can host and convince people to come model and draw.

And if I fail to succeed at any of these things, if any of it falls through? It's not that big a deal. I can start again, and I think I finally know how to look at my failures and learn and grow from them, making the next try a little easier.

It's hard to look at everything happening in the world and not feel despair. But I think it's important to know how to work on in despair. Take care of yourself, and if you have the strength, look after those around you as well. See you soon.

Bear with me. Trying to articulate thoughts that have been running through my head is always kind of difficult.

As I'm laying out plans to get the final three chapters of Other Sleep finished this year, I'm slowly beginning to sketch out the basics of my next graphic novel idea. It's going to be an entirely different beast. Some things will be similar to OS I guess, sci-fi with a female protagonist, but I want to tackle it in a different manner. I'm thinking about story structure, most specifically.

This week, I blasted through the entire first season of the new Hannibal TV show. Which is weird, I never go through an entire season of ANY TV show that quickly, unless it's the Tim and Eric Awesome Show or something equally ridiculous and short, you know? But yeah, I watched all 13 episodes.

Airing on NBC, Hannibal definitely has its roots in network television and the standard episodic structure that most shows follow, but it's the way it subverts that structure which I was really keen on. Like Law & Order, CSI, all those other shows, it was a "villain of the week" kind of thing, where each episode had our intrepid team of FBI agents hunting down a different serial killer. But unlike those other shows, the killers were hardly the focus at all. Part of the appeal was definitely seeing the crime scenes, the incredible and gruesome ways the victims were mutilated and placed, but beyond that? The killers hardly mattered. They didn't get into harrowing chase scenes with the killers, deal with crazy hostage situations, nothing like that, half the time catching the bad guy was just...anticlimactic. You don't get that cathartic moment of victory when they snag them. That's not what's important.
What's important to the show is Will Graham and his relationship with Hannibal Lector. The serial killers are just there as foils, seeing how they relate to Will and Hannibal. And, well, even if you made a totem pole of mutilated bodies, sorry, you're STILL not as fucking horrible as Hannibal is. If Mad Mikkelsen had facial hair, he'd be twirling and stroking it every second while trying not to let out a Dick Dastardly laugh. Dude's just an incredible villain. Will's downward slide into insanity, Hannibal's manipulations, those are the focus. The drama isn't in catching the guy who cuts his victims backs into wings and poses them as angels, the drama is in watching Hannibal and Will sitting and talking. I love that.

So again, episodic nature, but the episodic stuff is completely secondary to what's developing over the course of the entire season, which is Hannibal getting inside Will's head, pushing him further and further into darkness. The last two or three episodes cast off the episodic stuff in favor of pushing Will over the edge and tying everything up. The finale was kinda sloppy and disappointing, but still, it was a great show to power through.

And then we have the Japanese TV show Super Robot Red Baron, from the 1970's. Yes, I'm about to compare Hannibal to a show that's entirely about robots punching each other. Feel free to stop reading at any point.
I got Super Robot Red Baron on DVD just before going to HeroesCon, and started watching it around the same time I started watching Hannibal. The entire series is 39 episodes long, and I'm not even 10 episodes in because, well, I was also watching Hannibal, and um, watching more than two episodes of Red Baron at a time would probably leave me catatonic.

The first few episodes of this show are INCREDIBLE. Okay, it's given that this is a tokusatsu (special effects) show, all about giant robots fighting, aimed at kids, but there's still a story there, and the way it handles that story is insane. Character development? There really isn't any. In Hannibal, you're watching Will slowly lose his damn mind, episode by episode, dramatic tension building until everything snaps in the finale. In Red Baron, the main protagonist's brother, the scientist who built Red Baron, is killed just a few minutes into the SECOND FUCKING EPISODE.

And I MISSED it. It happened so fast. I turned my head to look at a text message or something, and when I turned back, shit was exploding and robots were fighting, and it didn't even occur to me until the end of the episode that anything had happened to the brother. This show is so dedicated to putting giant robots onscreen punching each other that it speeds through plot relentlessly. I mean, dude's brother was strapped to a fucking crucifix with a bomb tied to his neck, which just went off. That's a hell of a way to watch a family member die, especially since they briefly mentioned in the first episode how their parents and ANOTHER brother went missing after a car accident! Ken, our hero, doesn't have time to mourn, he's gotta pilot Red Baron and BARON PUNCH the fuck out of the Iron Alliance!
 

Then the villains make an android double of the dead brother and send him out to fuck with Ken. This happens in THE VERY NEXT EPISODE. There is no time given over to Ken coming to grips with his brother's death, with his new responsibility of piloting a giant robot or any of that. Any other TV show would have waited until mid-season or something before pulling a move like that, but the writers of Super Robot Red Baron give no fucks, nor do the villains that they write.

In any other kind of show, that would be terrible writing, but for some reason, with this show, I can't help but actually ADMIRE it for being so dedicated. They waste no time blasting through dramatic developments and plot twists to get to shit exploding. A single 20-minute episode feels like its half its length.

See, there are plenty of examples of storytelling where a plot development or dramatic twist is rushed through, and it feels sloppy and wrong, or shoehorned in because it doesn't fit in with the rest of the story, but Super Robot Red Baron does it so goddamn consistently that I can't help but be in awe of it. It's not like Power Rangers, Ultraman, or your standard Godzilla movie, where you're sitting through bad jokes and boring crap before you get to the robots and monsters fighting. This show just cuts to the chase and gives you more action than you know what to do with. You have no choice but to roll with shit as it happens, and I love it for that.

An example of abandoning the episodic structure almost completely would be the new season of Arrested Development on Netflix, the episodes of which you could technically watch in whatever order you wanted if you so choose, due to its labyrinthian style of jumping through time from character to character. Then there's the Wire and Mad Men, which are less like TV shows and more like novels in the way the story unfolds in each. What I love about the Wire is that it's one or two related cases developing over an entire season in a more realistic fashion, completely bucking the standard cop show routine where each episode is a different case.

So what does any of this have to do with my new graphic novel that I'm slowly plotting? I have no idea right now. The storytelling in Other Sleep is so straightforward because I just sat down and wrote it beginning to end, picking out dramatic moments to end each chapter on and then working with the page count from there. I want a more solid structure for this next graphic novel, and I feel like some sort of episodic structure would work really well for it. For years before I started Other Sleep, I was constantly tinkering with a comic that would've been structured like an old-school videogame, but that's a subject for an entirely different blog entry, yep.

Anyways, I've rambled enough now. Go watch Hannibal. And Super Robot Red Baron! BOTH.

[Brett]

HELLO INTERNET. IT’S TIME FOR BRETT TO TALK ABOUT FREAKING OUT OVER ART THINGS AGAIN.
I’ve been insanely busy. This Saturday is ETSUCon, Johnson City’s premiere (I think?) comic/anime convention thing at, if you haven‘t put it together from the name yet, ETSU. I’ve got a table in the artist’s alley and as of yesterday I have everything together for the thing.
I’ll be selling FOUR different posters (two from Other Sleep covers, two variations of show posters), three different buttons, three different postcards of my October Game work, my remaining copies of Burst Reach 2 (the first one is sold out and I have no plans of reprinting it), a second printing of the first chapter of Other Sleep, I will be doing sketches, and I will be just GIVING AWAY my remaining copies of the Distinguished Gentlemen & Other Exciting Tales!
Oh, and after ETSUCon? Free Comic Book Day is NEXT Saturday, May the 4^th (be with you har har har ugh) and I’ll be part of a big shindig going on downtown at Mountain Empire Comics. They’re closing off 6^th Street to traffic and allowing anybody with anything nerdy to sell to come set up a table. I’ll be one of multiple visiting artists, including my main man Jeremy Massie, Matt Smith, and the one and only Dionysis. Here’s a link to the Facebook event for the thing. OH. Prices for everything at these two appearances, here:
Simultaneously, I’ve also been working on Burst Reach 3. You’ve seen the first page of the comic about a dream about an owl already, here are the first pages to two other comics that will be in it. The first is a comic about a girl who grows a second head, entitled HEADACHE:
And the second is a 10-page comic drawn ENTIRELY IN PENCIL called STRANGER RAINS, which is based on my painting series, the Same Mistake, and takes place right after the events depicted in those paintings:
…So you can imagine how busy I’ve been these past few weeks, scrambling to get things together. I was worried the copies of Other Sleep wouldn’t come in on time, the postcards were a last-minute idea suggested by a friend (got those in the mail yesterday), and I’ve been buying and gathering tools left and right, printing and cutting business cards, tweaking everything, you get the picture. Oh, and I’ve also begun painting a nursery for a soon-to-be-born nephew, but I’m doing that more to RELAX than anything else.

With ETSUCon just days away, my initial plan was to just hang loose, kick back, and rest until this weekend. Then my brain started screaming “NO BRETT YOU NEED TO PRACTICE DRAWING EVERYTHING WHAT IF SOMEONE ASKS YOU TO DRAW CAPTAIN AMERICA OR JAKE THE DOG OR A WASHING MACHINE.” My arm hates me right now. A lot.
I had this bad dream last night where I made it to the con with all my stuff, but had to punch in a bunch of info in this old computer like the kind you used to see at the DMV and things malfunctioned and messed up and I couldn’t get my table, or even into the con at all. And then I couldn’t find a drink. I don’t have nightmares, I just have dreams where horrible and ludicrous inconveniences happen. Also? Despite what you may think, Super Mario 64 is NOT a good game to play when stressed out and trying to unwind, it just leads to a lot of shouting and grumpiness.

I’ll be fine. I know I’ll be fine. I’m sure it will all go well. It’s just my brain being stupid but geez, I wish it’d lay off already. So there we go, come to ETSUCon and the FCBD celebration and buy stuff from me, and if I’m looking disheveled and weepy, maybe give me a hug or something and tell me it’ll all be okay? Yeah. And then I’ll draw Deathlok for you.

[Brett]

So last week was Beat About's one year anniversary show. I got asked to do a poster for it by Sir Jesse Mutter of Ungodly Hour Aftermath. I'd been itching to revisit the Metal Zombies of Mars, so I busted this out for them:
In case you haven't seen it or had forgotten, here's the original appearance of the Metal Zombies, for an illustration assignment where we had to do a fake pulp magazine cover:
Ahhhhh, memories.

Next Saturday is the final punk show at the Bristol Grind House, and I did a poster for it as well, using an old photobooth pic I found on the side of the road at work:
I've been listening to the Shirks A LOT this week. I'm so excited. I hate that the Grind House is closing, but the good news is that Sterlin is still bringing punk bands to our sleepy little town of Bristol, with Colleen Green coming to Machiavelli's on the 17th.

I plan on writing a longer, more thoughtful thing about these shows, the Grind House, and Sterlin's efforts. Probably next week or something?

In other local news, Burst Reach, Burst Reach 2, and the Distinguished Gentlemen comics are all available now at the Purple Loon downtown! Once I get the first chapter of Other Sleep reprinted, I believe it will be sold there as well! Exciting, yes? If you haven't gotten a copy of either of the Burst Reaches or the Distinguished Gents, better hurry and head over there or talk to me, because I don't have too many left, and I have no plans on reprinting them again. I MIGHT do a pay-what-you-want pdf kind of thing, if only so that I can read them myself on my new Kindle Fire. We'll see.

Other stuff I've been into:
I've been sketching pictures of some friends of mine as Embrace Infection style mutants. Zombie portraits are kind of popular at conventions and things these days, so this my alternative take on that. I'm hoping it's neat enough that people will want to give me money to turn them into something out of a David Cronenberg movie.

If all goes well, I'm doing THREE conventions this year: ETSUcon (which is a new anime convention), Heroes Con, and of course, Bristol's own Rob-Con. On top of that, Rob is putting together something big for Free Comic Book Day. The street that his shop is on is going to be closed off to traffic, with dealers and artists outside selling our wares. 

Oh, ALSO!
I HAVE BUTTONS!! And they're awesome! All the credit goes to Haley and Steve at Self Destruct Buttons, they did an amazing job. I look forward to selling these babies...
Finally, I just finished up a 4-page silent comic for an upcoming Pizza Flag zine. No clue when it's coming out, but I'll of course let you know when it drops. I also did a...poem/narrative/comic/photodistortion thing for a Pizza Flag/William Birdcock zine that I think is dropping some time in April. Can't wait to post that. The owl comic will also be in Burst Reach 3, which I'll be releasing...um...sometime this summer. I'm still working on it, but trust me, it's gonna be great. I feel like Burst Reach 2 was a little bit of a misfire, not quite as frantic and entertaining as the first one, so I'm trying to make up for that.

That's all for now. Lots of stuff going on, considering we're only now just a quarter of the way through the year. It's just going to get better, hopefully. Stick around!

[Brett]

If January is any indication of how the rest of the year is going to go for me, then 2013 is going to be a crazy busy year.

First off, here are the four watercolor paintings, a series called the Same Mistake, that I did for the art show that is currently on display at the Bristol Grind House:

Secondly, I drew a 10-page, silent sci-fi western snowstorm comic over the course of a few days, completely on a whim after a massive snowstorm hit us. You can "read" the first five pages of that HERE and the rest of it HERE. You can also check it out on deviantART HERE and HERE. Maybe I'll post it all on here. I guess I should do that.
 

Also? I’m kind of an amateur stand-up comedian now. After watching my friends do it for quite a few months now, I decided to give it a try myself. I’ve done it three times now. I'm not so sure how good or funny I am, it's really impossible to tell when you're up on stage, but it's a new and fun and terrifying and beautiful creative outlet for me to play around in.

Oh, and I drew this for my friend Sterlin:
FURTHERMORE, I’m doing freelance design work for the local newspaper now, which brings in a little extra cash and lets me use a different part of my brain. I just wrapped up a logo for a thing recently. Not as steady work as I'd like, but still, hopefully this will open up to more opportunities, right?

And finally, I am in this art show at Floating World Comics in Portland. Zines are available to order and stuff too, so check it out! There are a LOT of talented folks in there, all of us paying tribute to the Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius. Really, I feel like I don’t deserve to be in there next to artists like Dave Taylor and Sloane Leong. It's like I pulled off some sort of heist. Here's the panel I did, which I somehow failed to post when I did it back in November:
Yeah, it’s February and I’m in two art shows at roughly the same time? I don’t know how that happened. I’m savoring it, because it will probably never happen again.

Um, obviously, chapter 6 of Other Sleep isn’t done yet, but it will be soon, I swear. Look, here’s the cover for it!
And I think that covers everything, right? Now I must get back to work! THERE'S MORE TO COME.

[Brett]

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I kind of had a slight nervous breakdown earlier today, maybe. Over my art. Heh.

I've been working on some paintings for this art show that starts next week at the Bristol Grind House. Here's the flyer I put together for it:
Watercolors and Microns on canvas is what I'm doing, because I'm a masochist. I've been working on them for two weeks now maybe. Well, two of them anyways, the other two I started on just last week. It's a narrative, but uh, I didn't really know what the narrative was until the other day? Yep. It was supposed to be just three canvases, then it ballooned into four. When I do things, I have to go about doing them in the most punishing way possible.

Anyways...I had them all in what seemed to be a finished state this morning, and I sat them all side by side, and...and I hated them. And I started to think, "fuck, this was a terrible idea, why did I do this, I should've done something else, fuck fuck fuck." And I contemplated painting over at least two of them, abandoning the narrative and just doing something more thematically tied together? Or throwing all but one out and maybe trying to do something different over the next few days.

I spent three and a half years in the graphic design program at ETSU, and in that time I sat through way too many critiques that would go on for literally two or three days sometimes. I failed my portfolio review three times and shouldn't have gotten another chance. Why they gave me four tries, who knows, but I passed that fourth. What I'm getting at here is that school was really rough on me, my pieces were never really terribly notable during critiques, and a small group of professors I was unfamiliar with mostly thought my work was lousy and I just really had to fight in order to graduate.

So all of these memories were going through my head as I was staring at these paintings, thinking about how they'll be up for a good two or three weeks, seen by dozens of people, people I've never met, never will meet. And they'll be judging them, judging ME based on them, even if they never do meet me or see any of my other work ever again. These four paintings are all I have to make a good impression, to convince these people I've never met that I don't suck. And I'm absolutely blowing it, only ONE of the paintings was really strong, the rest were flat and vague and ugly.

I gave myself a bad head rush and a case of the hiccups as I paced around, panicking, trying to think of what to do. I didn't want to throw them all out and try to do something new when everything has to be done by Sunday for Sterlin to hang. And I didn't REALLY want to paint over the canvases, but I was getting desperate and thinking that was the only way out, I was tired of looking at these crappy paintings.

I told a friend on Facebook that I wish I could just erase three and a half years of art school critiques, to which she responded "Keep this in mind: You're an artist, not an art student...and a really good artist at that."

And that...kind of snapped me out of it. I kept thinking about all the lousy critiques I sat through, being told by professors that my portfolio wasn't good enough for the BFA program, all that negative stuff. And her comment reminded me that people DO enjoy my art, and then I remembered this guy who wrote me on deviantART last week, telling me my gallery was his favorite that he'd seen in years.

So I stopped, took some deep breaths, collected myself, once again looked at the paintings, this time more objectively, and set about working on them once again, all afternoon, until once more they looked like they were pretty much finished.

And I was satisfied this time. I was able to figure out how to strengthen each painting and make them stand on their own while still telling a complete story. All it took was a kind word from a friend to help me step back and clear the black clouds out of my brain.

I guess the moral here is, if you like someone's art? TELL THEM. Let them know you appreciate what they're making. Because artists, we're neurotic as fuck. I often find myself in this hole, hating my work, hating myself for hating my work and not being any good, and it's discouraging. But a comment or two is all it takes to get me back on my feet. 

Anyways. Show goes up on Sunday. I'm gonna take pictures of the individual paintings tomorrow once I've deemed them complete, and post them some time next week. Stay tuned.

(originally posted on my Tumblr)

Which means that the October Game is over and done with! I survived! I managed to create a new piece of art every day of the month! Thirty one new pieces! And I threw them in a gallery over here! Go check them out!
Here are some fun facts about my month of torment:

23 of the pieces were hand-drawn. Only one was a full-fledged watercolor painting. I tried my hand at digital painting for the first time with one of the pieces, with maybe some success? All but one of the hand-drawn pieces were inked. The one that wasn't is just raw pencil, with a couple stains from sweet and sour sauce. There are at least three pieces that I had almost completed drawing before deciding to abandon them and do something else. I got pretty desperate towards the end in coming up with ideas and trying new things. 

In the long run, there are more than a few that aren't as successful as I would have liked, but I'm pretty proud of how things turned out all around. Even when I got lazy, I was still at least trying to do something different, and with the exception of the stupid number of pieces that involved astronauts or space technology or some such, I don't think I really repeated myself any more than once or twice on occasion. Most of the digital pieces came about because I just couldn't draw to save my life that day. Except for this one, which I'm REALLY happy with:
You can view the artwork of the other artists over here on the Facebook page. In all, it looks like there were 32 people participating, and out of those it looks like 16 of us managed to finish. The quality is all over the place, there's a lot of stuff that caused me to say curse words and hit my head on the wall, but there were a few really talented people who were in on it too. There were...at least two...that really irked me a lot, because I was putting everything I had into it and going nuts and I know for sure those two were hacks and on multiple occasions were just posting old work. Alas, the rules as they were initially given were not adhered to at all, so a number of people were late and never got removed from the game or anything...

...Maybe I took it too seriously. Maybe I shouldn't have been as competitive as I was, but I didn't want to half-ass any of my work (even though I did on some of the days where I just wasn't feeling it), and I guess I felt like I had something to prove. This was a challenge for myself, an attempt at further artistic growth. I guess not everyone saw it that way, but that's how I approached it.
 I figured that, with it finally over, I'd take a break for a few days and let myself recharge a bit before going back to work on the highly neglected Other Sleep. However, that's not happening and today I'm back to work on a flyer for an upcoming punk show, and also sowing the seeds for something potentially big...which I'm afraid I can't talk about just yet.

Anyways, check out all 31 pieces in the gallery, let me know what you think, which ones you love, which ones you hate, you know, fun stuff like that. Any and all feedback is very much appreciated.

Hopefully I'll be able to blog a bit more regularly on here in the future, but I've said that before, haven't I?

It feels so good to be back in action, doing comic stuff. I mentioned that stupid slump I was in, right? I went into detail about it over on the Other Sleep blog shortly before I got chapter 3 online and...oh crap, I never announced that over here, did I?

That's right! A week or two before I went to HeroesCon I put chapter 3 online! GO READ IT NOW. Or um, wait until you're done reading this post, at least?

Ahem. Anyways. Yes, I was in a slump, and the trip to HeroesCon really helped to pull me out of it, inspire me, and get me back on my feet and making comics for YOUR enjoyment. I confess that chapter 4 of Other Sleep is going to be late, BUT I've got other things coming down the pipeline! For instance, I am PRINTING chapter 1 of Other Sleep for Rob-Con! I'm polishing things off and figuring out what to do for the back 4 pages, inside cover, and back cover, but I'll be putting the order out for it soon. And oh hey, what's this?

GASP! Is that what I think it is? YES. It's the logo for Burst Reach 2, which I've been slaving away at all this week! I'll be getting it finished up and printed this weekend, then I'll be bringing them with me to Rob-Con next month on the 21st! I'll be doing it the same way I did the first one last year, printing it myself, getting copies made, and folding and stapling them myself. Had I mentioned that I purchased a long reach stapler one night earlier this year on a night that I couldn't sleep? Well, I did.

Yes, I'm taking two different approaches in getting two different books printed and put together. Other Sleep is a full-color comic, and it's my real professional effort, so going through a professional printer to get it right is easily the best option. On the other hand, Burst Reach is a lo-fi minicomic anthology that's MEANT to be cheap and handmade like a punk zine or those pamphlets that crazy street preachers occasionally hand out.

(quick aside: I was once handed a Bible on campus at ETSU, and in exchange I gave the guy a copy of Burst Reach. Fair trade?)

Another reason I'm making Burst Reach 2 in that fashion is influence from my friend Sterlin, whose Pizza Flag Books you should be familiar with if you've been on this site for a while. Last week before I left for Heroes, a Nashville all-girl punk band called Heavy Cream put on a free show downtown, which was put together by Sterlin. It made me happy to see when I got there that he had a table set up selling copies not only of his own Museum For Dead Clowns zine, but Eye Alive vol. 1 (I FINALLY GOT A COPY), a NEW zine of his own called Irony & Whine, and a zine by another friend called Tune Out. I greedily snatched these up. He's also been selling copies of Burst Reach for me. It's just...man, zines are just the coolest things ever, you know?

OH. And I did this poster for that very show:
 It makes me happy knowing that they sold out there. Sterlin did a pretty sweet poster too, which also sold out.

Um...now I forgot what I was talking about? Yeah, Burst Reach is my punk comix zine thing, while Other Sleep is a little more high-quality. But I still love both and I'm putting all I've got into them.

And have no fears, that Distinguished Gentlemen/Exciting Tales! collection is progressing as well! And I'll be doing a cover for Eye Alive vol. 2 for Sterlin and contributing to the guts of the book too. I don't think I'll be doing a new comic this go around, but I still want to do something cool...You'll see.

Aaaaannnnnd I think that's it for now. BACK TO MAKING COMICS.

[Brett]

I have been busy. I'm nearly finished drawing chapter 3 of Other Sleep, and I'm deep into flatting/coloring it as well. I've got someone interested in me doing some drawings for a thing they're writing, I'm doing a flyer for a local show, and I've got to plan a photoshoot for a friend. STUFF IS HAPPENING.

Not to mention those collections I keep putting off on working on, and planning that trip to Heroes Con next summer.

I'm afraid I don't have anything terribly new to show you guys right now. HOWEVER. That comic I did at the end of 2011, Zimmik Looks For Love in a Barren Land, is finally online and you can go read it in the comics gallery. I was waiting until my friend printed the anthology book that it was for. Here's the first page:

Lots of weird semi-emo stuff and nudity in this one, yeah.

Oh, and here's a quick thing I threw together last week as a bit of a test/experiment:
 That's it. Back to work.

[Brett]

I'm going to do a bit of a braindump today. Things I've been looking at, listening to, thinking about, et cetera.

I keep listening to this song, because it's so good. It brings to mind imagery from Stalker, and makes me think of a What If? sequel to that film where, after another decade or two, Stalker returns to the Zone and finds that it's...changed, in a sinister, austere fashion. Give it a listen, it's remarkable.
 

I read Sharknife ZZ by Corey Lewis this week and HOLY CRAP IT IS AWESOME. I could only read it in quick bursts, a handful of pages at a time, because it's so dense with style and it's so overwhelmingly fun to flip through. Corey is at the top of his game with it, and it was so worth the 6-year wait it took him to make it. I did some fanart, I loved it so much:

This blog post by David Brothers about the Before Watchmen crap is absolutely venomous and on the nose.  I was initially thinking of buying the Minutemen series because I love Darwyn Cooke, but now, ugh, I'm just not going to bother at all.

I wrote a blog post over on Other Sleep about the bad 1980 movie Altered States and how it's kind of the backbone for the comic. I'm planning on doing posts every week over there about what's influenced it. I think next time I'm gonna write about Guy Davis and his work on BPRD.

I'm trying to figure out how I can really promote the hell out of Other Sleep and get people to check it out. I don't think it's something I can do myself. Right now I'm hopping on messageboards and stuff, and I made a list of comics professionals and critics and bloggers that I want to send it to, but I just haven't worked up the guts yet to email any of them...

Saturday the 21st, I'm going to be at the Tri-Cities Toy and Hobby Show. Basically I'll just be doing sketches, giving away Other Sleep postcards, and selling copies of the new third printing of Burst Reach for a buck apiece. The guy who manages the show is a really nice guy and is letting me have a table for free to do my thing. This is, I guess, my first "appearance," so to speak, since I don't think walking around Rob Con last year thrusting Burst Reach into people's hands necessarily counts, yeah?

(by the way, there I also dropped some copies of Burst Reach off at Atomik Comiks in Johnson City, so you can grab them there too. Tell Shawn I sent you)

Also? The third printing of Burst Reach is STAPLED BY ME, rather than saddle-stitched at Kinkos. This justifies the long-arm stapler I ordered in the middle of the night back in February with a copy of Redline when I couldn't sleep.
 

I'm also going to be at Mountain Empire Comics in Bristol for Free Comic Book Day, drawing and stuff.

AND I bought a 3-day pass today for Heroes Con. I'm really excited about that, since it'll be my first REAL con.

And finally, I just watched a really good documentary on digital sampling in hip hop that's called Copyright Criminals. It's great, you should check it out on Netflix.

Okay, back to work.

[Brett]