Hello. Things have been happening.

Here's today's Distinguished Gentlemen strip, the start of a new storyline:
I admit, I drew this while I was in that slump I previously talked about, so it's not one of my favorites. Next week's strip, however, is going to be fantastic, trust me. Taking these guys in a new direction.

This week I made my design for the postcard for Embrace Infection:
There are a few more things I need to get done before the show, like mounting my pieces and some other silly odds and ends that the professor is making way too much of a fuss about. But they'll get done.

I really wish the show was sooner, so I could just get over with it and out of the way, because I'm to the point where I'm sick of looking at and thinking about this body of work and I'm ready to move on and do new things.

I'm working on a new action comic, writing and writing and rewriting it. I've written the intro four or five times and I think just today got it nailed down, with four thumbnails to go alongside it. I've designed a bunch of the characters (a few of which are repurposed from older concepts) and have done lots of frantic sketches. I'm not going to start seriously drawing the thing until I know what I'm doing, where I'm going, and approximately how long it may be. I'm making myself work slow, because I want it to look good and I want everything to work, and when I get stuck on a character or story element, I don't want to try to force it. Everything's gotta flow good.

The three big influences on this work are No More Heroes, Jerome Opeña's art on Uncanny X-Force, and the Old City Blues Comic I wrote about last time. To varying degrees, of course. There's a bit of Sergio Leone in there too.

My time keeps getting eaten by other things, though. My laptop is slowly dying, and the other day the disc drive wasn't working at all. I've ordered an external hard drive to back everything up onto, then I'm going to start looking at desktop machines. I'll keep using the laptop til it dies, but I don't know if that'll be next week or next year.

Also, I bought Dark Souls, the sequel to the horrible addiction that was Demon's Souls, on Friday. I shouldn't have to say anything else there.

...In fact, I'm gonna shut up and go play it right now.

[Brett]

So I bought this graphic novel in Barnes & Noble yesterday, OLD CITY BLUES. It can also be read in its entirety on its website, and I think you should check it out if you're into cyberpunk awesomeness.

Here's the kicker, though: The creator, Giannis Milonogiannis, is my age. He's 23 years old and he has a hardcover graphic novel out that can be bought at Barnes & Noble. Holy freaking crap. Talk about throwing the gauntlet, because this thing's better than quite a lot of what the Big Two are putting out, and he's only 23. At first, it felt like a kick in the balls, that someone my age already has a graphic novel published, but it's a good, refreshing kick in the balls, a call to step up my game and work harder. It's motivating. It's the kind of comic that you can look at and just get inspired to do your own work, and we need more of that, you know? Comics and creators that ENCOURAGE you to step up and go for it. It's awesome.

It's the same reason I love King City and Casanova so much, because they make you WANT to make comics.

Anyways, here's this week's Exciting Tales! strip:
I REALLY wanted to pay tribute to Krazy Kat, and I REALLY wanted to do a comic about those annoying people who stand around outside the library and ETSU's Culp Center trying to give out Bibles, pamphlets, and crap like that. And here is the result.

(true story: this semester, an old man gave me a Bible outside the Culp Center. In exchange, I gave him a copy of Burst Reach. I have my OWN word to spread)

And here's this week's Distinguished Gentlemen strip, finally concluding the dating/lost hat story:
I love that walrus.

Next week is Fall Break, so they're only putting out one East Tennessean, meaning only one strip, which will probably be the beginning of the new Distinguished Gentlemen story.

That's it for now. More work to be done!

[Brett]

...Well that was somewhat awkward. Just a little bit.

Given the nature of my art, I always do wonder whether or not I'm going to offend someone. I want to make people a bit uncomfortable and disturbed, yes, but still keep them entertained, you know? Of course, also given the nature of my work, I don't show a whole lot of it to my parents, because they're not really anywhere NEAR my target audience, if I uh, have a target audience to begin with?

So it was unexpected when dad, seeing a couple of finished prints, asked me why I'm doing "that stuff." And was quite upset about my having left the two prints in the back room at work, where I wasn't expecting anyone to see them anyways. But he was so uh, repulsed, I guess, that he stated he never wants to see "anything like that" over at work or in the house...

...Now I know who I'm NOT inviting to the closing reception for the exhibition in November, heh.

Of the two pieces in question, this is one:
The other one isn't uploaded yet because while I think it's finished, after I had printed it last week, my adviser looked it over and made an idle suggestion about doing just a little more work to it. I think the reason dad hated it is because it has full frontal male nudity. Dudity. Heh.

I really wasn't expecting him to react as if Satan himself rose from the depths of Hell and farted in his face, but hey, whatever. It hurt, a little, but hey, at least now I know my work is capable of provoking strong reactions! That's always a good thing, so much better than indifference. I can sensationalize this, though. If I were doing adverts for the show, I'd put up some silly slogan like, "THE SHOW DAD DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE" or something.

(I actually SHOWED both prints to mom, who had already seen some of the original drawings and test prints, and her reaction was a confused "oh that's really good!" Actually, that's her reaction to a LOT of things I do. She can still come to the reception, hehe)

Moving along, here's last Thursday's Exciting Tales! strip. Yeah, two Exciting Tales! were printed last week.
Once more I must offer my gratitude to Sterlin for the poem. I still need a copy of Museum For Dead Clowns, man. And you still need a copy of Burst Reach!

And here's today's strip. Because there were two Exciting Tales! last week, this week will be two Distinguished Gentlemen:
There's one final strip to this storyline, to be printed Thursday. After that, the Gentlemen travel to ANTARCTICA. Because, um, penguins. Or something. I don't know, I've only drawn the first one.

I've been kind of lazy this past week, not a lot of thinking or drawing or writing done. I'll try to make up for it this week. Maybe.

[Brett]

My head really hurts right now. Here's Monday's Exciting Tales! strip. It's a tribute to Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland:
Not exactly one of my best, I'll admit, but I'm still fond of it.

I have all thirteen pieces for Embrace Infection finished, though a few need minor revisions. I had seven printed on campus today, though three of those are the ones which need revising. I'm excited to see them in the full size they were meant to be printed at, however, with the colors brilliantly popping on the glossy paper.

Here's one of those finished, printed pieces, entitled Feeling Good:

I've been thinking a bit lately about, well, women in comics I guess, given the shitstorm that hit last week with DC's Catwoman and Starfire being portrayed as trashy sex-hungry sluts, not real characters but cheesecake for fanboys to gawk over and fantasize about having sex with. It makes me feel dirty and uncomfortable, seeing the pages, and I don't like it at all. I'm plotting a new comic in which the villain is a woman, and I'm thinking hard about how to develop her as sexy, yes, but more than anything else, FORMIDABLE. There aren't a lot of formidable women in comics, I don't think...

Chiyoko in Akira, though. The big burly woman in the apron who protects Kei and Kaneda? I'm pretty sure she punches more faces in than she has lines of dialogue in the third volume. I love her. I just got volume 4 in the mail today, and she's on the back cover, in ragged clothes, ammo belts, and wielding a rifle. I do hope she gets to smash more faces in...

I also got a copy of John Dies at the End, because I saw the trailer for next year's film adaptation by Don Coscarelli:

Looks like he's channeling Cronenberg quite a bit, which makes this movie look even tastier. And given that the novel's from the editor in chief of Cracked, one of my favorite websites, I'm so excited about getting to crack this book open and start reading.

I just have to finish Philip K. Dick's Now Wait For Last Year first.

Also, I must admit something that MAY be considered blasphemy among many circles: I've been watching old James Bond movies on Netflix, and, well, I don't much like the Sean Connery flicks. And I LOVED On Her Majesty's Secret Service, despite the fact that yes, George Lazenby is not quite a good Bond. But man, the way that movie was lit and shot is phenomenal! And Diana Rigg as the Bond girl! It's a weird one, yes, trying to be grittier and more serious than the Connery films while at the same time including a bobsled chase scene, but I dunno, it may be my favorite Bond film alongside Casino Royale...

And I think I'm gonna call the entry quits here, because I keep getting distracted by Top Gear. AWAY.

[Brett]

Today is Thursday, and here's the new Exciting Tales! printed in today's East Tennessean:
It has been requested that I do a future strip about Professor Waterbear. I have to agree, his story must be told.

Today I drew the seventh Exciting Tales! and the fifth Distinguished Gentlemen. I also started character sketches for a graphic novel idea. Now it's back to work on Embrace Infection, I guess.

Also, this has got me excited:

No, it's not as intense as the original teaser trailer, but still, the more I see of this film, the more I want to see it. The novel was amazing, but the Swedish film was a bit lacking. Did I say that already once before? I feel like I might be repeating myself.

I've got more things to do. Rawr.

[Brett]

Today's Exciting Tales! in the East Tennessean:

All of these things are true, though of course, people who know me and know my work really well will realize that I am personally responsible for the first two.

...Heh.

Thursday sees the second Distinguished Gentlemen strip, of course.

Met with my advisor today about Embrace Infection, showed him the seven finished pieces. He seemed to talk to me longer than any of the other students, and it was mostly about the concept of a loose narrative, which is what I'm calling this stuff. He suggested some minor changes to make to a few of the pieces, then told me to keep cranking them out and not to be afraid to be even more outrageous. Excellent.

I got a Droid X2 smartphone and have been learning my way around it. Obviously, one of the first things I downloaded was the ComiXology app and a nice big slate of free comics. It's a bit exhausting at times, but reading the comics one or two panels at a time is a very interesting thing. It's got me thinking about how page layouts are affected by it. For instance, a big, beautiful two-page spread by JH Williams III would not translate all too well. However, something simple, on a 6-or-9 panel grid would be pretty much perfect unless the artist is playing around with symmetry between panels and such, the way Dave Gibbons did for the Fearful Symmetry issue of Watchmen. There's a lot of push and pull, and I wonder just much professional artists think about the differences between the physical book and the screen on someone's iPhone, yeah?

It's fascinating stuff, but still: nothing beats having the thing itself in your hands, being able to flip between pages, smell the ink on paper...Er, right. I'll shut up now.

[Brett]

Since it was published Thursday afternoon, here I will share with you the first Distinguished Gentlemen strip:

This is the first Distinguished Gentlemen strip I've done since...late high school, early college, I think? I had made a stab at doing a webcomic, and you can still find all those strips online, but please don't. They're appalling. I created these guys out of the blue my senior year of high school in a painting which now hangs (appropriately, I think) over my brother's toilet in his house. They are very endearing to me for some reason I can't quite put my finger on.

These strips are a different beast from the Exciting Tales! stuff, because there's an arc, with each story being (I think) four strips. This one and the second one were also absolutely tough to draw. Then I spent a long time hitting my head on a wall trying to figure out how to do the third one when I had a breakthrough. I gave it an interesting layout, but it'll be a couple more weeks before you get to see it.

I'm still ahead on the strips, yes, but gosh, it's turning into a grind. I know I could move faster, but I have to work to motivate myself sometimes, especially since I'm just going back and forth between them and Embrace Infection, having difficulty sometimes in determining which is the higher priority.

But they're still getting done, and I refuse to resort to Jim Davis-levels of awful laziness. Though I do kind of want to do a Garfield or Family Circus parody at some point. I just finished penciling a tribute strip to Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland earlier this afternoon, but maybe only three people total will get that. Still, though, I'm learning with each strip I draw and I feel like I'll soon find a happy method of working where I can provide good quality comics without breaking my back over it.

I hope.

(I also want to do a tribute to George Herriman's Krazy Kat)

[Brett]