I spent this past weekend at HeroesCon, neck-deep in nothing but comics culture and nerdery. We got up at 3:45am Friday morning to drop my girlfriend’s mother off at the airport before we drove the three and a half hours to Charlotte, so I spent all three days of the con sleep-deprived and overwhelmed, much like everyone else there, it seemed. This is basically how I am now that I‘m back in the real world:
Last year was the first time I’d ever been, wandering aimlessly and trying to put copies of the first issue of Burst Reach into the hands of artists and writers I admired. This year, however, I shared a table with my friend, comics mentor, and convention veteran sketch monster, Jeremy Massie. This is basically my third con appearance, and, like I said in my previous blog post (I think??), I had no idea what to expect at all.
The truth is? I think I did better in one day at ETSUcon back in April than I did in all three days at Heroes. Everyone was saying that Saturday would be massive, that I’d be slammed with sketch requests and people buying things from me, but it turns out actually that I sold more books and drew more sketches on Sunday alone. I barely had anybody Friday and Saturday. This, ah, well, um, led to a bit of an existential crisis Saturday evening. I had packed so much, unrealistically thinking that Burst Reach 3 and Other Sleep would sell really well. I DID manage to get rid of all of my leftover copies of the first two issues of Burst Reach, which was a great relief, but still, I could feel despair closing in as I sat at my table watching hundreds of people walk by without so much as a glance in my direction or worse, standing in front of my table in order to get a look at the insanely cool collage pieces at the table next to me while awkwardly pretending I wasn‘t sitting there.

After some talking about it, I understand completely now. HeroesCon is just HUGE. It is packed with hundreds of artists and vendors, some who are new to things, others who are con veterans, heavy-hitting Marvel powerhouses like Paolo Rivera and first-timers like myself, all of whom are scrambling and struggling for the attention and money of con-goers. Why would you want a copy of Other Sleep from me when Sean Murphy is just about 20 feet away with Punk Rock Jesus and some killer prints at his table? So it makes sense that I did better at smaller cons with fewer artists. I mean, come on, I was at the same convention as Jim Steranko and Eric Powell, who was I to think that I’d do well in their presence?

It wasn’t all existential pain and self-doubt, of course. On the first day I got a personal inking lesson from Paul Maybury, who is a great artist and great person to chat with. I got to watch my girlfriend who’d never been to such a massive con run around, meeting up with old friends and making new ones while formulating a plot to leave me for Matt Fraction and Ben Templesmith. She had a blast all three days, and it made me extremely happy to have been able to bring her along with me and watch her having so much fun. And some good friends of ours came down on Sunday and we ate at Pinky’s Grill with them, which was fantastic.

I did some pretty fun sketches for people, too.
And saw some fantastic costumes.
And, despite not making much money at all, I got a TON of stuff.
(not shown: two shirts, a badass Ultraman poster, and a few other comics and stuff)

And on top of all that, here are some other highlights:
-After two days of searching for each others tables, I finally met up with Alejandro Bruzzese. Check his work out, it’s killer stuff.
-After seeing Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConnick together, my girlfriend claims that they’re exactly like she and I. Her words echoed in the back of my head when I got my copy of Hawkeye #1 signed by Fraction and felt like I was having a conversation with myself. That said, she still wanted to kidnap him.
-I saw Nate Bellegarde’s original pages for Nowhere Men and swooned.
-Did I mention Pinky’s Grill? That place is amazing. I like fried pickles now, how did that happen?
-I got to watch Massie draw this strange sketch request of Burt Reynolds playing cards with a lion:
-Supermag by Jim Rugg is a thing of wonder. And when I gave him a copy of Burst Reach 3, he complimented the look of Stranger Rains!
-The Out of Step Arts table may be my favorite. I got a great Paul Maybury shirt last year, and this year got a Toby Cypress shirt and a couple of Liz Suburbia’s minicomics. He’ll be at Rob-Con next month, too, so be sure to stop by!
-There was a Republican convention going on at the same time, and the juxtaposition of cosplayers and nerds with old white men in suits made for some fun people-watching.

…And I think that’s about it. I’m going to disappear for a while to work on chapter 7 of Other Sleep, and will resurface sometime in July as Rob-Con approaches!

[Brett]

AT LAST, Burst Reach 3 is COMPLETED. Well, for the most part. I mean, I have to have the thing printed, and then I have to fold and staple all those copies myself, BUT STILL. I've spent these last couple of weeks in Antisocial Hermit Artist Mode, working to finish off Stranger Rains, coming up with and executing a one-page comic to fit into the book, then designing and laying out the whole thing and printing and pasting together the dummy copy. It's been grueling, time-consuming work, but it feels good to look at the (nearly) finished product. Here's the cover:
That may not quite be the shade of pink the final book will be, I'm going somewhere else to get it done and I...don't...actually know what their color selection is for paper. I try not to let things like that deter me.

Here's the inside cover, the table of contents:
...err, well, actually, I changed that annoyingly long sentence at the bottom to simply "SELF PUBLISH OR DIE," which I know I stole from somewhere, but I cannot remember where.

I'm happy to have gotten all this done a couple of weeks before Heroes Con in Charlotte, which is June 7-9. The girlfriend and I are heading down together, and I'm sharing a table with hero and savior Jeremy Massie. We'll be at table AA-41! I'm excited, and a little scared. I have a little experience under my belt now, and while last year's Rob-Con and last month's ETSUcon both got a good crowd, over a thousand people each, that's still NOTHING compared to the big huge three-day event that is Heroes. We're in the back, against the wall, so on the outskirts of Artist's Alley, but not in a corner or anything, so while we won't get the same kind of traffic the big artists do, it should still be bustling.

I have a second order of copies of Other Sleep that should come in this Tuesday, I'll get a LOT of copies of Burst Reach 3 printed up (I want to give some to a few choice artists I admire), gotta print more posters, and probably get more paper prepared for sketches and such. I have no earthly idea how busy I'll be, but by god I'll be prepared. I hope. There's no predicting, that's something I've realized in the few things I've attended. While Free Comic Book Day this year was smaller, I still did WAY better than I did at Rob-Con last year despite it's larger attendance, partially because I had a lot more work to show, maybe? 

So. Two weeks. I can't wait. It's gonna be crazy. YOU SHOULD GO.

[Brett]

...I hope I come up with a better title for this thing by the time I'm finished writing.

Yesterday was ETSUcon! Tomorrow is my 25th birthday! COINCIDENCE? Well yeah, actually it is.

It was quite an experience, being only the second real con I've ever done, but I surprisingly did pretty freaking well. Better than I'd expected to. Turns out people LOVE posters of giant skull robots and kaiju! And I managed to do quite a few mutant portraits for people, too!

Cosplayers roamed the ETSU Culp Center in droves, more than anyone could possibly try to count, but this Splicer lady was my favorite:
There was also a dude dressed as Ryan Gosling's nameless character from Drive? He was awesome and hung around my table quite a bit, but I forgot to photograph him because we kept talking about how cool the new Gosling/Nicolas Winding Refn flick Only God Forgives looks. Seriously, watch that trailer! Doesn't that just look AMAZING?!

It was also a weird experience to have groups of cosplayers get their pictures taken right in front of my table...when there were two empty tables right next to me. I didn't know how to react to that, just a bunch of costumed butts in front of me.

Nor did I know how to react to people who asked me if my work was based on or referencing anything, who would then just lose interest and walk away when I told them that it wasn't. It's like...there are a number of artists on the internet who complain about how someone else's My Little Pony/Deadpool mashup gets more attention than their own, original work? Which is a lame truth, but not something I've ever paid much attention to. This was the real world equivalent to that "if I don't recognize it, I don't care" mentality. Someone asked if my Distinguished Gentlemen collection (which was being given out for free) had any "meta references" in it, and when I told him no, he immediately put it down, and when I tried telling him about Other Sleep he just remarked that the only webcomics he likes are badly drawn MS Paint ones...which...I mean, if that's what you dig, then cool, more power to you, but that was just weird.

Still, though. I saw some friends I hadn't seen in a long time, met some cool new folks (it seems appropriate that, as much time as he spent at my table, I never learned Drive dude's name), and I got video interviewed by stand-up comedian friend Hunter Roberts for a site he writes for called Gonzo Geek! Then I went and got Mexican food with a couple friends I don't get to see too often, so yeah, good times all around!

And hey, this next Saturday, May 4th is Free Comic Book Day! I'll be on 6th Street outside of Mountain Empire Comics doing it all over again. I don't think there will be as many Homestuck cosplayers this time around, though. Or Old Gregg.

Aw crap, I never came up with a better title for this entry. OH WELL.

[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]

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]

A couple of things I've failed to write about because I suck. I've done a couple more flyers for local punk shows at the Bristol Grind House, one for Slug Guts last month and one for the Eeries, who are playing tomorrow.

Sterlin, the guy who talks these awesome bands into coming to our small town, as well as printing zines under the name of Pizza Flag (he has a Big Cartel page set up now, go order some cool stuff!) is also a part of a local group of stand-up comedians known as Beat About. I've been going out and watching them do their thing quite a bit, and with their Tumblr, they're trying to not only promote themselves, but promote other weird local stuff that many people here in Bristol wouldn't really be aware of.

One of the members actually interviewed me! You can read it here. I rambled about inspiration, Altered States, giant monsters, and some other stuff.

I wanted to write a bit about these guys because what they're doing is kind of a big deal to me, and I'm proud to be involved in my own little way. Bristol is a small town known primarily for two things: NASCAR and the Rhythm & Roots festival. I mean, it's also the birthplace of country music, but it's not really known for that and aside from Rhythm & Roots, the only other thing we have to offer is a tiny museum in the Bristol Mall, woo. There's not much to offer downtown: a good comic shop, a few places to drink, and more antique stores than probably necessary. It's seen a boost in activity lately, especially this year, but it's still kind of small and sleepy and won't be shaking off its reputation any time soon.
 

But what the Beat About guys are doing is hopefully making a difference. Between the open mic nights, Bring Your Own Vinyl nights at the Acoustic Alehouse (which I haven't been to yet), and the punk shows at the Grind House, things are picking up. I'd like to say Bristol is starting to show a little of its weird side. I'm thrilled to be able to watch it happen, moving back here after three grueling years in Johnson City, I was worried there'd be nothing here for me, and I'm so glad that's not the case. I also enjoy being able to make little contributions, doing art and stuff for Sterlin's zines and posters for the shows. 

I think this kind of thing is what just about every small town needs, a little...I don't want to say counter-culture, but people teaming up to bring something DIFFERENT to the public. To stand out. Sterlin and Beat About are proving that there's more to Bristol than just bluegrass music, and I really hope these guys get noticed by more and more people. I'm doing what I can to help and support them.

Oh, also! I finished drawing chapter 5 of Other Sleep today. FINALLY. My drawing arm is screaming in glorious agony. I'll have it finished and online this month, so look forward to that!

[Brett]

Hey! You! What are you doing Saturday? Seeing the Dark Knight Rises? That's cool I guess, but what you SHOULD do is go to Rob-Con at Viking Hall!

Yes my friends, go to the Tri-Cities biggest comic convention and feast upon the thousands of comics and toys and stuff that will be there! Meet some zombies, check out the Batmobile! And then come by my table and BUY MY STUFF.

I'm debuting Burst Reach 2 there, packed with comix greatness:
As well as the collected Distinguished Gentlemen and Exciting Tales! strips, the first Burst Reach, AND chapter 1 of Other Sleep!

I'll be doing sketches for stupidly cheap, too! Here's the flyer I made for my table:

You see that? For under 10 bucks you can buy ALL FOUR of my books! There's no reason NOT to! Unless you just don't like comics in which case, why are you even here?

Seriously guys, I'm stoked for this. That show I did in Gray, back in April? That was weak. Free Comic Book Day was fun, but it's nothing compared to Rob-Con. This is gonna be BIG.

Also I'll be dressed really nice, which doesn't happen often. You don't wanna miss that!

Besides, you don't HAVE to see the new Batman on opening weekend you know. That's when all the crazy crowds are out, who wants to deal with that crap? COME TO ROB-CON.

[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]