HAPPY HALLOWEEN. Here's today's East Tennessean strip, about the Ghost Monkey of ETSU. It's a true story:
Could this be my best work yet? Next week's Exciting Tales! is going to be a haiku. I can't do haiku very well, so it's bound to be terrible. There may be a dinosaur in it though.

I thought about writing about all the different horror movies I've been watching lately. I think I've finally pulled myself out of my John Carpenter kick that I've been on after making attempts at watching some of his lousier films like the Ward. I bought Halloween and watched it last night, of course. Old Vincent Price films like the Masque of the Red Death, but those still don't compare to the outrageous awesomeness of the Abominable Dr. Phibes. Re-watched Nosferatu and and the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which led me to draw this last night:
I MAY re-watch Nosferatu again tonight, because it is great. I also watched Shadow of the Vampire, which I had bought earlier this year and kind of forgot I owned. And another favorite of mine, Bram Stoker's Dracula.I had started watching the 2005 remake of Dr. Caligari, and it was...eh. The acting wasn't too good, though Doug Jones was REALLY creepy as the somnambulist. If I finish it, it'll be for his performance, definitely...

Eh, that's it. I'm gonna go eat candy and draw now.

[Brett]

Here's today's Distinguished Gentlemen strip, which is the most cinematic comic I've ever done, possibly:
I finished drawing the next strip today. It too is a doozy.

Nothing to report on. My life has been mostly horror movies, comics, and tying loose ends up regarding the exhibition of Embrace Infection and my graduation.

I would like to point out a few things: First, this week's issue of Secret Avengers is jaw-droppingly awesome. David Aja's art is absolutely perfect, channeling the likes of Toth and Steranko, with Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, kicking people in the face in a sci fi MC Escher-like setting. It's a thing of beauty. Second, I think that the Abominable Dr. Phibes is not only Vincent Price's greatest role, but also my favorite horror movie. Or it's at least up there with the Thing and the Fly. It's so ostentatious and wildly entertaining. Finally, I got to watch Psycho Gothic Lolita yesterday, and was quite disappointed. This is heartbreaking.

Er, that's all. Gonna go draw, eat cookie cake, and watch Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the one that DOESN'T have Michael Myers in it.

[Brett]

Hello, here's yesterday's Exciting Tales! strip, which I sincerely believe is one of my absolute best comics yet:
After doing the Professor Bear strip? I HAD to do one about Professor Waterbear.  It also gave me the opportunity to do a figure drawing gag I had been wanting to do from the beginning.

Man, Harold just can't catch a break...

As mentioned before, Thursday's Distinguished Gentlemen will be pretty amazing, and Monday's Halloween strip will be even more amazing.

A friend sent me this video on Facebook. See if you can figure out why:

I think I like this guy. "MAY THE POWER OF THE COSMOS BE WITH YOU!!"

So I mentioned before that I'm working on a new action comic that I'm taking my time on. Since then, much progress has been made. I've been writing and thumbnailing simultaneously, which seems to be the best way to work, considering that I always get bogged down if I just try to sit and type out a script. I finished laying out the first chapter, which at 16 pages is longer than anything I've done before, but a bit short for even a single-issue thing. Still, it is what it is, and I may do a bonus supplementary chapter to squeeze in a few more pages. I started the second chapter today, with three pages thumbed out so far.
The guy on the far right is introduced in the second chapter, explaining how he bought an isolation chamber that he never uses.

I keep referring to this as my "dumb action comic," but it's hardly that at the moment. The fight scene in the first chapter takes up about 5 or 6 pages, and the rest is just two characters talking. No idea if there'll be much action in the second chapter, because I'm finding that it's more fun to develop the characters and the setting, but at the same time, I have to fight and keep myself from making it all just a big, boring exposition dump, so I have to figure out how much info to let out and when. There's a lot of questions between the two main characters, and figuring out what they are, when to ask and when to answer is a big chore.

There's a lot of designing to do too. In trying to give the town the comic takes place in a life of its own, there's a lot of defining to do. For instance, the hotel itself needs look as though it's been around quite a while, but the TV, furniture, and other little bits need to look new and different, like they've replaced the old furniture but left the room itself as is. Does that make sense? It's a science fiction future, but the town itself hasn't quite caught up just yet. And it's doubly difficult because I've never really drawn any real interior spaces before, my backgrounds are always light, and I'm going to try and break that with this comic. Also, a scene with a car. I'm going to hate myself when I start to REALLY draw this.

And compared, to the other comics I've done, there's not really any super weird and random crap. Not yet, anyways. I want things to slowly get more and more ludicrous as time passes, so maybe later on it'll become what it was originally intended to be. I realized I can't just make a comic that's a bunch of fighting and make it compelling or interesting if the characters don't do much else and the setting is ambiguous.

I mentioned No More Heroes and Old City Blues last time as influences, but I realized there's more going into it than that. Akira, the Woman Trap, King City, Ronin, and hell, I quote David Lynch's Lost Highway in one panel and in another do a scene similar to a Batman panel from the only Justice League comic I own. It's coming from all over the place, which is totally a good thing.

I probably won't start drawing the actual pages until December at the earliest, once the semester and my job doing comics for the East Tennessean is done.

Also, unlike previous Big Ambitious Projects I've come up with, hopefully this one won't get scrapped so quickly, especially after having written about it here.

[Brett]

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]

So after that last entry, I decided I was being too much of a whiny emo loser bitch (in that order), and decided to get back in gear and get back to work...

...Then I got sick Saturday night, and spent all of sunday watching horror movies on Netflix: John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, 2/3rds of Dario Argento's Inferno, Phantasm II, and Madhouse. Whenever I'm sick in October, I always sit and marathon horror movies. It goes back to this time in high school where I had a nasty stomach virus and sat watching AMC's Monsterfest.

While watching those films, I ended up drawing a piece of Casanova fanart. Newman Xeno, the comic's villain, is probably one of my favorite all-time characters. I considered trying to dress as him for Halloween:
Casanova is, incidentally, the best damn comic coming out right now, which of course explains why I'm having a hard time getting hold of the new issues. And one of the best comics ever. Trust me. You need to read it. Crazy sixties sexy sci fi awesomeness.

I finished reading John Dies at the End yesterday and loved it. Actually, I spent all day at work yesterday reading it, finishing the thing just 5 minutes before closing. I haven't been that absorbed in a book in quite some time. Excellent stuff.

And I've listened to this song more times that I'm willing to admit today, from the soundtrack to Drive, which I saw a couple weeks back:

I don't normally dig electro synth pop stuff, but this song is just hypnotic, like the movie itself was.

Hm...that's all I've got to share this evening. Oh, yeah, the Avengers trailer is out, and it looks like it'll do just fine, but that generic rock music and typical editing killed it for me. I kind of just wish the film was actually about Thor and Tony Stark going on a cross-country roadtrip and getting involved in wacky shenanigans with the Cosmic Cube or something, because aside from Black Widow being HOT, none of the other characters appeal to me. But then of course, the only superhero film I saw this year was X-Men: First Class, and I'm one of about five people seriously looking forward to Neveldine & Taylor's Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance next year, so what do I know?

[Brett]

Rejoice, because I have finished and printed all but one piece for Embrace Infection! Well, two. There's one I won't print at all, and one that I, um, forgot to print. But I'll get that next week. Anyways, all of them are now uploaded to the gallery here on the site.

Most of the pieces are also cut down as well, which leaves the mounting and, well, the show itself in November. I'm ahead of the game.

And now I'm at a loss at what to do next. I had written a script for the first chapter of a graphic novel, but a few days later deleted it because I thought it was crap. I've done a decent number of sketches, but not much else. And I did this:

This is from a pose I really wanted to use for Embrace Infection, but I couldn't make it work. And so I went back to playing in Illustrator again! Yay!

But no, it's bugging me. My head feels empty, and like it's not on straight. Technology has been rebelling against me all week, I've been draggy, I keep making stupid little mistakes and forgetting little things, it's like I'm not really myself. Maybe it's something to do with the death of my old guitar teacher last week, maybe dad's words hurt more than I thought, maybe I have the bird flu and I'm dying, I don't know, but I'm stuck in a rut and must find my way out.

If you'll excuse me, I'm now going to go and uh, draw something.

[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]