BEHOLD, I have finished drawing the awkward 8-page dream comic, and I have also scanned all eight of those pages!

Yeah, it starts on a street and ends with a robot shooting another robot in the face.

All it lacks is my fixing all the terrible flaws with it, toning it, et cetera, and it will be ready to make people slightly uncomfortable!

Also, I acquired these yesterday:

The Age of Reptiles Omnibus is 400 pages of dinosaur comics. No dialogue, no narration, just visual storytelling at its finest! It's absolutely beautiful. And Akira...what could I say about Akira that hasn't been said before by those that have actually, uh, read it? It too is a massive tome, though I'm already a third of the way through it and will have to get my hands on the other five equally large volumes as well.

Got them at work at G2K while I still have my employee discount. Tomorrow's my last day. I think I picked up everything I wanted from there for now.

Also watched Castle of Cagliostro the other night, and it was amazing. I mean, I should've known it would be, being Lupin III directed by a younger Hayao Miyazaki, but still. I just need my own copy now on DVD to watch over and over again. And I watched Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed tonight, a Hammer classic with Peter Cushing in top form. I hope I look kind of like him, Vincent Price, or Boris Karloff when I'm an old man.

Hrm...that's it. I should go to bed now.

[Brett]

I am kind of a zombie today. Little energy, a bit of stiffness in my movements due to sore limbs, and most of my verbal communication is made up of grunts and muttering, and it's because yesterday was an epic, awesome day.

It's also possibly the closest I'll get to an actual vacation this summer.

I dragged a friend with me to Pigeon Forge for the day, having promised to take her to Splash Country because I REALLY wanted to go, as I haven't been swimming once this summer and it was killing me. I know a few friends that hate touristy stuff and themeparks, and while I kind of understand why, I just find it impossible to say no to giant, potentially dangerous waterslides. Unfortunately, halfway on our journey south, a massive rainstorm struck, and I was panicked, worried we wouldn't get to enjoy getting bumped into by little children in the lazy river.

I made the first stop when we got off the interstate at the Beef Jerky Outlet, because I am a creature of habit and every time I go to Pigeon Forge I HAVE to stop here and buy a pack of barbecue alligator beef jerky and a kangaroo beef stick and whatever other strange animal I can find. I was momentarily tempted by the cheddar and bacon flavored crickets, but thankfully decided against something so weird.

Since it was still wet, we just went on to Gatlinburg and went through Ripley's Believe It Or Not. God knows how many times I've been since I was a kid, but I still love that place simply because it's a museum dedicated to Weird Crap. Do we have a modern day equivalent to the mad explorer and collector of eccentricities, Robert Ripley? Because I think the world needs more rich people who circle the globe collecting strange artifacts and meeting people with bizarre physical features, y'know? We all need to be exposed to more strange things.

Anyways, a pizza lunch later, the skies were clear and we hit up Splash Country, going on pretty much every slide there. It was fantastic, and also reminded me I need to finish that Ezra Neuro comic at some point with the frozen waterpark and giant extraterrestrial jellyfish...

We made a few more stops, the Red Rocket, TGI Fridays, an arcade, and headed back. I guess I dropped her off at her place a little after 11, and got home myself after midnight, tired, sore, and with my iPod having died, being forced to listen to the radio and finding the crappy dance station more entertaining than the two rock stations. I also might've hallucinated at least one flying saucer.

Other highlights: Two little kids at the pizza place, one in a Superman shirt and one in a Batman shirt with cool glasses, going nuts over my friend's green hair, seeing and playing an arcade game for Terminator Salvation (I thought they had just outright stopped making arcade games for North America these days), getting on one of the raft slides with two fat people so we got swung around a lot, myself nearly getting thrown out of the raft at one perilous turn, NOT GETTING SUNBURNT FOR ONCE, and probably other things I can't immediately think of because my brain is still waterlogged.

And now it's back to reality, and back to work. I've been slacking a bit lately, so I need to get my ass into gear. Here's a sample of two pieces for the senior show, which is now titled EMBRACE INFECTION:

Still a lot to be done.

The weird dream comic is almost completely penciled and over half of it is inked, so that's chugging along nicely. Capsule hotels are more difficult to draw than you'd expect.

Finished the 10 volumes of Priest I was given, now I'm upset that I probably won't find the other volumes and finish it, because it's pretty awesome. Also picked up a stack of comics on Saturday, like another issue of that Chronowar manga and Howard Chaykin's Thick Black Kiss, which is probably the sleaziest comic I've bought so far.

I keep coming back to this online comic by Michael Deforge, Spotting Deer. It's so surreal and strange and beautiful and I love it:
I'm so incredibly jealous of his use of zipatone stuff, and his colors, and his skill, and, well, everything.

Also re-read the 6 issues of James Stokoe's Orc Stain, another comic I'm jealous of and in love with. It's the only fantasy comic I really love, possibly due to the colors, the importance of orc penises to the plot, and the lack of elves. His detail is ludicrous, I mean, look at these pencils for some random comic he just decided to start doing for fun:

Sweet Mary Christmas.

You should be digging into the work of both these guys, trust me. They're amazing.

That's it. Back to the real world, I've things to do.

[Brett]

First impressions of Shadows of the Damned after my first couple hours with it: HOLY CRAP YES.

Er, yeah, I'm enjoying it very much. It's like a marriage between Resident Evil 4 (being a greater successor to that game than RE5 was), Silent Hill, No More Heroes, and a Robert Rodriguez film. But with more dick and poop jokes.

Akira Yamaoka's soundtrack is wicked. I think I caught a snippet of a riff from his soundtrack to Contra: Shattered Soldier, which is by no means a criticism, that's probably my favorite game soundtrack ever. He also reuses sound effects from Silent Hill, which also makes me happy. For a game powered by the Unreal Engine, it's a bit fugly, and the aiming is kind of wonky, but these things don't bother me. Actually, they add to my enjoyment of the game and it's a lack of polish that adds to its punk rock attitude.

So many dick jokes, man.

Also: Demon that swallowed a harmonica, strawberries are made of ground up tongues, your machinegun fires teeth, Hell is a creepy abandoned old town with cobblestone streets, and horse crap playing an important part in a boss battle.

I love this game.

[Brett]

You'll notice the website is now cleaner looking, with a solid white background and a new banner using bits of one of my pieces for my final project. I think EMBRACE INFECTION might actually be the name of my show, come to think of it, eh?

You'll also notice I'm posting more. Hopefully I can keep that up, as it's the best way I suppose to get people to look at the site.

So I had this dream last week, one that kind of shook me a bit when I woke up. So I decided to draw it. I scripted it that morning and penciled the first five pages that afternoon, one after the other in a feverish pace.

It's...weird. The way the story is told is weird, the there are no faces on any of the characters, it kind of looks and feels like a real dream. It's also melodramatic and awkward and when people read this, they're probably going to think I'm really weird and will never speak to me again.

Clearly, I must finish it and show the world. It's called DRZAEM, and will be 8 pages. I'm working like mad on it. Once it's done...I'm probably gonna stop doing comics based on dreams for fear of them all turning out like this. Old friends of mine will remember the atrociously painted 12-page Dream Dive comic I did 4 or 5 years back. Let's try to forget it.

Also, my copy of Shadows of the Damned comes in tomorrow. I am excited beyond words.

I'm stoked about getting a free download of the soundtrack by Akira Yamaoka too.

Eh, that's it. Busy week ahead, lots to do!

[Brett]

I realize that my post yesterday about anime and manga from the 90's is really just a facet of my tastes and bias: I just really like weird, obscure, nifty sci fi stuff, especially when it's nothing I've ever really seen before. You can apply this to my tastes in movies, games, comics, novels, whatever. That's just me.

But I just wanted to further illustrate my point. I found this at work tonight, 5 minutes before closing:

Clearly, I had to have it. Also, I scanned this myself, DO NOT TRY GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH YOU WILL ONLY WANT TO CLAW YOUR EYES OUT WITH A SPOON.

No, I haven't watched it yet, and no, I know nothing about it aside from the fact that it's a 1984 OAV, it's sci fi, and and I am in love with those character and robot designs. I dig that package design too. I'm so excited about watching it later.

It could suck, I'm not sure, but I'm still stoked about owning some obscure anime.

(also, guy who commented on the previous post: I responded in my own comment already, BUT HOLY CRAP I'm glad I'm not the only person who watched RahXephon!)

[Brett]

This took entirely too long to write, and it’s probably too long and rambly to read anyways. Bear with me.

If the average person were to ask me how I felt about anime and manga, my knee-jerk, gut reaction would be largely negative, and I would probably make some comment about how annoying most anime fans are, and act as though I am above them. Which is silly and hypocritical, really. This reaction comes from being around too many of those fans who reinforce the stereotype of a crazed otaku virgin or some such, far too obsessed with Final Fantasy and Naruto for their own good. There’s an anime club at ETSU. A former co-worker of mine is the president and my ex-girlfriend is a member of it, and they’re both quite cool, but most of my encounters with other members of the club left a sour taste in my mouth, and I’ve got some friends who have been pestered by them as well.

But anyways, no, I make comments about anime nerds having poor tastes and bad social skills, only to go home to watch Birdy the Mighty: Decode on Netflix after tripping over myself at work just because a cute girl spoke to me. I own the entire series of Outlaw Star and Ergo Proxy on DVD, I was bitterly upset when I learned that Satoshi Kon died, I really want to get my hands on the entirety of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, I swear to you that Osamu Tezuka is a comics god and that Astro Boy is the best manga ever, and Shinya Tsukamoto is one of my favorite film directors. Hi, my name’s Brett and I am a nerd who makes fun of other nerds. I am the pot calling the kettle black.

ANYWAYS. That…wasn’t exactly the point of this post at all, no, I guess I felt I needed to throw a confession out there that while I’m embarrassed of the stuff I liked when I was younger and totally obsessed with anime, I still love a lot of the crazy things that Japan likes to fling at us over the ocean. By the way, thank you Japan for the splattergore action comedy genre thing. Keep sending those movies my way, please.

THE POINT IS. I just finally got around to reading a copy of Masamune Shirow’s original Ghost in the Shell manga, an old battered copy put out by Dark Horse in the 90’s, flipped to read left-to-right as we the English speaking/reading do. AND IT WAS AWESOME. Well, no, the first couple chapters made little sense to my simpleton brain and the pseudo-philosophical metaphysical what-have-you vague ending was a head-scratcher, but otherwise? Very cool. Ghost in the Shell is an important piece of Japanese sci fi with good reason, and it’s kind of the backbone of the Japanese cyberpunk movement, which is arguably cooler in many ways than American cyberpunk. Of course, cyberpunk is dated by this point for whatever reason and all the cool kids are into steampunk now, but considering I did a freaking comic called Cyberpunk Blues, yeah, I guess I‘m kind of biased.

Simultaneously, as I was reading Ghost in the Shell, I was picking up other stuff. We acquired a MASSIVE collection of comics at G2K, and nearly a month was spent just organizing, pricing, and putting those things out. A lot of crap, keeping with the rule that 95% of everything is crap, but a lot of wicked gems too that I immediately snatched up for myself before anyone else could, along with obscure stuff that I don’t think anyone else would’ve bought in the first place. Among these little treasures were a few issues of various manga, from back in the late 80’s and early 90’s where folks like Dark Horse and Eclipse put them out issue by issue, like American comics, rather than in digest volumes that are the norm today. I know they quit doing it pretty much because the hardcore fans preferred the digests, reading right-to-left as the Japanese do, but for some reason I really love the flipped stuff. Probably because it makes almost all the characters left-handed and this makes me very happy as a lefty. I’m sure there are some crazy hardcore fans that would froth at the mouth upon reading that, but publishers like Tokyopop are dying off because no one buys the actual books anymore. They just read the scanslations online, so screw them.

I found the first issue of Masamune Shirow’s Appleseed, book 2 of something called Grey, and an issue of something called Xenon. Later, while browsing the back issue bin of another comic store, I came across two more, Genocyber and Chronowar, and I already own some other stuff in this format like an issue of Cutey Honey and Pixie Junket. That’s when the pieces started coming together in my head.

Anime didn’t really start reaching the ultra-saturated levels of popularity it’s at now until about the 80’s, when Voltron wowed little kids and Robotech, an amalgamation of Macross and two other shows, started airing on TV. Then the animated film adaptation of Otomo’s Akira arrived, kicked down the doors, and blew everyone away. Similarly, Ghost in the Shell followed not long after.

Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed, Robotech, all this crazy sci fi militaristic awesomeness is what opened the floodgates, and these books that I found, Grey, Genocyber and Xenon, the others, they’re part of the massive wave of Me Too’s that poured into comic stores. Everyone wanted a slice of the pie that Otomo and Shirow were enjoying so much of, and that meant wave after wave of crazy sci fi and super violent weird stuff like the Guyver, Wicked City, and Doomed Megalopolis.

I have a friend who, like me, hates hardcore anime fans, but nevertheless owns the entirety of Sailor Moon S on DVD, Serial Experiments Lain (possibly my first introduction to cyberpunk culture) on VHS, a bunch of CLAMP graphic novels, and loves Junko Mizuno‘s work. She says that anime was a lot better back in the 90’s, when the Pacific Ocean served as a kind of filter where only the wildest, most violent and awesome content made it to American shores. I kind of agree with her on that, as most of the anime and manga I’m seeing nowadays is this silly moe-blob romantic comedy crap, all bright colors, no high concept, and then the Naruto and Bleach stuff which appeals more to young teenagers in the way that Dragonball Z did to me when I was in middle school, and none of it has that same appeal to me that these obscure 90’s titles do. Not to mention the fact that the art in most manga nowadays all looks the same, kind of like most superhero books do these days.

I’ve typed over 1000 words now and maybe it’s too vague, so I’ll make it clear: Anime and manga from the 90’s is awesome and appeals to me because of all the crazy sci fi high concept stuff and violence and I enjoy finding the old single issues of this stuff, and I also wish there was more of it coming out nowadays and less of that K-On! and Lucky Star stuff. Also, the immense international popularity of Hatsune Miku disturbs me greatly, as do those body pillows with the sad-looking naked anime girls printed on them.

You can keep your One Piece and Strike Witches, I have a comic about biotechnological alien life forms merging with a serial killer, detective, and 30-year-old housewife in the middle of an exploding apartment building that probably no one else has ever read, and it‘s intricately drawn, too.

NEXT TIME: A Korean man-wha inspired by Christianity, spaghetti westerns, and Hellboy, and the piss-pour American film adaptation thereof.

[Brett]

Much progress has been made these past couple days, and I thought I'd share this. <3

I'm working on...three? pieces at once, brainstorming others, and trying like hell to come up with a better show title than "Back On Mars" or "You Are Here." It's going to be a lot of thinking...

[Brett]

More things accomplished. I've been busy.

I've done two more illustrations for my friend's Museum For Dead Clowns book, as well as the back cover design and a logo for use in future books!

I'm not so sure about these either, folks. Uh, robots, toasters, old TVs, jellyfish, these are the things that I seem to draw when left to my own devices.

And the back cover:

This one I'm proud of. Upside-down cityscape and legs! Yay! And the Pizza Flag logo in the corner there.

Progress is a bit slow on the final project, but it's still coming along. Here's a sample of two separate images for it that I'm working on:

And I've finally finished moving all of my books out of the apartment and back to my room in Bristol:

I...possibly own too many books. Not pictured are the three longboxes full of individual issues.

Um, that's about it for now. I also wrote a 1300 word post about anime and manga and the 90's and some such stuff, but I won't post it just yet, no. Also, because I was given the first 10 volumes of Priest, I wanted to do a nice long post about it, and about the lousy recent film adaptation too. Maybe.

Back to work and MST3K!

[Brett]

Hey there. Been a while.

Clearly, the semester is over now. I made it through in one piece, celebrating with the purchase of a PS3, Fallout 3, and Red Dead Redemption. I've spent these last two weeks playing games, sitting on my arse reading from the massive stack of comics that had accumulated over time, and working. I'm in the process of moving out of my apartment and back home in Bristol, and also moving upstairs. Otherwise, I've been lazy, not working on anything in particular until this week.

First off, here was one of the final projects I did for school, which doubles as a flyer for my friend Sterlin's chapbook that he's self-publishing this summer:

And as it says on the flyer, I'm doing art for it. I did two illustrations this week:

Some of my older friends may recognize this as Archibald, one of the Distinguished Gentlemen, from a number of paintings and a short webcomic I did about 5, 6 years ago. It's a rather undignified return, I admit.

And this one, for a specific poem.

You'll notice that I've been using a lot of half-tone filters, zipatone, whatever you call it, in these pieces. It's something I've been wanting to explore for a while now, having fallen in love with its use in the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, some of Ashley Wood's black and white comics, and other stuff. I really love it, and I think it strengthens these pieces. I plan on implementing it a lot more in the future, too.

Right now I'm sitting on my bed typing this while watching the first episode of Stephen King's The Stand on Netflix, which is immensely entertaining despite being so dated. I'm surrounded on all sides by stacks of comics: comics I need to read, comics I need to file, and the comics I'm using as research/inspiration for my final show, which I'm also working on.

So far, the name for my show (because I'm tired of saying "I'm working on my final/senior show/project") is Back On Mars, but I dunno if I'll stick with it. I've got the concept, two or three of the characters down, and thumbnails for a few pieces. I want to actually try to have 10 or so finished pieces by the end of summer, so that I'll be way ahead when the semester begins, and can approach my committee with confidence. This'll also help us boil down what's working, what's not, and where to go next.

Stuff I'm using as research/reference/inspiration: King City, an issue of Young Romance (in my opinion, romance comics from the 60s/70s are great for figuring out how to draw a proper kiss), some Bill Sienkiewicz stuff, some Jack Kirby of course, and more.

And uh, that's about it. As many comics as I've read lately, my brain is crammed with things I'd love to talk about, like Kirby, the industry itself, Judge Dredd, et cetera, but nah, I'll spare you for now.

I'm gonna try to update more frequently this summer. I needed those two weeks of not doing anything, but now it's time to dive right back in, head first.

[Brett]

Rising up from a pile of work to update.

Things have been happening.

As finals week approaches, the workload shifts and morphs. I have begun work on an oral presentation for Spanish that will be on the luchador El Santo after finishing off a 2500 word paper on Roy Lichtenstein and comics in which I quote Warren Ellis. I've been polishing up my figure drawing portfolio before turning it in, too, and I've got more stuff to prepare for and dig into.

Somewhere in there, I got fake blood splashed onto my shirtless body to take reference photos for the life sized self portrait I have to do. And this came from it:

I'm still struggling to figure out what I want to do for my senior exhibition. I mean, I kind of want to do a narrative series of some sort, but I can't um, think of a decent one just yet. I've got ideas, a few characters bouncing around in my skull, but nothing's really clicking. I kind of know the direction I'm wanting to go in, and I did this piece as a sort of example, though it was also an experiment in playing with zipatone and halftone filters and stuff:

The green-haired girl is an actual character I was planning, the two guys in the background are just chilling.

Things I've been into lately:

Went into a huge Witch House kick after learning of a tribute to Twin Peaks album that I'll never get my hands on. In particular, I dig this band Silver Strain, also called §. The video, is uh, not safe for work (Mexploitation cinema! Boobs and blood and stuff!)...much like some of the art that's already on this site, so, you know, use your own discretion.

§ - Sádicos Infernal from § on Vimeo.

Also on a punk kick, having bought a Bad Religion album. Also, I got to see David Liebe Hart from the Tim and Eric Show live the other night! I got my picture with him.

No joke, it was AWESOME.

As usual, I've also been acquiring and reading more comics. Got a lot of decent Jack Kirby stuff at work: some Kamandi, Devil Dinosaur, the Demon, 2001, and the Eternals.

Also watched Sucker Punch in theaters and didn't like it. Last weekend though, I went and saw Hanna, and it was amazing. Check out the trailer:

Hm. I think that's it. Back to Mexican wrestlers fighting vampire women!

[Brett]