The Mug Story

So here's a weird, rambling little story that I'm going to post for no other reason than that I haven't posted anything here in some time, and I've been think a lot about this.

I was looking at mugs at Target yesterday, but I couldn't quite bring myself to buy one.

Let me back up. I drink a lot of tea. Like, a lot. I start my day with two cups, something dark. I like Constant Comment, I like Earl Grey, English Breakfast (or Irish Breakfast), Darjeeling. I like it strong, and I don't add sugar or milk or anything. I'll make my morning cup, and then when that's done I'll use the same bag to make another. (I also sometimes use loose tea, but it's usually more expensive than the bags so not all the time.)

At lunch I'll make myself green tea. Tazo makes a green with ginger that's really good, or just normal green tea is fine. Depending on what I have going on later, I might have a second cup of green also.

If I work my second job, at a Thai restaurant, I can drink all the tea I want there. So I'll usually have 2 cups of jasmine tea, sometimes four. If I don't have work, I have various herbal teas that I'll usually dig into, peppermint, or chamomile, I have a lemon ginger that's pretty good, or a few other blends. And then I end my night with a cup of sleepytime tea (I'm sipping on some as I write this).

I had this mug that I really liked, and I broke it a few weeks ago. It was a pretty frustrating week, and the mug was just a part of that. It was the week Bowie died, so I was pretty severely depressed all week. (I'm a huge Bowie fan, if I haven't mentioned that on here, and I was devastated to hear of his death.)

That was also the week that I almost quit comics entirely. I had a pretty serious financial setback, or rather, I was counting on bringing in a chunk of money that was going to go to a project, and that money never happened.

I was already pretty low that week, like I said, and then the mug broke, and the money thing happened, or rather didn't happen. It was one of those moments I just really felt like giving up entirely. Kind of an overreaction, I know, but anyway, I ended up launching Campaigners on indiegogo instead, so there you go.

Anyway, yeah. So, I broke my mug. I dropped something (I don't remember what) onto the handle, and it just broke. I was pretty bummed.

I should tell you about the mug. When I started drinking tea a lot, there was this Starbucks mug. I'd never really noticed it in the cupboard before, I assumed it was my wife's. I started using it. It was bigger than normal mugs, and it was the perfect size to make two cups of tea with one teabag. (I'm currently using a mug that belongs to my wife, that's also bigger than a standard mug, but not as big as the Starbucks one.)

So I asked my wife once if it was okay to use the Starbucks mug, or I may have apologized for it getting stained by the tea, or something. I don't remember, all I remember is her saying that it wasn't her mug. She didn't know where it had come from, and neither did I. Like it had just always been there.

That's what was cool about that mug. It had just kind of appeared, the perfect mug, out of nowhere. So I'm at Target yesterday, looking for a new mug, and they had a few that were about the right size, but it felt weird to just buy a mug, just at Target.

The mug I use at work is a mug I got for backing Reading Rainbow on kickstarter. The mug I'm using now my wife bought from a non-profit her sister used to work for. I have a mug I got when the Evening with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer album went on sale, I bought it with the digital download of the album.

And, of course, the plain white mug that just said Starbucks in small letters on it, that had just materialized in our kitchen, and was the perfect size.

So I didn't end up buying a mug. I'm sure I will, and I'm sure it'll be fine. It's just one of those things. You have a thing, and it's got a cool story behind it, and you love it, and then it's gone, and you just go to the store and replace it, with something normal and boring and functional.

I used to have this pair of Chucks. A few days after I'd bought them I spilled some bleach on one. It looked really crappy with just a bunch of big flecks of bleach, so I just decided to bleach it all the way, until it was this pink-ish, orange-ish color. And I left the other shoe the way it was, so I had two mismatched shoes. It was like a signature, and I had those shoes for years. When it was time to throw them out, I thought about getting a new pair and bleaching one again. Or buying two different color pairs and switching them out. It just wouldn't be the same.

(I might still do the second one, buy different colored pairs, one of these days, when I have plenty of disposable income.)

I don't know what the point of all this is, just thinking about it a lot and I wanted to put it out there somewhere. I think I'm about done now. Time to go to bed.

Campaigners Kickstarter is Live!

It feels like I only come here anymore when I want something from you.

Ah well, if I had more time, or more to say...

Anyhow, I have another Kickstarter running now! I mention a while back about a project called Campaigners, and we've finally got the Kickstarter launched! You can find the project here.

This is a much, MUCH bigger project than I've ever tried before. This is important to me for a number of reasons. This story is incredibly important to me,. It started out as just a small, weird, almost a joke of idea. "What if candidates had to fight each other to the death?" It's one of those things you think of and laugh about. Gee, that'd be great to watch! Right?

Except would it, really? If the sort of person who would beat another person to death with their bare hands for power were put in charge of the country? That would be, for lack of a better phrase, pretty fucked up.

That was my starting point. Looking at political campaigns now, it's all just a game. How best can I convince people to vote for. Not by being the best candidate, but by putting on the best show. In retrospect, pro-wrestling might have been a better analogy for what I was trying to accomplish at that point, but MMA seemed so much more brutal.

While I was developing the idea I realized I needed a POV character. It couldn't just be about the fighters. There needed to be someone watching this and realizing how much a mess it all was.

That's when I met Kydra Franks. A teenage girl, with all the angst and confusion that comes with being a teenage girl. A little bit of an outsider, frustrated at the fact that no one else sees how absurd the system is. The more I got to know her, the more I realized that she wasn't just the POV character, she was the main character. This is her story.

There's a lot of myself in the character of Kydra. Especially the me I was in high school. Smarter than average, but not as smart as she thinks. Self-assured but lacking confidence. As she developed, the idea occurred to me that she should have a best friend. A co-conspirator.

And thus was born Bee. Bianca Faye. Pretty much Kyd's complete opposite. Outgoing. Loves clothes and music. Doesn't care about politics, at all. While I was playing with the her characteristics, I decided to see what would happen if she were a transgender girl. How would that effect the story? And, quite honestly, it opened the story up entirely.

Bee went immediately from a sidekick to practically as much of a protagonist as Kyd. It's because of Bee getting bullied that Kyd lashes out publicly against the political system. It's Bee, trying to piggyback off Kyd's sudden notoriety, who organizes a public protest. And so much more.

The last cog in the machine was the President. I honestly didn't think I needed to do much with him. Just give him a vaguely Presidential history, so I made him a lawyer who got into politics. Give him a background in fighting. He was from a rough neighborhood, poor, learned to fight young, worked his way through school with MMA scholarships.

The thing is, the crux of the story hinges on this character. If the system is going to change, he's the one that has to decide to change it. If it isn't going to change, it will be because he chose to do nothing.

The big breakthrough was a line that he says, and I'm not going to say the line, or who he says it to, or any other context, because it's late in the story and it would give too much away. But it really informed his character for me, and I suddenly understood who this man was. This was a man who defended poor teenagers, mostly black teenagers, being bullied by a dysfunctional legal system. This was a man who lost his first fight for the Presidency, nearly died, and was told he would never fight again. This was a man who fought his way back into the ring, and destroyed all comers.

Of course, it didn't become real until I came across MJ Barros online. I don't remember at this point where I first saw her work, but I knew immediately that she was an artist I wanted to work with. It was clear that she would be an ideal artist for this particular project. It wasn't until she started putting together character designs and promo art that I realized that she was the perfect artist for the project.

I can't imagine doing this book with anyone else. She's brought so much to the project. Everything she's done has been better than expected. And it's not just her art. MJ is from Chile, a country that was until recently run by a violent dictator. These issues are very real to her. She reminds me regularly how important issues like voting rights and the right to assemble are to her. Having her on the book, I think, forces me to take it more seriously than I might otherwise. It keeps me from being overly cynical. There's a passion to the project that simply wouldn't be there without MJ's presence.

And finally, Sean Rinehart, who designed the logo and has put a ton of effort into making all the promotional material look great. He's done an amazing job so far of designing everything and he'll be lettering the book as well as providing further designs (including something really interesting in the book that I don't want to go into too much detail on but am really excited about).

Everything about this project has been an incredible experience so far, and I can't wait to see this book completed. It's terrifying and amazing and I can't wait for everyone to read this story!

So please take a look, and share it around, and maybe give a little money? It's a huge goal, I know, but every cent will go toward creating the book, paying the artists, printing the book, getting the rewards made, and so-on. It's necessary, I promise. And it will be worth it, I promise that as well.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Brendan

Summer Playlist!! (there's still a little summer left)

So I know it's kind of late, since summer's just about over. But the weather is still pretty hot where I am, and there's a nice three day weekend coming up for Labor Day, so I thought I'd share what I've been listening to all summer.

(Note: I tried posting this on my tumblr, but I couldn't seem to get the actual player to embed. I think I've figured out how to do it here, which will be much better than just posting a link to their web-player. If it doesn't work, I'll probably just delete this whole thing.)




So there goes Enjoy!

New Kickstarter: Tales of the Damned

Hey everybody!

So it's that time again! I'm running a new kickstarter campaign. This is for a comic collection of three short horror comics, all written by me, with art by Kevin Enhart, Pramit Santra, and Chris Brown. This is horror in the more classic style, period pieces with creepy monsters and ghosts and so on. I'm very proud of how all these stories turned out, and I would love to share them with everyone, so I'm hoping you guys will take a look and back if you can, and share the link around as well.

Thanks!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/152668502/tales-of-the-damned-horror-anthology

Campaigners!

I’m going to take a break from complaining about Spider-Man to talk about something much more important to me. I may have linked to the tumblr blog for my project, Campaigners, already. If not, there it is. Please check it out.

Campaigners is a graphic novel I’ll be running a Kickstarter for this summer. It’s a project I very much believe in, and I’m incredibly excited to share it with everyone.

I had an idea a couple years back, probably not a new idea. What if candidates won the Presidency by fighting? What if you had to beat the crap out of your opponent? I mean, everyone knows that politicians are full of shit, and everyone not only acknowledges that elections are just a big mess of smoke and mirrors, but actually actively participate in it.

So why bother with the elections at all? Why not just have them beat the shit out of each other?

As the story evolved in my head, it became clear that it needed a focal point, a point-of-view character from which we could watch this chaos unfold. I came up with the idea of a kid whose turning 18 on Election Day, and as an act of protest has decided not to vote.

Because have you ever told anyone you don’t vote? Have you ever been in a room when someone said that out loud? It’s like they said they like to use pieces of the American flag for toilet paper. It’s crazy.

Over time, the story started to revolve around this kid, and this little rebellion began to grow in scope.

And then I realized that I really wanted to make this story happen. And it occurred to me that an election year would be the best time to put a book like this out. An election year like the one coming up in 2016. But there was no way I could come up with the money to make this happen by then.

So I decided to turn to Kickstarter, and the rest will (hopefully) be history. I found MJ Barros online, she’s an incredible artist who has already done an amazing job of bringing the characters to life. She’s already provided a ton of art and it’s all awesome.

This is going to be a very ambitious project for me, and I really hope to make it happen. I hope you’ll all check out the tumblr, and I especially hope you’ll share it with others. There’s so much great stuff coming down the line for this.

Anyway, thanks for listening.

Last thing about Spider-Man movies, I swear (UPDATED)

So I’ve been meaning to say something about this Spider-Man business, mainly because I was so certain it was never going to happen, and now, clearly, it is happening. I would have liked to post something right after the announcement, but quite honestly I just haven’t had then time.

Anyway, yeah. Marvel announced that they made a deal with Sony allowing them to use Spider-Man in their movies. And the nerd-world had a collective orgasm. While I was certainly not surprised at the overwhelming support for this decision, I’m definitely not joining in the enthusiasm.

Look, I know it’s going to seem like, being the one guy shouting that this was never going to happen, now I have to say it’s a bad idea to save face. But, really, I think this is a bad idea. I’m not going to go over all the reasons why. I've done that before, anyone interested can go look at what I’ve already said on the subject.

Just want to mention, though, that Spider-Man has had five movies in thirteen years. This is a known property, and to audiences that aren't familiar with the comics, this is going to make about as much sense as suddenly throwing the Ghostbusters onto the Avengers.

So the details of the deal, as far as I’m aware, are as such: Marvel can use Spider-Man in their movies however they wish, but Sony can basically ‘veto’ if they don’t like what Marvel’s doing. And Sony gets a cut from any Marvel movie Spider-Man is in. Marvel has input into Sony’s Spider-Man movies, but Sony doesn’t have to listen to them if they don’t want to. I don’t know if Marvel gets a cut of Sony’s Spider-Man movies, but I highly doubt it. And, apparently, Kevin Feige will be co-producing Sony’s Spider-Man movies for free.

The interesting thing, to me, is that when these details came to light, the comment people kept making was that Marvel got the use of Spider-Man “for nothing.” Like this is some kind of steal for Marvel.

Guys, really, Sony comes out so far on top in this it’s not even funny. Like no contest.

Sony gets a cut from any Marvel movie Spider-Man is in. So they get a percentage on some highly successful movies for doing literally nothing other than saying “Yeah, go ahead.” That’s just free money for them. Plus any Spider-Man movie they make is going to bring in a wider audience now that the character is part of the Marvel lineup. They can do whatever dumbass thing they want with the character, and Marvel just has to put up with it. More than that, they have to incorporate that into their stories.

Because he’s a part of it now. Once he shows up in Civil War, Spider-Man is officially, canonically, a part of the MCU. And anything that Sony does with Spider-Man is officially, canonically, a part of the MCU. Do you remember the things that Sony has done with Spider-Man so far?

Also, Sony gets Kevin Feige for free.

So Sony gets a huge, huge, huuuuge lifeline. And Marvel? Was Marvel having any real problems without Spider-Man? Other than the comic fans wanting him there? And really, that was as much because they didn’t like the Sony movies as anything else.

So Marvel now “gets” to use this character, in exchange for sharing their profits with another company. Because there are literally no other characters in the Marvel universe that can fill the shoes of Spider-Man?

Guys, there are probably at least dozens of characters that could fill Spider-Man’s shoes in the movies. Did anyone look at the New Warriors? Young Avengers? The Initiative? Kamala Khan? This new Nova kid?

My pick? Cloak and Dagger. Not going to explain why. Just like them.

**UPDATE: So there is a rumor going around - and so far it's just a rumor, so I'm taking this with a sizable dose of salt - that they might be looking for a person of color to play Spider-Man, and that Spider-Man might not even be Peter Parker. *cough*cough*Miles Morales*cough*cough*

So I'll say this. If they choose to use Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker, I will have 1000%  more faith in this move. If they cast a person of color as Peter Parker, look, I'm not gonna complain about the sudden race shift, it really won't bother me at all. But it won't change my opinion on the move.**

Seriously, there is no reason why Marvel should make such a one-sided deal. The beauty of having the Marvel universe at your disposal is having a character to fill literally anything you need. Usually there's a few.

The only thing that gives me any hope here is the rumor that Marvel was really trying to get Spider-Man for Civil War, which to me implies that the decision is based more on the story they have than on them buckling to fan pressure or whatever.

Okay, I’m gonna call this a wrap. There are other things I could add here, but my thoughts get less and less coherent as I go, so I’m just gonna stop here.

Check out Anonymous Nancy on comiXology. Check out the tumblr for my upcoming project, Campaigners.

I'll be locking down a convention schedule soon, so keep an eye out for that. And keep an eye out for my next blog about how Batman v Superman is proof positive that Warner Brothers has literally no idea what to do with DC.

Birthday Post

Today's my birthday!! I usually try not to make a big deal about birthdays, but I wanted to post for two reasons. One: Roy Stiffey, artist on Anonymous Nancy and all-around awesome guy, sent me this



Which is completely bad-ass! (btw, you can still pick up Anonymous Nancy, issues 1 and 2, on comiXology here)

The other reason I wanted to post is because it was on my birthday last year that I started my 365 stories project. Which means that, today, I have posted a new flash fiction story every day for the past year. That's 365 stories! Holy shit!

As I mentioned already, I'll be finishing out the month. Just feels cleaner that way. I'd like to say that I have special, profound story to end on, but I'll probably just crap something out about, like, fantasy warriors defeating an ancient enemy, or something post-apocalyptic, or whatever.

I'll probably spend the next couple weeks digging through the stories, just taking stock. I'd like to do some rewrites on the better ones and maybe put up a digital collection on like Amazon or something. We'll see.

Anyway, that's all for now!