Tch's questions

TCH asks:


' Firstly I'd like to you how you keep up to date on the paleontology. You seem to read up quite a bit so I wondered if you had subscription to some journal?'


Well, I read several blogs with dinosaur themes:

Tetrapod Zoology

Laelaps

Then there is the Dinosaur Mailing List.

I'm not on the list anymore but I read the archives, they are usually a day behind.

And then of course Yahoo news has some good stuff. I sometimes get papers but they are usually pretty hard to get through.


' Secondly, did it ever occur to you to start up some dinosaur comic, either something in the style of Raptor Red or the classic Cadillacs and Dinosaurs? '

Yep, in fact I even drew 5 pages of it, but I didn't have the time to do it. We even had this cool thing planned so that when you put your cursor over a new dinosaur a fun fact would pop up. I'm hoping to have time too do the panel to panel stuff for the dino book. I inquired about doing Raptor Red for Dabel but it didn't sell that well so Random House didn't want to do it. Maybe one day:)


'Also some dragon sketches would be interesting to see :)'

I don't have any sketches but will a Pern fan picture work? It's got a Dragon:)

Best,

Brett

Happiest Moment Question

This is a tough one from Frank. To be honest I can't think of one singular moment that's the 'best.' I'm a 'Happiness is in the little things' kinda guy. I was really happy to get to work at Wildstorm. I was happy to get Jess. I was happy to get the Anita Blake license (two of them sort of blew up in my face (I won't say which two;)) Some of the happy moments aren't suitable for the blog;) Still other's I can't talk about in public.

I know the women will be saying, 'Of course it was when I proposed or when we got married.' But I was more nervous about the proposal part and the 'wedding' part was really just a formality and a cookout. Plus, I'm a guy and we really don't think the same way, trust me, we are way to gross for you;) If we actually told you what we were thinking about you would NEVER touch us again.

So I think I'll go with finding out about the 3rd printing of Anita Blake #1. Sure I've had books sell far more than the 60,000 copies but this was a book I picked to do well years before we even got to start it.

Best,

Brett

Jurassic Fight Club on tonight!

Also, that Evolve eyes things will be on after it. Both on the History channel. On the Scifi channel, Eureka season 3 starts tonight. Woohoo! Good night for sitting and vegging!

Enjoy!

Brett

Qestion 2

Frank, Jess will answer your question, she's a better story teller than I am:)

Sorry this took so long, our power inverter died and we only had power during the generator running time. I got a new one yesterday so all is well:)

Next question:

'What do you do to get the creative mojo flowing?'

I'm assuming your talking about the art..right, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more;)

It sort of depends, it might be something as simple as watching a dinosaur special on TV or just getting the urge the draw some animal people. Sometimes I just think of something I think is cool and off I go to the drawing board. Mostly they are just done when I'm in the mood to do them, the other stuff, comics and commissions... Well that's totally different.

Basically I do them because we have to eat. Some times it turns out to be fun, usually I'm just trying to get to the end of the book. To get the comics done I have to get in the 'groove' popularized in the great Disney movie 'The Emperors' New Groove' it also called the 'zone' by athletes. It sort of a frame of mind. Basically I have to NOT think about anything else, I generally just let everything else sort of fall by the wayside for a bit to get stuff done.

I have also been told that if I'm depressed I don't do anything other than the work, I stop drawing anything new and creative. It's how Jess tells my moods;)


On another note, the remnants of hurricane Dolly plowed through the area this weekend. The weather idiot guy Doppler Dave said we'd get .25 inches of rain....we got over 2. Good job!


On another note entirely a recent fossil has come to light! Yes humans and dinosaurs did walk the Earth together, the Flintstones had it right! NOT! This is so totally a fake it's not even funny.... well actually it is, since it's so bad. Go here for more info here.


Best,

Brett

Dead but Dreaming...the Cthulhu Tract

Y'all know what Chick tracts are, right? Those little religious comics with the really obvious moral lessons. Well, here's a Cthulhu tract. Enjoy.

Weirdly, the guy in the Cthulhu tract looks like my first husband.

Test I took

This was the result. It's actually fairly accurate:

My Liberal Identity:

You are a New Left Hipster, also known as a MoveOn.org liberal, a Netroots activist, or a Daily Show fanatic. You believe that if we really want to defend American values, conservatives must be exposed, mocked, and assailed for every fanatical, puritanical, warmongering, Constitution-shredding ideal for which they stand.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

I'm still laughing, they figured me out in 7 questions!

Best,

Brett

Question 1, the Scarlet Speedster

This question is from Damon O:

'You've made it clear that you're not interested in drawing superheroes anymore. However, you've also mentioned that you'd like to draw the Flash, so is there any circumstance where you might one day reconsider your non-superhero stance -- like if they offered you the Flash, for example?'

Let's see, if DabelBrothers fails I will be looking for another job and at that point I would have to consider doing superheros again. I might be interested at some later point when I get sick of doing the novel adaptions, but DC has NO idea who I am. I tried to get work with them after the second Thundercats series I was asked to do was pulled from me (more in a later answer.) They wanted me to send in samples and the like. I had a website, they could have just googled me. But I said I would, they stopped responding to my emails at that point. I did try to get work at Wildstorm in 2004 and 2005 but I was told by Scott Dunbier that they didn't have anything for me. This is the same guy who wouldn't sell to people who wanted my original art and instead tried to sell them Jeff or Jim stuff ( I actually got emails from people about this so I pulled all my art from WS.) He doesn't like me. Maybe Wildstorm will finally get back on top.

I might also be lured if Mark Waid was writting it. But that would depend on if I was working on a project at Dabelbros that I really liked or not.

I have had thoughts about doing Backlash again, but I doubt that will ever happen. I do miss him and Taboo every now and then. On a side note, we had actually thought about doing a Backlash Daredevil crossover instead of the Spider-man one. But we decided to go with the higher draw, unfortunately we did not know that the clone crap was going on so we might have done Daredevil if Spidey wasn't approved already.

Here's a story about the Flash that never was. Years ago right after DC bought Wildstorm I got a call From Jim Lee. He mentioned that Stan Lee was in talks with him and DC about doing a revamp of the main DC characters similar to Heroes Reborn. He asked if I would be interested and which character I'd like to do. Not being a DC fan in my youth I said the Flash, the only DC guy I ever really liked. Alas I left Wildstorm a few months later.

Any follow up questions will be answered in the comments.

Best,

Brett

Ask Brett a question!

In an effort to actually keep updating the blog, and sicne I can;t really think of anything interesting today how about this, you ask me questions? Just post them in the comments and I'll answer them to the best of my abilities. It doesn't have to relate to comics or science or dogs, just something you want to ask me. Nothing too crude please;)

Page from Frank 4, not only one panel with borders. I hate borders, I just do.

Best,

Brett

Dino Dilemma

Here's my problem, I drew this after I was told by everyone that Megaraptor was indeed a carcharadontosaur. Well, the newest paper says it was a spinosaur but even the experts are basically saying it's just an arm, it could be either because it looks like both...

Sooooo... I wanted to do some comic like scenes fro the dino book. This would have been page 1 of a 5 page sequence showing Megaraptor fending off some Carnotaurs from a kill. I plan to space out a few of these 'stories' throughout the book. But should I just scrap this one?

On the Jezit front. One of the death threats came from 1800 Flowers. Well the woman who's account it was sent under was fired. It turns out her Husband sent it. Idiot. I feel bad for her for loosing her job but to send death threats over something so trivial... And the husband is blaming the people who told 18oo Flowers about the email threat! Dude, you crossed the line and screwed up, man up.

When will it end!

Well next month I guess. I'm starting on Frankenstein #5 this week. I don't have anything 'scheduled' for after #5 but I might continue on to the next part of Frank or hop on another project. It's a bit up in the air right now. but after issue 5 I will get all the remaining commissions done.

Let's see, what interesting things have been going on? Well we ordered a new larger tri fuel generator, our tiny old one was starting to go. Well last Wednesday I got a call from the generator place confirming the order and whatnot. It will be shipped out of Illinois. That night I went to start our generator (It's been rainy and cloudy so no sun for the solar to do much more than power things during the day) after I pulled the cord it made this horrible grinding noise and then pulled the cord in and the cord handle popped off (It's basically a glorified lawn mower that has an alternator to generator power.) So I had to turn it off and take it apart. Well the piece that holds the recoil spring in place and the little thing that grabs the rotor on the engine popped off. I fixed it and replaced the handle. I tried it to make sure it would recoil and put it back on. It wouldn't recoil and it was next to impossible to pull the cord out.

I messed around with it and canniblized several parts from other generators and the like. It STILL wouldn't turn, I did notice that it would turn if I didn't put all the screws back in it. So I tried i t this way and it did indeed start but it destroyed the recoil gizmo in the process. No big, it was old and worn out I had a new on coming and could pick uo a cheap replacement the next time I went out. I just had to keep it running for a day. Well an hour and a half later it just stopped working. So I had to go out the next day to pick up a new one. Not a big deal as long as the rain didn't screw up the roads to bad. Well I made it out and apparently Pepboys had a sail on the little generator that died. They didn't have anymore but the floor model and the cord was screwed up already. So I basically had to get a big one that was on sale, so now I have a big generator in the back yard AND another one coming via ups. Ugh....

We had another snake, but this one was huge! I went under the house and we have yet to see it again but I have started putting up the snake barrier... Boog, the dog who got hit by the rattlesnake before, is fine:)

There is a lot of crazy fundie stuff going on on science blogs. It's all explained here.
Basically a kid took a Jezit (TM and copyright Dane Cook) and didn't eat it to show his buddy, the church people got all physical with the guy trying to get it back. He received death threats and the loving, caring, forgiving, church want him tossed out of school and brought up on hate crime charges. Ugh. Well PZ Myers of Pharyngula got wind of this and asked someone to steal a Jezit and has would do some sort of horrible thing to it. Well the Catholic League read about this and had a fit. They are trying to get Myers fired (he hasn't actually done anything yet) and he's notw receiving death threats from these loving, caring, forgiving Catholics. It is a piece of crappy ass bread people! I know I was raised Catholic and had to eat that fricking things lots of times. It sticks to the roof of your mouth and I'm told tastes like glue. I never ate glue as a child so I can't compare the two. Of course the Catholic League is the same guy who wanted to protest Heath Leadger's funeral fro playing a gay guy in a movie, so you know these are smartest most loving Catholics in the world;) If this stuff did turn into the flesh and blood of Christ, I doubt this religion would have lasted this long... gross.

Oh, Jurassic Fight Club will start airing on the History Channel on the 29th of this month. It's basically dinosaurs fighting against each other! Unfortunately it's on the same night and time as Eureka so I might have to watch it later in the week:(

Best,

Brett