Year of the Rooster

Hey everybody. It’s been a while since I posted something hasn’t it?

Part 1: Where are all the Chickens?

First off I need to say, I can’t apologize for the lapse in posts and artwork, because frankly, life happened. Good or bad it seems like life gets the better of us sometimes and between work and home I’ve had my hands pretty full this year (Moreso than in the past).  

But I’m not here for excuses. If you are here, reading this, then you are one of the small handful of people that are still checking up on my artwork and the Chickenbrain brand, and for that I want to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

One of the big things that happened last year is that my computer stopped working, which put a pretty definitive halt to any work on We Are Legion. What’s worse is that my hard drive may need to be wiped, so I could potentially lose EVERYTHING, fonts, logos, scripts, raw scans of pages, and unlettered colored pages, hell, the actual finished pages themselves. On top of that, my phone’s SD card took a crap on me too. So I was only barely able to salvage some of my script ideas. I am basically trying to blow up the Death Star without an X-Wing here.

What I’m trying to say is that it is pretty likely that this page is going to be the only place where you can look at the first two issues of We Are Legion in their original form, hopefully not, but I really need to brace myself for the worst here, and this is a real lesson in backing up my data.

The other, much bigger thing that happened over the last year is that my son was born, and while I’m sure one day he is going to be a massive comic nerd like me, right now he needs a lot more of my attention than my computer, or Adam and the Legion gang, and I feel like as a dad I’ve gotta be there for him in these formative moments as much as I possibly can. This doesn’t include his siblings who I am currently filling with horrible comic book knowledge as well, slowly turning them into giant nerds who read indie comics and talk about how X-O Manowar is in fact, much cooler than Ironman, just like me.

Part 2: Year of the Chickenbrain

I’m not going to lie, this is a downright stupid statement, but I want 2017 to be the year that I really get Chickenbrain going strong. We Are Legion was not the only bird in this brain of mine, and my seriousness about my brand has really driven me to try to not only work outside the box, but to make my own box entirely.

I am a modern artist. I like to experiment with different art styles and formats. That’s how all of this started to begin with, and I am inspired to try to get back to that in 2017. I want to get back to doing my thing, my way. Get back to not trying to adhere to some sort of schedule or issue lineup.

Just getting back to having fun making comics again.

When I had this revelation I realized that I didn’t necessarily need a computer to make this happen. (Okay maybe a little tech is important). I used to make (not good) comics using just the supplies around me at any given time. When I made my original comics Packin’ and Metroline I made them using unmeasured panels, and no prepared script.

Obviously I’m not going to take it that far, that was when I was a kid. But isn’t that what being a comic book fan is about? About capturing that joy?

There was only one logical place to go from here.

Jake Land

Part 3: Chicken-Man-Plans

I had worked on the purposefully unhinged Super Jake Land script using freewriting techniques back when my computer still worked, and thankfully I had a copy of that script backed up on my computer at work. I looked it over and laughed, obviously me laughing at my own work doesn’t really mean much, but that was enough for me. I started drafting artwork. Then I started working on actual art with just pens, pencil shading and small pieces of paper I was able to find around the office. This book is capturing the guerilla vibe of my high school books Metroline and Stamp perfectly (As it should, since I came up with the idea for Super Jake Land in high school as well).

The fire was back. But then I started to lose focus again. I was missing working on We Are Legion.

So I started writing a new book in the We Are Legion canon, which would serve as a prequel, I actually already have the first issue written entirely, but am thinking about trying to put the entire thing into one big project and just making a graphic novel style thing. It’s called Cosm: The Typhon Report, and it features..well Captain Cosm, the man who raised Adam Atom in space prior to We Are Legion.

I realized that working on another We Are Legion book in the interim while my PC is on the shelf meant that I would potentially be chomping into time I could be spending on Legion itself, so I decided that Cosm was going to be more of a pet project on the side while I focused on books I could actually complete right now. But Jake Land is such an unhinged beast that it doesn’t really tax the mind as much as it did back in highschool, when I was just trying to make the most bizarre RM2K3 game ever. Needless to say I have grown quite a bit in the damn near 10 years since I graduated, and I wanted to build something else, along with Jake Land to help get me into the same mental space that Legion does.

The second destination came into view.

Jecta.

Jecta, ironically also started as a computer game, or rather computer games in highschool as well. One was about a vast fantasy world in which several people learn they are gifted with incredible magical abilities called The Reckoning. The other was called Chronicles of Jecta, about a man who existed in two planes of existence, one in which he was a man in a medieval world, and another in which he was a magical being in an apocalyptic dreamscape. Both games were much more serious in tone, and I was putting a lot of effort into them (RPG Maker games take quite a lot of effort believe it or not). I had gone through and made a ton of story ideas for The Reckoning, while Jecta was more of an idea that I wasn’t sure what to do with.

*EDIT* I just realized that my very first RPG Maker game “Eternal Winter”, which was made with RPG Maker 2000 my freshman year is also included in the plot, but much later, so there’s a third aspect included as well.

I am much smarter now. Put them together. Make something new.

While I already had sort of melded the two together I did it under the pretense that Jecta, the man torn between dimensions would be the main character, and the magically powered individuals from Reckoning would become Hierophants to the Gods of the world they lived in, making them ‘power players’ in the story, but not necessarily the main characters.

After experiencing a ton of fantasy novels and games over the past few years I’ve come to the realization that I can make a fantasy story about a world itself and how it changes, which includes characters and how they change, like a standard fantasy adventure.

Make a book about a fantasy world, and how it changes, call it.

The Chronicles of Iyr

Now this book still has a lot of work to be done on it. But I have been hammering away at a script for the first issue, and I have it set up (right now) as having 8 issue arcs spread out over 7 “Books” but that could definitely change. I’d like to do the art using watercolors, which I have been playing with since reading some of Matt Kindt’s creator owned stuff like MIND MGMT and DEPT.H. With this stuff in place it makes creating this book more accessible, so I have goals that I can reach, but also breaks in between so I can breathe and experience my family the way a dad should.

I still intend to get my computer fixed, and obviously NONE of this stuff might happen (Please reference the last post-date on this blog). I am approaching this carefully, slowly, and casually. These are just some of my ideas for projects, and my priorities could change at any time. I don’t make money off of this stuff. I don’t have many fans (if any). I do this for fun, and I want to get back into that aspect of it in 2017. After all 2017 is the year of the Rooster (It’s like destiny, or something) so I’m going to focus on making it the year of the Chickenbrain as well.

 (Hastily drawn visual aid)