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1/1/03 - Wow, another year passed. I hope you all had a wonderful and safe year and new years. A lot has happened (and a lot not happened) in my life as well as in Bruno.
In Bruno, I know that this year has been a bit of a change, the pace of the strip slowed down, I allowed more pregnant pauses rather than leading y'all as much by a nose chain. The artwork was as well pretty solidly photographically sourced (enough exceptions to make me frown, but I'm still majorally smiley), but yeah, which I feel has really enriched it a lot. And I hadn't planned on this year being a big "issue" year, the majors being, transgender and stripping. They were just things which found themselves posed as questions in front of me, things I felt that I had respectively, no notion at all about, and pre-concieved notions about. And I hope it has not come across preachy or like an after school special. But yes, both have been interesting, and hopefully that holds true as well to the majority of you. And hopefully the following (many, hopefully) years will be as much so.
Business-wise this year, I did a bit more freelance, which i obtained through Bruno (as my unaware resume i guess). I did my first trade show in San Diego where I managed to break even (plan on being there as well as APE this year). I'm sure I will show a bit of a spike in profits this year due to having sold original drawings (still some for sale). But due to owing a ton of money from not having worked much the year before due to travel and the economy, I just kinda skimmed by. I am ending the year alive and in sorta' okay financial condition, albeit the majority of dental work is on hold. But hopefully Book #8, Book #1 reprinted, and my novel, will all be going to the printer, for at least small print runs, at the beginning of Feburary, so due out likley the beginning of May. But we all know how those kind of projeections usually pan out...
Starting on Monday, the 6th, I will be reducing my job hours to 5 hours/day. This is not, unfortunately, due to having loads of money coming in through other sources (I will, in fact, be dirt poor, but happier), but rather me throwing in the towel of beating myself up by working so hard. And as well, I am developing a second comic strip which if not picked up by the synidcates (King is the only synicate I still haven't heard from on the package i submitted) then I plan to self-syndicate (big pain in the ass, but maybe worth it). And no, you have not seen this project, and unfortunately it's going to stay quiet until it's ready. But I will be working a lot on it, and I promise, I will share it eventually, be it through some form of syndication, or simply on my site.
Anyhow, best to all of you. And thank you all, for all your supportive (and not) emails, for the interesting debates on the bulletin boards, the financial support both through patronage and buying of books, drawings, and merchandise. I know I only earn some loose spending cash through Bruno, but still, both that, and the immense encouragement ai receive from you all, are truly what help me continue on with this project. As much as i love it, if i was doing it with no audience and making no money, i think i'd have to throw in the towel completely. Even I have limits to how hard I can self-motivate and push myself.
I will try to continue to create things of interest, facination and beauty.
My best,
-Christopher
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1/2/3 - So I'm finally caught up on the strips. I can't tell you how good that feels. Yay!
So yeah, I have a question for any San Fransicians. I will be traveling with a friend down to San Fran APE comic-con, and am wondering if anyone can put us up.
Bethanne and myself will be traveling down to San Francisco, arriving Thursday, January 30th, and the convention is February 1st and 2nd. Bethanne will be leaving Sunday the 2nd and I will be leaving Monday, the 3rd. If anyone lives accessible to the convention center which is at 620 7th Street, and has sleep/floor space, I would be very grateful.
Jenn and Kip will be going down too, I believe just for the weekend, and if someone has space for four people, even better. But they're looking into other arrangements, so this is not necessary.
For those of you hoping to see me at the convention, I am unsure of my table location yet, but the name I'll be under is "Baldwin and Lee", as Jenn (Manley Lee) and I will be sharing a table, as we will also be doing at San Diego Con.
Anyhow, thanks so much. :)
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1/3/3 - The First Congregational Church is actually quite a beautiful church. My favorite view is at night when they light up the steeple, it gets this massive surreal look to it. But yes, to see the chruch from outside the alcove area where Elian and Bruno are standing (albeit on a sunny day), see it here.
Well, and it looks like a place(s) to stay has been procured in San Francisco for the APE comic-con. Yay! I'll keep you all posted as the date comes closer, and hopefully soon I'll even find out where I will be sitting. But yes, more info is here.
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1/4/3 - The, uh, see, the short strip is because yesterday's was a taller strip, see? Umm.. the pages, the books are 5.5x8.5, and so the two strips together, they... wait, is this microphone on?
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1/8/3 - Oh... not 'Nam, I meant Iraq, oh wait, that hasn't happened yet.
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1/9/3 - Okay, so the amount of text in this strip truly goes beyond what is reasonable. But I really don't mind. :) There are times for it, and times not for it. I wish I had even more space so I could have mentioned the thigh-high roller skates.
I hope everyone is feeling okay today. For no particular reason, it's just what's going through my mind.
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1/15/03 - Speaking of "Whoo-hooooooo", I finished my novel this weekend (well, about 6 days of straight work, plus taking off two days from my job). It took me 7 years after beginning it, and is only finished 5 months after I had hoped it would be, from when i realized I was reaching the home stretch.
So yes, Bruno book#1 (reprint), Bruno book #8, and my novel (a farce), will all be released simultaneously, hopefully in early May.
And it looks like all is confirmed with the Con. Jenn and I will be at table #297 at the APE comic-con Feb 1st and 2nd.
That's it. :)
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1/18/03 Today's (Saturday) strip will appear at the regular time (6:00am NYC time), but on Sunday.
So, there's this huge protest Saturday, supposed to be at least 10,000 people, against the possible war in Iraq. And so I'm going to go there and be a part of it because it's something I believe in, and I'm also going to try and do a Bruno strip there. And I wanted it to fall on the correct date. So yeah.
Anyhow,
Peace.
My best,
-christopher
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1/19/03 - So the protest was great, and enormous. Felt really good to be a part of this, as I believe this potential war is misguided, and it felt good to be a part of something, with so many people who actually came to something for something they believed in. Hell, maybe this is what it feels like for many of you to go to church. But it was just great.
So yeah, hard to describe how many people were there, they said there were 20-30 thousand, although I can't verify that. Here's a pcture I took behind about 3 blocks worth of shoulder to shoulder people facing a stage with speakers (and many more were behind me).
And here's just another picture showing the people waiting to enter the parade, it took a huge amount of time just to get everyone from the S. Park Blocks into the march, there were just so many people to cram into the streets.
And lastly, Bethanne and I did our small part. We copied 60 form letters to Colin Powell, and filled out the envelopes and put on stamps, and got people to sign and provide addresses, and mailed them all off today. Below's a picture of us upon completion, and below that is a copy of the letter (feel free to print it and do the same).
January 18, 2003
Honorable Colin I. Powell
Secretary of State
Harry S Truman Building, 2201 C Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20520
Dear Mr. Secretary:
I am writing in protest of the potential war on Iraq.
Along with many others, I would like to see Saddam Hussein disarmed, but I have seen no evidence that this war is necessary or justified. I believe this should be resolved through international diplomacy. Our policies to date have only hurt the Iraqi people, and this war appears to be a continuation of that.
For too long already, it has been clear that the administration has planned to attack Iraq regardless of the results of weapon inspectors, or the opinion of the international community. I have not found that this administration's motivations for war reflect a desire for peaceful or diplomatic solutions.
Please act in the best interest of the nation as a whole, including reconsidering this questionable military action which has such a high disapproval rating, both internationally and here at home.
thank you for your time and consideration in this matter,
-
Anyhow (again addressing you, the readers) that's it. It was beautiful weather and we had a great time (although Bethanne later got sick on bento). And I'm just finishing this 5 mintues before deadline. Yay, for lucky timing. :) -c
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1/20/03 - Sorry to get all political, I really don't like to rant and rave, and you're all here for a comic-strip not for a soapbox below. But I just can't wish a straight M.L.K. day without commenting on such extremely recent news.
Bush has spoken out and set the white house legal staff in motion to end affirmative action. Both Powell and Rice, two of the highest black leaders in our country, both feel that race should be a factor in diversifying student bodies.
I stand with Powell and Rice on this, and disagree very much with Bush. And so I'd like to personally wish you all a joyous Martin Luther King day and state my strong support of affirmative action. Someday I hope this country will be more equal, to all races and genders and sexual persuasions, but there's a lot of work to be done.
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1/22/03- So, several Bruno items today. First is, that after just over 2 years of Eric hosting the Brunoboard bulletin board, he is relinquishing that post at the end of January. I'd like to not only point out his always witty blog, but also thank him for providing this opportunity and forum. The board has provided a great place to go really in-depth on a lot of issues I've addressed in the strip, as well as in my own text blips I provide. Sometimes it's been hairy, but I feel kinda' proud that the board has stayed pretty much on topics, and not gone off into self-referential techno buzz-words that only a few people can understand about nothing.
That said, I am not looking for a replacement. The reason being that the board has had an effect on the creation of Bruno, influenced the writing and process of it in several ways, and some of the ways I have not really cared for. I don't want to go into detail, but it's simply this, I'm here to draw Bruno, it's the love for this that i am doing any of this, and so it takes priority. Someday I may try to get a board up again, but for now, I'm just going to focus on the strip.
I know mostly politics and religion were the main topics, so hopefully you can all find other places to discsuss these things. For politics I might reccomend Kevin Moore's site, or Barry had a huge blog/debate on stripping recently, as well as dealing with politics. And Kip's site is defintiely where you want to go if you like the political and literary obscure intellectual beauty of words.
What else. Bruno book#8 will be going to the printer hopefully within the next few weeks. I mostly just have the cover to do at this point. So yes, I wanted to say, if you wished to help, or for your name in the "patron" list, now's the time, and every bit helps, especially with me trying to print 3 books at once (book #1 reprint plus the novel as well)
And again, I will be at APE comic-con Feb 1st and 2nd along with Jenn at table #297. Tickets are pretty cheap (to the show, not necessarily for the airplane ride) so i hope to see lots of you there. I'll have books discounted probably to $10 for the show, plus I'll try to do free sketches and stuff like that.
Anyhow, that's about it. Went and saw "adaptation" (thus today's strip), which was fun to talk about afterwards. I liked it, and it was very interesting and fun, but I'm still unsure what to make of it. And Kevin showed me a pub I didn't know about which I really liked, and they didn't have any ginger-ale (sad), and the 7-up wasn't working, and so they gave me squirt! Which made me laugh, I didn't even know that squirt (if you believe it, a grapefruit flavored soda) still existed. :)
-Christopher
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1/25/03 - Hey, so I fell ill this week. Amazing that i managed to finish Friday's strip. But basically it is friday evening, and I'm not good for anything. I'll try to catch up, but we'll see. I need to get strips done before I go to San Francisco next week, but yeah. I'll do my best.
My best,
-christopher
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1/27/03 - Well, today, Monday, I'm posting Saturday's strip. I'm hoping that Tuesday I'll post Monday and Tuesday's strips (Monday's is half done as-we-speak), but we'll see how it goes. Again, I'll do my best.
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1/28/03 - Okay, I must want myself to fail or something. The entire weekend was planned to do Bruno, but "life" things came up, and I was simply not able to get much done. In fact, on Sunday, I was still a half-day behind. Now instead of giving myself an easy week, I choose this frikkin' week to have the most detailed and rich drawings i could come up with. So yeah, I'm doomed to not get it all done before I go to San Francisco for the convention this weekend, but I'll get done what I can. Hell, I still haven't finished Tuesday's strip (the one up today is still Monday's). But sleep still needs to be had. My apologies for this self-inflicted disaster in advance.
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1/29/03 - I know, immediately after I whet your whistle, I pull away the fish. So yeah, last night when i stopped drawing at about 9:00, I hadn't realized then, but I had burnt a fuze. I had been trying to do too much, and it went into overload. Today I could barely move or function at all. it was not quite panic attack, but enough to give me enough sense to take a break. So, I am taking a week off of producing Bruno. Instead, I will be digging into my archive folder and pulling weird Bruno stuff out that you've probably never seen. Like today, it's a cast sketch I had done for a commission which never panned out (must've been shortly after I got to Portland, as the philosophy club is in it, but it mainly features her life out east. And yes, it is very sketchy). Anyhow, the "actual" strip will resume next week, I'll post the "planning to go to OMSI" strip on Monday and continue on Tuesday with a new strip.
Sorry about this, but you know, trying to look after my mental health and all. A damaged cartoonist is okay (and likely), but a broken one is useless.
Oh, and at APE, There'll be a banner above Jenn and my table, I don't have a pic of her side yet, but if you're looking for me, my side will look like this:
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1/30/03 - So, strips never shown before. Today's strips are from Bruno's first visit to New Orleans (and before I re-began the strip, she went to New orleans before dropping out of college). The problem was that they broke the wall between Bruno and audience, plus they simply broke the reality of the strip. So even though they appeared in the UMass Daily Collegian, and even went into the 8.5x2.75 photocopied Bruno zines I first did, when I re-started the strip for the web in 1996, I cut them out.
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1/31/03 - More strips never shown before, today with a holiday theme. I actually quite like the Christmas-lights one, and may re-use the tone of it at some point, but for some reason it never went in, I think it just got lost or something. The Thanksgiving strip... umm... I'm a vegetarian (always have been), and was likely just being my college vegetarian revolutionary self.
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