Going Around: Alpha Shade Interview: The Conclusion

By Park Cooper

The GOING AROUND series of interviews was something we started to illustrate how the center of comics is moving away from where it was, and how one can get into comics these days in a different way from the oh so painful ways of the past-- by going around.

Very few people WANT to go around. _I_ don't want to have to go around. I'd rather have a real publisher admit that my work is the best choice for his or her company and agree to publish it (instead of just agreeing it's the best and not publishing it, which also happens).

The Brudlos brothers seem to WANT to go around.

Barb attended a con where she was on a webcomics panel recently with the Brudlos brothers, Chris and Joseph, of Alpha Shade. Alpha Shade is a free webcomic which has just started its first print run, and is meeting with success. Gaining fame not only for their comic but through their audio podcasts in which they say whatever they think, we decided that anyone who was meeting with such results as they are should be given the chance to reach the SBC audience… so here's the conclusion of the interview started last time...




SBC: All righty then. Let's bring it back to you for a sec. Now, do you both still have day jobs, or what?
JB: I quit my job to work on Alpha Shade full time last December. We incorporated in January 2005.
CB: And I work full time as a locomotive engineer for a class I railroad.
SBC: What does it mean to incorporate, exactly?
CB: We’re an actual business with an accountant and what not…
JB: Well I filed the paper work and Alpha Shade is now an official company… Alpha Shade Inc. If you are going to sell large amounts of product it makes sense.
SBC: Say, what steps have you taken to copyright?
JB: There is a general copyright that is automatically given to anyone who produces artwork.
CB: You are copyrighted, any time you put any idea into a tangible form, it's copyrighted to you by law.
JB: I did ask about further copyright protection, and what they said is:If someone steals your work, you can then upgrade to the more robust copyright retroactively and sue them for it.
SBC: But does Web count as tangible?
CB: Yes, your files on your computer.
JB: Basically you’re are covered no matter what. Of course you have to watch out for people trying to trick you into giving the rights over to them… advice to webcomic artists, be careful when people say they want to "publish your work" …or translate it and then they retain the rights of the translated version…
CB: The copyright thing does scare people from posting on the net, but we did research it first…

SBC: What are the long term goals of your comic?
CB: We plan to put out quite a few books by chapters. The first book should be around 16 chapters, with 2 more planned after that… or 16 each, give or take a few.
SBC: Er... How long is a chapter?
CB: 80-100 pages. We have the script written out, but sometimes the drawn out scenes are longer or shorter than you envision… like chapter one. It was only 16 pages in the script, but 90 pages drawn out.
SBC: Wait... one book will be around 16 chapters?
JB: Right so about 1500 pages a book
SBC: Gad.



CB: The book, as we call it, is the story arch… The first complete story will be about 16 chapter books of 80-100 pages each.
SBC: Now you say you weren't/aren't big comics geeks... what made you do a comic in the first place? I mean, at all?
CB: It was a combination of things. Joe was doing some neat things with flash and animation and drawing with his work. I was bored and had all these ideas floating around… and the general lack of comics on the web that I was interested in. We wanted to do a complex story line that didn’t fall apart in the end like a lot of the Japanese stories do....
JB: I remember reading Chris's script and I said, ‘why don't you just publish this as a novel,’ he said that there were plenty of novels out there, he wanted to do a long form graphic novel.



SBC: Example of a "Japanese story" that falls apart in the end?
JB: So many of them end with a giant blob at the end, or a nuclear explosion…
SBC: That would be Akira, then.
JB: Yes, although that was one of the ones that started it…
SBC: Akira's more coherent in the graphic novel…
JB: Princess Mononoke.
SBC: My feeling about Princess Mononoke wasn't that it fell apart SO much for me... I just didn't LIKE the ending much at all.
CB: EVA the movies…The Wings of Honneamise did too.
SBC: OH GOD don't start with me on EVA. We LOVED Evangelion, HATED the endings. Well the TV series ending was hardly an ending, but I liked it more than the movies... It was all just fine right up until Red killed them 9 angels in like 12 seconds… after that... I would have wrapped it up right about there
JB: Part of the problem is that when the Japanese people say what movies influence them, they all list 2001.
[Editing note: I see the truth of this everywhere I look in anime now-- most recently in Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex. --PC].



SBC: So you guys were ANTI-influenced by anime... what WERE you influenced by?
CB: The Wings of Honneamise is one of may all time fave movies
JB: Actually, when we were kids we read a series called ElfQuest that is similar in scope to what we are doing. ElfQuest was the first comic that really impressed me… as a kid I couldn't put it down. Appleseed was also a big influence (the graphic novels).
JB: Naussica, Valley of the Wind (the graphic novels again)
CB: Even Dune, a bit.
CB: And of course, history.
JB: I also would have to say the Starblazers series (Yamato)… When we were kids it was one of the only cartoons that showed consequences.



SBC: Heh. Friends, I know all about Elfquest. I watched that when I was young... say, how old ARE you two?
JB: I'm 31
JB: Chris is 35
SBC: I was gonna say, you must be my age if you knew about Star Blazers in the day. That and Battle of the Planets was my afternoon.
CB: Yeah Starblazers was what got us into the whole thing.
JB: The funny thing is that after that our TV broke and our parents didn't replace it for 5 years, so from first grade to 5th grade I had a lot of time to ponder that show… and draw a lot
SBC: Say, have you guys done the anime FLCL?
JB: I thought it was great…
CB: Yeah... But I think kids today think everything should be FLCL.
SBC: I loved it. Staying into it was hard for Barb though.


JB: MY favorite anime of all time though is Azumanga Diaoh
SBC: Wow, another guy who likes Azumanga Daioh! "Lemmee put my POWER into it again…"
CB: Of all the Japanese TV shows I've seen, AD was the best.
JB: Azumanga Daioh is one of the few animes that did absolutely everything right.
SBC: Barb loves AD too, particularly the start and the end. She fought falling in love with it and couldn't.
CB: It was funny and touching and ended perfectly. We try to push that one all the time.
SBC: We still go around talking about Mr. Tadakichi… and doing Chiyo's "please don't drive the car" speech
CB: It would be different if it was just yapping, but the story evolves and you see them grow up a bit through there high school years, it was fun.
SBC: Yes. Evolving in real time is a gift that western comics generally just throw away… Because then their characters would get too old and they couldn't milk them for profits anymore…
SBC: Okay let's wrap this up... We can talk about anime all day. We might need to do another interview someday just about anime.
JB: That would be good…


SBC: Here we go, last question... Take me through a typical day for each of you.
JB: Okay, I start working anywhere between 7pm and 10pm and I work until 6am to 4pm the next day every day unless my wife makes me visit her relatives.
CB: I work on the scripts and storyboards for a bit. I don't want to get ahead too far on the storyboards.
JB: Chris calls about 5 times a night to keep me on track…
CB: Mostly I stay one page ahead because things change as Joe draws them out and sometimes that means reworking the next pages.
JB: I try to sleep while my wife is at work, and spend a couple hours with her a night… then work while she sleeps.
CB: I do PR stuff. Answer emails (I'm bad at it too), check tracking programs to see where referrals are coming from… deal with the Ad stuff and look for new areas to expand into.
JB: Mostly I work on the pages, but there is also Alpha Rants, packing up the shipments, maintaining the website, making tutorials, doing research for animation, doing animation, keeping up on the fans in the forums… my blog… extra comics etc…
CB: We started moving into the podcast thing as well, and that’s brought in new people. Today I did about 6 hours or editing for a 1 hour and 20 minute show…











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