BRUTE

First, my apologies for its been too long since I last posted. I’m endeavoring to get back to a bi-weekly schedule with my musings on Brute, and comics in general.

Comic convention season is here and we’re pleased to announce we’ll be at the Toronto Comic Con this weekend at the Metro Toronto Convention Center, booth A139! Owen and I will also be looking at which other conventions we can attend so we can introduce Brute to as many people as possible. While we’d love to tour North America, currently that isn’t realistic so we will stick mostly close to home (Toronto) but maaaayybbbeee Chicago or New York. Hope to see you at one soon.

In the meantime, I’ve started plotting out the entirety of the Brute maxi-series I’m looking to tell. I don’t want to end up doing a ‘Robert Jordan’ – I want to ensure I keep the series ‘tight’ without needless fluff issues or pointless meandering plotlines that go nowhere, not to mention ensure it can get finished even if it is not ultimately by yours truly. I have a very definitive story I want to tell with these characters as they progress from hopeless to heroes (or not…).

I’m up to roughly the 100th issue, and have plotted out how one particular character’s life goal is finally realized – that the thing they’ve been fighting for tooth and nail for 100 issues is in their grasp but embracing it will cost them their very self-respect. It’s a totally soul-crushing but character-defining moment that will forever change who this character is and what they stand for. This by the way is one of the things to look for in this series. Unlike characters like Spider-Man, Batman or even Captain Canuck – characters who essentially cannot change too much and must remain more or less themselves from decade to decade, these Brute characters will be very different people by the end of the series. They will grow, evolve, and become more (or even possibly less) than who they are now.

Which is a perfect bridge to my next topic – The evolution of GOBBY. In my last two posts, we looked at how the artistic conception of various characters had evolved from their initial conception to the current finished product, and perhaps none have evolved more so than our adorable, curmudgeonly GOBBY. Despite, or perhaps because of, being just a piece of crystal, GOBBY was one of the hardest to nail down, but Owen absolutely rose to the challenge with the GOBBY we meet in Brute #2 – #3.

Finally, I’ll end this post with another sneak peek at the upcoming Brute #3. Here’s a look at the fabulous 1st page picking up immediately after where Brute #2 ended – with Brute and Rose in a whole heap of trouble.

That’s all for now! Next time, I’ll update you on how the Toronto Comic Con went and my thoughts on the evolving industry of comics.

By the Essence,
Preston Squire

* Robert Jordan is a beloved and notorious author of the best-selling ‘Wheel of Time’ fantasy book series (and now a Netflix TV series). RJ (I’ll call him RJ for short) wrote a wonderful trilogy of books called the ‘Wheel of Time’ which was near perfect – except… at the very end, he did a bait-and-switch and revealed the ultimate villain was in fact, a pawn of an even greater evil (sigh). And so a forth book came out where not a lot of progress was made by the heroes but more plot threads were introduced and everything was fraught with portent of what was about to happen. And then a fifth where less happened but more plot threads were introduced still keeping you eagerly awaiting for the imminent climax. And then a sixth which just did the same, and so on which each book getting thicker in size, thinner in progress and deeper in convoluted plotlines – but his writing was soooo good he held onto a loyal audience for nine books…

And then he died.

The publisher hired another author to wrap-up the Wheel of Time story but even switching gears to immediately resolving plot thread after plot thread, it took him another three whole books to wrap up the gargantuan meandering story Jordan had started… but never finished.