Hello, there!
I have retired the old website, I’m twenty-five pages into laying out my next graphic novel project, and as of July 1, 2024, went live with my new rebuilt BrentAndersonArt.com website, the same day I kicked off my 2024 Month of Sundays Art Commission Event, which was very successful. Thank you to all who participated and made it a success. I am enjoying my current transition into “retirement” quite a bit.
Fifty-six years ago, in 1968, I was introduced to the World of Monthly Marvel Comics Group Wonderfulness, and immediately, with the help of a middle school friend, George Chelemedos, began to produce one creative conceit after another a Brent Anderson Universe of characters and stories and comic strips. For a period of three-and-a-half years, I created dozens of new characters, robot heroes, animal-themed heroes, super spies, prehistoric heroes, space-adventuring and cosmic hero-gods, and super-teams. It was the Age of the Superhero and I was all in.
At roughly the same time, I published, co-published or contributed to a number of independently produced amateur comics called, at the time, “fanzines” or “fan magazines,” yet never losing sight of my ambition to produce my own universe of creator-owned comics.
In each of the years 1971-72, I mailed two packages of original pencil art to Marvel’s Art Director, John Romita (Sr.), each containing five penciled sample pages. Each return of the artwork included a Form Rejection Letter with a hand-written note at the bottom from Romita encouraging me to continue practicing and, in the second letter, if I ever found myself in NYC to call upon him for an interview.
Four years later, in 1976, I did just that, and for six months did a smattering of work for Doc Savage Magazine, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, a five page “Angel of the X-Men” back-up story, and an unfinished story for DC “Mail Order Brides to Another World.”
After six months, I knew I wasn’t ready in either ability nor temperament to start my career with the comics industry, so I returned to California for two-and-a-half more years of art instruction and personal comics creation.
In 1979, I returned to Marvel and New York, got plenty of work and a few proffered opportunities, some taken some not, but I never adopted the “and I never looked back” expression I had read and heard other artists in the field making. Not once. I was constantly looking back to the unfinished nascent work of my youth, and wondering if I would ever have the chance to “go back” and pick up where I had left off, even as I was building a successful 50-year career drawing and co-creating many diverse comics in every conceivable genre.
I didn’t only think about going back, however. During those fifty years, I jotted down story ideas, did character designs, collected every possible reference I could for each project, carefully storing and recording them in 4-drawer filing cabinets, cardboard boxes, and ultimately in digital files, for use at some indeterminate time when I resumed work, if ever.
It’s now if-ever time.
With the completion of the most recent issue of Astro City, the “That Was Then” Astro City Special One-Shot (March 2022) and the 209-page El Jaguár “Out of the Shadows” graphic novel (unpublished as of September 2024) I was free to contemplate what my “retirement” from comics was going to look like. I knew from Day One back in November 1968 when I drew my first “Radium” four-page comic, this was what I would do for the rest of my life, only stopping if I could not physically draw or conceptually write the material, or I was dead, whichever came first.
So, today I am announcing my official “retirement” from the comic book industry. Long live retirement!
See you in the Funnies!
Brent Eric Anderson
If you would like to respond or leave comments, go to https://brentandersonart.com/site/contact/
I would love to hear from you.
