Welcome to the new updated and upgraded BrentAndersonArt.com website. It represents a turning point in my career, looking both forward to the creation of new comics, and looking back to a time before I became a working professional. This new website bridges them both.
Launching a new website is a rather daunting task for me. I’ve always been a technophobe, and definitely not a first adopter, so it was quite an accomplishment back in 2004 for me to agree to an offer from a fan and web designer to design and help me manage a business and personal website. It was an opportunity I was ill equipped to manage let alone optimize for my business, but I gave it a go. The site served me well for fourteen years, despite my many neglectful lapses in managing it, but with help from the original designer, who never charged me what their time and effort were truly worth, I fully appreciated their support of my career and work.
Around 2010, I had started planning a massive restructuring of Art for Sale exclusively through the website when 180 pages of art were stolen out of my car in San Diego in 2011. The ordeal of rebounding from that went on for three years, during which time I lost all interest in selling my original art anywhere, let alone online. Through a series of unlikely events, ten pages from the theft were returned, but the bulk of them are still out there somewhere, I hope. And I hope who ever has them appreciates them.
Then, in 2016, the hosting services were transferred to a different company, and BrentAndersonArt.com no longer had the hand-holding support I had grown accustomed to. When I needed hands-on help with Admin, I quickly found out how expensive it was, so the site sat neglected all through the pandemic, though I did keep paying the same low contracted price for the hosting, and would use it occasionally to post News or direct links to my online store (www.baartstore.com).
This brings me up to last year. Due to health concerns, Astro City was put on hiatus by creator Kurt Busiek, who focused his attention on getting and keeping the series in print in six Astro City MetroBook TPB collections, published by Image Comics, the original publisher of the first six issues of Astro City! A circle seems to have been completed for me in this regard, too. In the interim, Kurt outlined and I drew an original graphic novel “Gods on Sunday Morning” to be published by Image Comics last year, but has run into a production snag, which I hope is rectified soon. I had to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my career.
My decision was to pick up many or all of the comic book projects I had furloughed back in 1976 when I began my professional career, and produce all-new projects into the future, using a revamped website to facilitate the transition. This is my “retirement” from doing work for others on their properties and turning to the production of my own Brent Anderson Comics Universe, the one I envisioned for myself back in the summer of 1968 when I discovered, and was inspired by, the Marvel and DC comic book universes. I’ve had success over the years in co-creating two independent comic book universes, “Strikeforce: Morituri” (with Peter Benno Gillis) and “Astro City” (with the aforementioned Kurt Busiek) and I very much look forward to creating my own independent brand under KneeDeep Productions. (I’ve actually laid out two-dozen pages of my first project as I type this.)
The new website will reintroduce access to my art commissions schedule, which will go monthly starting in August 2024, accommodating four-to-eight commissions per month as studio time permits.
And, finally, I am reorganizing and archiving my art collection with the intent of posting it for sale on the BrentAndersonArt website. This will come later as I continue to educate myself (with help) in how to administer and manage the site. This is the place to review what I do with the next 12 years of my life in the production of what I hope will be very entertaining comic books, graphic novels, and comic strips.
Check into the BrentBlog from time to time. I will be posting what I hope are interesting adjuncts to my works-in-progress, histories of production, interesting anecdotes, sketch and preliminary art and work procedures. There are links to my YouTube, Facebook, InstaGram and XTwitter accounts. I invite you to check in now and again to see what I’m up to.
Enjoy!
Brent Anderson
July 1, 2024
