State of the Union 2011

It's been a while that I wrote a blog, left an update, posted a picture, or basically did anything for Culture Clash Studios.  A lot has been going on, and it has been a rollercoaster of a life.  The past number of months there just haven't been any motivation for me to focus on the tasks at hand that personifies the studio goals.

I can bore you all to death about my past friends that have come and left to move on, relationships that fell apart because of many different reasons, or just plain old depression.  But none of that can compare with probably the biggest change in my life recently and that is the disappearance of my best friend of 17 years.

My friend Dennis Mullan disappeared on January 2, 2011 and we have not heard from him since.  All the information that we know of as of date can be viewed at http://www.alternatewars.com/Dennis/Dennis_Handout.pdf.  If you have any information, or if you would like to help out, please do so.  Any help is appreciated.

But it's been close to five months, and as much as I hope for the best I have to realize that my best friend is gone.  And I didn't realize how he was a big part of my life until I looked back and remembered just the little things that we did.  In fact the best times I shared with him was when I would get off work, I would know that I could call him up and ask if he wanted to chill and get some grub he would be all for it.  And of course we shared the sake interest in food so our best choices was whether we wanted chicken or beef.  He hated Chinese food, so we never chose that.

Now with him gone, I lost a huge part of my life.  I still have a lot of friends, true, but to Dennis I can chew the fat with him and confide a lot that would trouble me during my days.  Now I lost that, sorry that I know some of you folks are trying to cheer me up and be that listening post.  But I guess I am back to just listening to myself talk from now on.

Dennis had his words of wisdom, and to those out there who knew him you would agree.  To me, there was one word that he would always say to me...

"Nerb....."

Okay I guess it sounds stupid, and ya when he responded with that to me I would get agitated as if he wasn't listening to me.  But now I realized why it now has meaning for me.  For everytime I would whine to him about relationship troubles, work problems, money, whatever, most of the time it would end with that response.  I guess it makes sense.

Why?  Simple!  Why worry about it, is what Dennis would usually mean.  Why whine about relationships, about work, money, blah?  Usually after Dennis and I chill at the local Krispy Kreme or the Southside Restaurant we would gripe a bit, have a Coke, then talk about the next fighting game we want to play.

So thank you Dennis for everything.

So in other words, as Dennis always pushed me to do after every convention, I got to keep drawing.

I got to keep Culture Clash Studios alive.

So the following are the projects that we will be focusing on for the remainder of the 2011 year:

AYVB - our weekly comic strip will be...weekly now.  It finds a new place in our website.

MG3 - Original manga by Toki.  We are currently working on publishing all the works to be sold exclusively at conventions

New logo - yes, we are redesigning

Tracebook, the comic - using a cast of many from my Tracebook photos via my Facebook this will be a weekly comic strip.  Permission request forms to use your likeness will be needed, i.e. if you can take a joke about yourself then by all means sign up

Project D - in honor of my friend Dennis, this will be a redrawn version if the comic book series we started, updated bi-weekly

So thanks Dennis for waking me up.  I'll see you when I see you.