For now, the Solar Brothers

Work is underway on Gygax's Inferno as you read this, but it remains important for me on a personal level to add all of my older work to this blog. I want it to live on somewhere, and this seems like a good home. With the conclusion of the Robot Masters, it's time to move on to the Solar Brothers. I began these drawings in 2009, and honestly the primary impulse was to quickly create a small art book that I could xerox, sew together, and sell at a small press show. It was an excuse for me to take a little journey through my own private universe, illuminating the extrasolar beings that I imagined lived out there. I thought I would only do one zine, but in 2010 that turned into a second collection, and in 2011 I created a third. Primarily as an antidote for some of the stress the Moby-Dick project was causing me.

I'm really very fond of these Solar Brothers. They are mostly small, quick drawings of rough ideas given life. But something about them always spoke to me. A friend RF recently wrote to me saying that "I see the Solar Brothers as creatures of extreme isolation albeit ones who wouldn't acknowledge the concept of 'isolation.' They're sentient, but know neither malice nor friendship as we understand them -- the dimensions they act in aren't our dimensions, and their social lives aren't our social lives. One comes upon them in deep space, and one is observed. Most have eyes for this purpose. The observation changes you." Which I thought was brilliant, incredibly kind and complimentary, and absolutely accurate. So with RF's description in mind, enjoy your look at the Solar Brothers. There are 48 of them, and while I thought that would be the end, these days I'm not so sure any more.