Brain Cloud Comics

Brain Cloud Comics is an independent comic book publisher and maker of paper artifacts who strives to publish the best indie books.

STL SPEX (Joceline): What are your artistic influences? 

Growing up, I was heavily influenced by Frank Miller and his runs (solo and with David Mazzucchelli) on Daredevil and Batman. To this day, those are still some of my favorite comics. Later on, it was pretty much anything published by Vertigo Comics — I love Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillion’s Preacher, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s 100 Bullets. Rounding out my influences would be Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillip’s Criminal and Mike Allred and Laura Allred’s Madman and The Atomics.There are a ton of other artists, writers, and cartoonists that I could site here, but I always keep coming back to this group. 

STL SPEX: Who do you create for? 

Selfishly, I only create for me. I’ll get an idea for a story and then I’ll have to get it out, it’s as simple as that. I wish that I didn’t have this obsession with making comics, but whatever ideas I have usually come to me broken down into panels and begging to be inked. I always hope that people dig what I put out, but I create comics because I am compelled to tell a story. 

STL SPEX: Which project has been the most difficult to make and why?

There was one project that took almost eight years of my life and then imploded when my collaborator quit so that one probably takes the prize for most difficult. My newest book Blood on the Trackshas probably had the most difficult journey to being made because my creative team and I have worked on it in fits and starts since mid-2015. There were a lot of life changes — new jobs, new kids, new houses, etc. — that we all underwent during that time, which ended up stretching out the project timeline. In the end, I think we made something that’s really special, and it’s the longest book that any of us has worked on so far. 

STL SPEX: How did the idea for Brain Cloud Comics arise?

Brain Cloud Comics came out of necessity. I was trying to get my graphic novel Pretentious Record Store Guy published and all I got were rejection letters. I self-published the first issue and kept getting positive feedback from people, so I decided to create my own publishing imprint to put out the works my friends and I were creating. Ten years and two dozen books later, we are still going strong!