As a first step in my new direction for DarkBrain, I want to celebrate the work that we completed in the project so far. As such, I am going to open up a significant portion of our comics to be completely free.
I will be updating darkbraincomics.com as this rolls out, and not duplicating posts here on darkbrain.com. This site I intend to be more of a blog and to focus on my next project.
That being said, it is nice to have made the decision to keep DarkBrainComics as it was – not censored or changed to meet a new standard. The work was done in a time and place, and it should be seen as it was envisioned.
When the Me Too movement started, I was rattled by the realization that the moral foundation I had was absolutely not shared by so many others in my country. How could I write comics and push on moral dilemmas if the very basis of what is right or wrong is not shared by the reader?
And, most upsetting, the empathy I feel for so many abused people is not shared by others. Is it a truth that people only feel empathy if they have a similar experience? That left me with the moment of clarity of pulling back and being struck dumb. Tacking that on to the natural end of DarkBrain production, I just stopped writing for many years.
Honestly, I’m still rocked by that experience and my current choice is to completely step away from my old style of writing. I am going to pivot to my work-in-progress and write it out as an R-rated story with zero sexual content. Not even a romantic one. Time to focus on something else for a while.
But, circling back to this post, I don’t think I should take my realization and put DarkBrain’s prior work out to pasture forever because (some) people don’t understand it. This, in combination with the decision not to “integrate” my creative life with my professional life, has put me in a good place.
So, please read up on DarkBrainComics and enjoy.
-Andrew Zar