Freewheel

This is probably one of my favorite pages of Chapter Three, when all the Gang Mills kids describe what they believe the Contessa is like. My favorite one, and the one that always cracks me up, is the kid who says “She’s made of cats!”

So I got an email from my friend Alan Lastufka the other day. He told me that a song on his upcoming album, Erase This, features a song called “Boxcar Blood” which was “semi-inspired by the attitude of Freewheel” and even name-checks Freewheel in a couple of lines! How cool is that? Erase This should be out sometime mid-May-ish from DFTBA Records, a label which he co-owns.

You may or may not know this, but Alan was actually instrumental in the creation of the original incarnation of Freewheel, which first appeared online as a webcomic on the Fall of Autumn website. Fall of Autumn was (maybe still is? I can’t totally tell from the website) a zine distro that I used to send copies of My Brain Hurts to for distro consideration back when MBH was a minicomic. They started selling MBH, and at some point Alan paid me to draw their website banner (which you can still see on their site), which if I remember correctly was actually my first paid illustration job, back in 2006 or so I think.

Alan and I worked together on a few projects, some which panned out, others which didn’t. I did some scratchboard illustrations for a zine project of his which ended up becoming a short film called “Five Stories,” which was shown on IFC (I am credited as “House Conceptual Design” as my illustrations aren’t in the film itself but the house in the film was inspired by the house I drew).

ANYWAY. Eventually he came to me with the suggestion of my doing a webcomic for the Fall of Autumn site. It would be good exposure for me and my work, and I could try my hand at a new story idea I’d been kicking around – a young girl who runs away from home to find her missing brother, and has some kind of train-hopping hobo adventure – which is what became Freewheel.

I was doing Freewheel for Fall of Autumn I think twice a week for a little while, but I was still working on My Brain Hurts and juggling a full-time job at the time, so eventually I had to cut back my updates to once a week, then once every two weeks, until I eventually decided to put it on indefinite hiatus. Part of this decision came from my own inability to give the story the time and attention it deserved, and the other part came from Alan‘s growing interest in YouTube, which I perceived as taking his time and attention away from Fall of Autumn projects, including Freewheel. It was obviously time for me to take a break.

Well, cut to a few years later, and I am now running Freewheel on my own site, giving it all the time and attention it deserves now that I am no longer working on My Brain Hurts or slaving away at a full-time job 40+ hours a week. Alan is a successful YouTube personality, having literally written the book on the subject, and his label DFTBA Records is doing awesomely, having been voted 2009′s Best Online Music Label of the Year by Mashable.

So what I’m getting at is, you should be sure to check out Alan‘s debut album, Erase This, on DFTBA Records this spring, and keep an eye out for the song Boxcar Blood, which was semi-inspired by the attitude of Freewheel. There may even be a special little cross-promotional dealie going on when the album comes out, but you’ll just have to wait and see!

Don’t worry, I’ll remind you again once it’s out!