Mat Brinkman

i met Mat sometime in the fall of 1992; he was part of the SBS crew that regularly skated past my room on Angell Street in the middle of the night. the hill does not at first appear to be skateable... it's a severe incline, with crossing traffic at the bottom, but they somehow had it timed perfectly. when the light turned red, distantly visible from the top of the hill, they started down, so that by the time they reached the bottom (at terrible speeds) the light turned green again, allowing them to pass harmlessly through the intersection. oh, but they took some safety precautions, of course: metal plates screwed into their boots and gloves, so they'd leave a shower of sparks in their wake as they skated down. when they rode en masse, it looked and sounded like a comet rolling downhill.

so you can imagine i was a bit in awe of Mat at that first meeting. and honestly, that awe has not diminished in the 20 years that i've known him. his drawings are some of my favorite things ever made, i still regularly read his comics, he's played in some of the best bands this city has produced, and now he's making board games. that's pretty damn rad.

oh, and he did a comic for the new MONSTER anthology. here's a page:

Brian Ralph

To be honest, it was pretty much blind luck that Brian and I were assigned rooms right next to each other, our freshman year in the art school dorms. It also helped that his roommate went to great lengths to make their room unpleasant to be in, forcing Brian to spend most of his time hanging out with me and my crazy roommate Bob. Suffice to say, I feel pretty damn lucky to have known this dude for all of my adult life.

There's a very good reason why Brian is an international funny book superstar: he works harder than everyone else. His output of work over the years that I've known him is mind-boggling: Fire Ball, Cave-In, Climbing Out, Daybreak, Reggie-12, countless minis and short strips in anthologies and magazines, posters, prints, t-shirts, action figures (seriously, action figures?! That's living the dream...) and on, and on... Oh, and everything he does just happens to be wonderful.

Brian and I made the first MONSTER anthology in, what, '97? I can't remember exact dates... but it was a long, long time ago. I think he's contributed to every single one of them since. Here's a couple pages from his comic for the new one: