Too Much Information About Alec Longstreth:
I was born October 4th, 1979 in Seattle, Washington. As a kid I loved STAR WARS (especially EWOKS!!!), Comics (especially Disney Comics and Tintin) and DRAWING. When I was six my family moved out to the suburbs, specifically: Mercer Island.
In 5th grade, my elementary school had this campaign to encourage kids to READ more. I got in a huge fight with my homeroom teacher, Mr. Shoemaker, because he wasn't going to give us credit for reading Comics. "But they have WORDS and they TELL STORIES just like BOOKS do!" I argued. Eventually he caved, giving me half the page-count credit for reading Comics.
I drew little Comics for my elementary, middle and high school papers. In 8th grade I began wearing glasses with no lenses in them. In my high school German class I sat in the back of the room, drew over 100 pages of Comics and learned very little German. At eighteen, I graduated High School and left the beautiful Northwest for Oberlin College in Ohio.
I almost dropped out of college after my first year at Oberlin. The only thing that kept me there was a crazy plan I developed to become a scenic carpenter on "Star Wars: Episode III." I became a Technical Theatre major and learned everything I could about scenic carpentry. Then, my sophomore year, my friend PAUL handed me a copy of "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud. Reading this comic book made my brain explode into a million pieces and when I put them all back together again, they had been REARRANGED. I suddenly understood that I had been put on this earth to DRAW COMICS.
I began regularly contributing Comics to The Oberlin Review and The Grape while also drawing two pages a week on my first Comics story "BARCODE." I also modified any assignment that had the least bit of leeway in my other classes, into a Comics project. My Junior year I set up a private study in Comics. I did my first 24-hour comic and vowed to do one a year for the rest of my life. My senior year I taught a semester-long class called "Exploring Comics" to 15 of my fellow students, with slides, hour-long lectures and weekly Comics assignments. According to Lindsay Sharp, it was the best class she took in four years at Oberlin.
In May, 2002 I graduated with a major in technical theatre. After working in Seattle at the UW Scene Shop for the summer, I moved to Los Angeles to get some "real-life" experience building movie sets. That was the worst five months of my life, so far. What really saved me in L.A. was that I began self-publishing my comic book PHASE 7. I consider PHASE 7 to be my "life's work" and plan to continue working on it until my death. I finished and sent out issue #001 and had issue #002 done by the time I left L.A.
In February, 2003 I traveled all the way to Sydney, Australia to try and get a job as a scenic carpenter on "Star Wars: Episode III - The Revenge of the Sith." After only a couple of weeks, I was in contact with the head construction manager, Greg Hajdu, who was supposidly looking for a position for me. While waiting to hear back about Episode III, I sang and played guitar on the street (or "busked") for change. It paid for my food, but not for my rent. In the end, Mr. Hajdu was unable to find me a position and my work visa ran out. After five years of preparation and hard work and planning, I failed. The only things that kept me sane while living in Sydney was my BLOG and working on PHASE 7 #003.
I returned to the United States and after spending the summer working at the UW again, I moved down to Portland, Oregon to live with my good friends Frunch and Gwyn for a year. During this time I worked in a hardware store and taught after-school drawing classes to elementary school children while finishing up PHASE 7 #004 and starting PHASE 7 #005. Frunch and Gwyn eventually got married and then headed off to Stanford for their graduate studies, so I picked up my stuff and moved to New York City. For a year I worked full time as an office temp, working on side projects like The Dvorak Zine during my lunch hour and then coming home each night and working on PHASE 7 #006. In September 2005 I began studying Illustration at Pratt Institute. That same month, PHASE 7 won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Minicomic.
I do not have a lot of "spare time" these days, but when I do, I spend most of it working on PHASE 7. I listen to music, Audiobooks, NPR and This American Life while I am drawing Comics. On my breaks I watch movies, read Comics and books, work on my website, exercise, write letters and hang out with my friends. I try my best to be a happy person, which is sometimes hard for me, but lately seems to be getting easier.
