About

Barstool Entertainment

 
Online Since August 22, 2006.
 
Welcome to my little neighborhood establishment. The website was conceived as a way for me to promote my creative works, and has evolved over time into the current condition.

Since childhood, I have dreamed of making my own comic book. Time and expense has always been a major deterrent for me. Then this thing called the Internet came along. Web comics were invented. Anyone could do a comic online. After a few stumbles, and false starts, I finally have decided to go for my dream.

The current version of Barstool Entertainment you see, with the Kid Spider Adventures comic, is the culmination of a lot of work. It was worth it.

This site was hand encoded with HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, and CSS to conform to WordPress structure. All artwork is original content.

Thanks for stopping by.
 
Brad T. Janowitz (Proprietor)
 
 
 

The Proprietor

 
Brad T. Janowitz
As stated above, I have dreamed of making my own comic book. As a child, I enjoyed them, but did not really become enamored with comics until a friend’s cousin opened a comic book shop. My main interest was doing comic strips, because I was always drawing, and the only thing I enjoyed in the newspaper was the comics. Much of my character creation was due to playing role playing games, like Dungeons & Dragons. Sometimes I was the Game Master, and eventually, I became the primary Game Master for the group I played with. I have also dreamed of becoming a writer.

In high school, my interest in art wained, but my love of comic books and role playing was retained. I made lists of heroes and villains, with background stories and powers, it was fun to just be creative. Since I was growing up in pre-computer times, I had note books of characters and stories written out. When I graduated high school, and entered college, my love for art was rekindled, but my desire to role play ended. I still loved comic books, and a few close friends from college are still part of my life, because we shared the same interest. In college my creativity was set on overdrive. Art classes, writing classes, any class really dedicated to doing creative work was part of my life at the time. I was a theater major, so play writing and acting helped me learn more about building characters, and keeping them consistent.

Graduating college, I ended up working as a graphic designer for an advertising agency. I began playing D&D again with some friends, and since I was the creative guy, I had to be the dungeon master. Over the years I still kept notes and ideas for stories or characters. I did manage to get a short story published under a pseudonym. It was one of those magazines that sent you a copy of the magazine in which your story was published as payment. It was still awesome. I have the magazine to this day.

When I was working at a newspaper as a designer/artist/writer, one of the interns showed me this thing called the internet. I had heard about it, and there were a few web capable computers in the newspaper. As the intern showed me websites, I was stunned. I also realized my job would become obsolete within a certain time frame, so off to school I went to learn to build websites. Once it became cheap enough for me to own a domain of my own, I purchased the domain of Barstool Entertainment. I also learned about web comics.

Even though Barstool Entertainment was intended as a way for me to show my creative work, a web comic was ideal. I could produce my web comic and people might read it. The web comic on this site has changed over the time. BagBoy was the first web comic, it lasted several years. There was a monthly comic as well called The Unknown, and changed to Figured Out. It was a slide show comic involving action figures and photography. That comic lasted four years. Then there was a brief comic I called “Shots”, it was an attempt at social commentary, I am not angry enough or pissed off at things enough to write social commentary comics. I did another comic called “Fan Boys” which took place in a future where cos players just wore costumes all the time and engaged in their fantasy life. That ended. After a brief hiatus from the site, I decided to relaunch.

Gorilla Fish was the first web comic I started with, but currently Kid Spider Adventures is running. My techniques for making a comic are still in the stone age, modern day tools would help, but working with a tablet seems beyond me at this point, so I will stick with pencil, pen and paper. Once I get a feel for the tablet or someone helps me get the mechanics down, then I may change over.

Right now, I am enjoying the way the website has developed, and the comic is going.