Most Iowa State students don’t know Andy Brase, sophomore in art and design, because he spends a good portion of his time tucked away in his drawing room designing comic books.

Another reason many people may not know the blond-streaked Brase is that he is somewhat reserved around strangers. But he’s not quiet about his love of drawing comics.

To this date, Brase has had one comic book printed by Hall of Heroes, an independent comic book publisher based out of Indiana.

He spent his entire freshman year at Iowa State working on the book, titled “Hall of Heroes Presents #4: Turaxx.” Brase drew 23 pages of black-and-white artwork for the book, not including the cover, which he colored himself.

His character Turaxx is a gun-toting, pointy-eared, hobbit-like creature. He calls the character a “trobbit,” which he derived from the words “troll” and “hobbit.”

A black-and-white poster of Turaxx hanging above his desk reads, “Not all heroes have a six pack,” meaning superheroes don’t have to be firm to be tough.

“He’s got a gut, but he’s physically fit,” Brase said of Turaxx.

Turaxx’s arch rival is the bat-like Vehementor, a creature who would disturb even Lewis Carroll’s imagination.

Brase has posted drawings of both Turaxx and Vehementor along with other characters he created on his Web site at www.public.iastate. edu/~abrase/MEGA.html.

Brase not only draws comic book characters, he designs every aspect of his comic books, from initial layout to lettering.

First, he develops a plot and then lays out each page of his book. After the layout is finished, he pencils in his characters and backgrounds. The last two steps of the process are coloring in the pages — or inking — and lettering the dialogue of the comic book characters.

Since only 2,000 copies of his first book were printed, Hall of Heroes made just enough money to cover printing costs. Brase didn’t make much profit, either.

“I got some free copies [of my book] to sell, and that’s where I made my money,” he said.

Although he only received marginal profits on the release of his book, he said his intentions were beyond capital gain.

“Mainly, I did it for the exposure,” he said.

He has his eyes set on making money in the future, though, doing something he’s loved to do since his freshman year of high school.

“If I make it professionally, [the value of my first comic book] is going to go way up,” he quietly boasted.

Brase got his start drawing comic book covers for art class during his freshman year at City High School in Iowa City.

It was during this time that he started collecting comic books. He considers himself a latecomer to the comic book world, noting that many people start collecting comics at a young age.

After his freshman year, Brase relocated to Valley High School in West Des Moines due to his dad changing jobs. There he met friends who shared his love of drawing comics.

“There were four or five of us who were into drawing,” he said. “We made up our own characters.”

During his high school career, Brase created four full-length comic books and printed each of them using copiers in his father’s office.

On his first attempt at creating a book, Brase was skeptical about whether he could come up with a good story, so he asked a friend to write it.

After his friend returned with a lackluster story, Brase decided he could do better and wrote it himself.

“I didn’t know if I could write comics [at first],” he said. “I was more into it for the artwork.”

A stroke of good luck hit Brase the summer after high school graduation. It was at Chicago’s Comicon comic convention that he introduced himself to Hall of Heroes, and they became interested in his work.

He has attended the convention the past four years.

“It’s a really good place to break into comics,” he said.

Rather than drawing widely read and distributed comics from monolithic publishers like Marvel and DC Comics, Brase said he prefers to work for independent companies.

He said he would rather focus on drawing fantasy and horror comics than superhero comics published by mainstream companies. Instead of incorporating the stock cityscapes traditionally used in superhero comics, he prefers placing his characters into more organic environments like “jungles and waterfalls.”

“If I was offered a job drawing superheroes, I would take it up,” he said reluctantly, but “everything has been done with superheroes.”

Brase is enamored by the fantastic and the whimsical. Some of his biggest influences are the mystical movies “Willow” and Jim Henson’s “The Dark Crystal.” A glass dragon tied to the ceiling hovers above his drawing desk.

Brase recently finished an eight-page comic about a vampire-like female character called “Spinose” that will appear in the Hall of Heroes Halloween special issue.

Brase’s story is one of three to be featured in the book. But like any good comic book artist, he didn’t want to reveal any information about the plot of the story prior to its publication.

In addition to his upcoming Halloween comic, he also has completed a 13-page sequel to his first Turaxx comic. He’s currently looking for a publisher.

Brase’s work has been featured as pin-ups in comic books other than his own. He described pin-ups as full-page drawings of characters, similar to posters, that are separate from the storyline in comic books.

He said the publishers of the comic book “Pitt” are planning to feature his drawing of the Pitt character as a pin-up in a forthcoming issue.

On an average week, when he’s “not working hard at all,” Brase spends about 20 hours at his desk. He said he has spent as many as 16 hours a day attempting to meet his deadline.

His roommates said they hardly see him because of his passion for comic drawing.

“I never see him,” said roommate Scott Dimpfl, junior in civil engineering.

To complete the Halloween issue, Brase skipped classes for four consecutive days and slept only two to three hours per night.

Other stimuli that Brase uses to ward off sleep are large doses of coffee and heavy industrial music.

He may be reticent around strangers, but this artist has the fire of an intense love of drawing in his sleep-deprived eyes.