Daniel Patrick "Patch" Brennan
(1981 - 200X)

 

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 Patch Brennan, author, game designer, and television writer, passed away earlier this month in a Los Angeles hospital after being struck by a passing van while rollerblading with his girlfriend.

We here at the official Patchwork Earth homepage join together in remembrance of our friend, our brother, our cousin, our inspiration; a man who was at times exasperating, at times patronizing, but also a man who was always trying to better himself and the fields he was a part of - for which we will always thank him.

-Molly Brennan

 

Biography:

Daniel Patrick "Patch" Brennan was born on April 1, 1981 in the North Shore suburbs of Massachusetts, the second of two children. His youth was spent reading comics and playing games with his friend Aaron Freeman, who is now known worldwide as "CobaltBlue," one of the highest-paid professional video game tournament winners of all time.

Attending Robert Flynt Memorial High School, he found a lifelong friend in Joseph Ashfield, who now teaches at the same school. During this same time, he performed with the school's theatre program, had a brief engagement with his high school sweetheart, and spent his afternoons employed by Revolting Books, a local comic store.

Upon leaving school, he spent a year off before college, traveling the country with friends (including now-decorated war hero Sgt. Marc Thornwell) - a period which fueled much of his early writing work. But it was during his two-year stint at Eisner University that Patch first became known as a minor internet celebrity for his creation of the Multi User Dungeon online computer game known as "Patchwork Earth." He and the other three "Horsemen of the Infocalypse" (Einar Ragnarsson, Henry Vivian, and now-media mogul Robert Ellis) crafted a world which still runs today - and was one of the internet locations which featured heavily in the Alternate Reality Gaming phenomenon "Project: Covenant." Even as tensions dissolved the group, Patch's name remained on the login page, as it does to this day - it was Patch's elaborate world structure that made the game so popular in its day.

Around this time, Patch also began "Testamentat," another minor cult phenomenon in the internet's earlier days. A novel written by dozens of authors who had never met, the project was a modern retelling of the Bible, passed on from one creator to the next like a chain letter, with each writer taking on one of the Bible's books - or in some cases, just a single parable or notable passage - and offering their own spin on the lessons and how they applied in the modern day. Patch wrote the story for Genesis 1, as well as a rendition of The Book of Job that he didn't take credit for... it was nearly two years before his authorship came to light.

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Patch left the university suddenly, and traveled halfway across the country to a city that he'd only visited once-before: Fusco, Indiana, a city which would be the setting for most of Patch's non-genre work in the years to come. Long seen as "Chicago Junior" or a "Rest Stop City," Patch became a largely-unrecognized patron saint of the city most-known for its confusing and largely-nonsensical urban plan development. Though perhaps oddly, his love for the city was perhaps best-expressed in a work written about a fictional town further South: the Bogsdale setting of his in-canon fan fiction story for Image Comics' Paradigm comic book was evocative of Fusco, and the protagonist's uncomfortable relationship with the city mirrored Patch's own. He considered himself a man without a country, and sarcastically referred to himself as "The Kerouac of Comics," a title that later embarrassed him.

During this time, Patch had trouble making ends meet, and took on a number of part-time jobs, including working for a moving company and selling door-to-door, although fans of his work note foremost a short stint working at a funeral home, which he drew from in the creation of Finding Fusco, a novel which never found a publisher.

Suffering from depression and at a creative crossroads, Patch returned to his New England hometown in 2005, renewing old ties and trying to find his place again while living with Ashfield and trying to romance Rachel "Mags" Nomura, the woman who'd eventually follow him to Los Angeles. During these turbulent months, he wrote the first volume of the one work that came the closest he ever had to a true hit: the graphic novel Tears of the Phoenix, drawn by old collaborator Anthony Young, which - while now forever remaining incomplete - hinted at telling the origin of Patchwork Earth, a world that he'd never quite been able to let go of.

When Tears of the Phoenix reached moderate success - to the consternation of parent-teacher groups in New England who disapproved of the mature content their children were hearing about in Ashfield's class - a movie option (that eventually fell through) prompted his move to Los Angeles, where he lived with his brother and released the book's second volume. Nomura came to join him, and Patch's demeanor seemed to largely improve; although taking on a job on the writing staff for the critically-acclaimed but ratings-challenged cable show "The Drama Program" seemed to provide more stress than creative release.

It was during a summer break from that same television program when Patch, with Nomura in tow, got into the accident which cut his life short. Patch, not yet thirty, was cremated and his ashes scattered across the tracks of major passenger rail lines, in accordance with his final wishes. For a man who'd never sufficiently found a home, it's said being in a state of transit between two places was the closest he ever felt to comfortable.

Nomura maintains a press tour and consistent convention appearances for the three volumes of Tears of the Phoenix that Patch was able to complete before his passing. "The Drama Program" was cancelled in its second season and is perhaps more popular now that it's off the air than it was when it was still running. He is survived by a still-grieving family and a small-but-dedicated cadre of fans.

-Matthew Brennan


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 Press:

While Patch wasn't very well-known, even amongst the comics or gaming communities where he found his home, there has been some minor press coverage of his passing:

  • The episode guide for "The Drama Program" written by staff writers after the show's cancellation, The Drama Program: Off the Board, included a memorial for Patch. You can read it in its entirety here. The guide was begun before the second season began, and some of the first season episode commentaries include brief remarks by Patch himself, recorded before his accident.
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Remembrances:

We, the people who knew Patch, wanted a place where we could leave our memories of him, and our final thoughts, and anything else that needed to be said.

 

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