heartsandironcomic

Twenty Years...

Added 2021-01-02 03:41:27 +0000 UTC

Happy New Year, everybody! Hope you all had a fun and safe evening.

It was twenty years ago, New Year's Day 2001, that I sat down at the drawing board to ink the pages for Hearts & Iron #1. I'd been drawing the characters before that, but I finally had a plan to show them to the world in a comic book and website. The site was Jeff's Muscle Studio; the comic didn't have its own page yet. The first two issues were zines – I made copies at Kinko's and collated and stapled them. Almost not worth the cost and trouble to produce compared to the selling price, but I was getting the book seen. Those first 4 or 5 issues were done in the evenings while I worked during the day at a state agency as a graphic artist. After issue 2, I found a Canadian printer that was affordable.

On Labor Day, 2001, I put the Jeff's Muscle Studio site, and the comic, live. It was a holiday so I went to the gym, trying to wrap my head around that I'd just put my art and characters into the world. I notified one person - a guy who had written a fan letter for the early comic posted above - that a full sized comic was available.

"Midway," above, is John and Carl's first printed appearance, in Gay Comics #25. I was invited to submit art for that as a former contributor. I wanted to use the characters I'd been drawing for my own amusement, thinking that this might be their only chance to be published. The art's pretty crude compared to later issues, and the 80's/90's gym wear fashions are dated. Giants, Werebears and Paul Bunyan are a long ways off yet.

Hard to believe it's been twenty years!