I have been drawing comics off and on since I was 11 years old. My first comic, back then, was Tim & Miles, a comic about two friends who got into all sorts of mischief. I was 16 when I came up with the comic I draw now, Loose-Headed Harry; the gory misadventures of a bullied teen whose head detaches easily but doesn’t die. It was perhaps a way to deal with how I myself had been bullied. The comic started as just doodles on the backs of my math homework, then just one page gags, and then ongoing storylines which were mainly an extreme exaggeration of what I saw as the injustice of the American school system at the time. Teachers would look the other way when Harry was bullied, punish him for things he didn’t do, and plot behind the scenes to make their student’s lives miserable. His bully, Bully Billy, was never brought to justice, or at most would be punished along with Harry despite being the aggressor. Harry’s school, Alcatraz High School, was named for an infamous prison and surrounded by barbed wire. Behind the gory and perhaps immature humor, there was a real statement. There were more recurring characters as well. The comic itself was never seen by more than a few family and friends, though. I eventually stopped drawing it in college to focus on writing novels.
My wife Deborah encouraged me to bring it back after I eventually showed her some of my old comics. Writing novels hadn’t really gotten me anywhere (yet, anyway), although I still plan on writing more of them. So we decided that we would make it a webcomic and just see what happens. We’ve seen other webcomic artists who make a decent amount of money through Patreon. It seems easier to make money from than self-publishing novels. I worked on pencil drawings for about three years from then on. Early this year I finally acquired a drawing tablet, and could finally start making the digital version. The new version will be more sophisticated than the original comic, more of a fantasy high school dramedy than simple gory humor. Although it will not stray too far from its roots. If it were a show it would probably be rated TV-MA. I worked on the first chapter of about 56 pages for ten months. Finally today I have begun publishing it.
So far I have it up on Webtoons, Tapas, and Patreon. Over on Patreon I am going to have a blog just for the comic, to be read by patrons. I will still be keeping up this blog for other things I want to write. You can read the comic at the following links, and likely other places where I will be posting it.
https://www.patreon.com/Surenity
https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/loose-headed-harry/list?title_no=536101
https://tapas.io/series/Loose-Headed-Harry
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