Yes, this was technically the first comic.
So one day I try to mess with an art style inspired by a webcomic I enjoyed at the time and Matt Groening’s style. I liked the look, but had trouble recreating that character. After getting too frustrated to even draw it well by my skill level at the time, I went to bed. Next day I try again and it actually came out pretty good. So I gave him a friend. The first character I named Jake and the second Leroy. However, when I went to show it off I ended up calling the second guy Leon, decided that was better, and needed to figure out what to do with them. At the time I was having trouble coming up with new ways to introduce the weekly comic reviews, and decided to put them into a comic strip, usually inspired by whatever I picked up that week.
When the comic reviews went daily so I wasn’t using up my Sunday, Jake & Leon eventually took over the spot completely, after a compilation of what’s now the daily article link. More characters followed, and I’ve somehow worked on this comic for seventeen years…EDIT: eighteen years. Apparently I didn’t get my best of list right. Fixed the title, but can’t help the page URL being messed up. It’s allowed me to be creative, work on my comic skills, and eventually led to other comics and prose, both of which now has their own archive, and this year I was forced to redo this comic’s archive due to how many comics I had.
Before I start the new year’s worth of comics (this doesn’t go by calendar year), it’s time to look back through the previous year and see what were my favorite comics. Which ones had a gag I really liked, had me try something new artistically, or was a push in my storytelling skills? Let’s look back at the year that was for the rare moment when I let myself have an ego. I’m not the best comic creator out there, far from it. I have been improving though.
