Ahhh, Steverino. My pet.

The comics, by golly, were a hit. That summer, I continued to draw them. I did a few weeks worth of strips about me and my then-girlfriend Briana. In August, she dumped me. Woe! At a end-of-summer party at my homie Shelly's house, things began to come together. Mike Attebery was there. "These strips are genius!" he said, his hair blown back from the sweeping winds of truth. I also met the one... the only... the Cori here! Actually I'd met her a month earlier but I won't count that for story purposes. In my smoothest Steverino demeanor, I told her she would be the Chosen one, Steverino's infatuation. Her reply, "Okay, but I still get to be that character once you're famous!" I got her address and would send her month after month of creepy declarations of love. But that is skipping ahead!

I sent them out every month. 25 pages each, 3 cartoons a page! Photographs, fan mail, random musings, it was awesome. The stories began to get personal. I wrote about Briana breaking up with me. I wrote about my cousin wanting to be a Spice Girl. I outted Danny Boy's power over women coming from his hat. People were furious. But entertained. After the third issue, Grandma lined up a few newspaper interviews. I was in the Shoreline Times with a nice 3 page article. It was a slow news day.

Over the months, my style would alter. It went from sloppy, to a neater presentation, then I drew larger and tighter. Eventually I tried using a brush instead of a micron pen, and for a while I did not use the squared jaws at all!

In September of 1998, I had done the issue "Tales of the Broken Hearted", about Steverino being jealous of Cori's new boyfriend. It was actually written about Briana and her new boyfriend. A friend of mine had told me about a contest being sponsored by Follet College stores and Andrew McMeel Publishing. It was judged by famous cartoonists, searching for the next great comic strip. I pulled 9 of my favorite strips from that month and sent them in. Late that winter, I'd learned I'd taken grand prize. My cartoons were published in a book, I won enough money to finally get a computer, and I had my own book signing that went very well until Danny Boy came in and brought with him bad luck. The lines went away, and he said 'Well, you tried, Steverino.'

Mike Attebery, creatively distraught at Film School in NY, was missing the old days of home movie making, and digging the "Steverino" installments. I pitched him the idea of doing a movie based on the comics. He was into the idea. I began spending time at Taryn's (at this point, I had no computer). I dictated, she typed! She'd write some scenes herself. We'd play Mario RPG. We sent Mike the script. He agreed, it was gold. It was long, we couldn't film half the scenes, and there weren't enough silly costumes, but there was something there.

That summer of '98, we filmed a milestone in cinematic history. We called out the troops- regulars like Mike himself, thespian Matt DeCapua, fellow filmmaker Jack Lilburn, and we got newcomers like me, Taryn, Cori, and Mike's coworker at the bookstore to play Briana. The story revolved around Steverino falling for Trina- who I created to be the "briana" ex-girlfriend, since Briana did not like her portrayal in that role. Steverino meets and falls for Trina (played by Taryn), who ultimately leaves him. In this version of "Steverino" history, Cori warms up to Steverino because he is friends with Danny Boy, who is his cousin. I did not write that. That was Mike's doing.

Mike went back to school and edited the whole thing together. It was released to the public that winter. I drove through a snowstorm to visit Taryn and show her the movie. The verdict was: Not bad! Cringeworthy at first, but ultimately sweet and a little better on each subsequent viewing.

It's very meaningful to me- Taryn died in an accident that next summer. I was glad to have spent that much time with her, to have created something with her, and to have that movie as a reminder of her. I'm thankful we got to finish it and show it to her before that happened.

Shortly before that, I had ended 'Steverino proper.' The monthly schedule was proving to be too much, after almost 3 years, I found that I'd plateaued, and the strip was not improving any more. I wanted to take my time and really make every strip the best it could be. At this point, it was less about just having fun, and more about trying to get syndicated. I was 20 now, and loved doing this so much that I knew I wanted it to be a career.

I did a lot more work after the last monthly issue. I'd abandoned continuity, but kept most of the characters. I tried a strip with danny boy as the main character, I'd done an issue with Steverino and Taryn as the main characters, I did a few issues that were going to be autobiographical, about my high school years.

Recently, I gave another stab at making a good collection. Having found Comixpress through printing Emo Boy when I was self-publishing, I thought they could do a good job in making a decent "Steverino" collection. What I ended up with is 3 books worth of comics. With each book being around 168 pages, I collected every single comic, sunday comic, I put in the fan mail, the prose writings, the watercolors, pictures, commentary, newspaper articles, basically every piece of "Steverino" memorabilia I could find to get the complete experience. It was so much more than just a comic about my friends, it was really it's own thing that just snowballed over the years. If you've read this far, you owe it to yourself to check it out! Right now the first book is available. The second is with the printers, and the third I'm still working on. so go on and check it out! It's only $10!

Which brings us to today. Working on those books made me realize how much I'd missed doing these comics. There's a big part of me in them. I'm not sure where it's going or for how long I can do it, but we're here, so read the new stuff, get the books and read the old stuff, or course read Emo Boy, and let me know what you think.