It was the dark days of the pandemic, lockdowns were still implemented in many places across the world, and people were already fearing the cancellation of Halloween that year. Halloween?! The best of the holidays… CANCELED?! NEVER! So Ghost was born to try to bring hope and a little clarity to the situation: OVER HIS… ummm… DEAD BODY!…? He was only meant to be here for a moment, but he never went away. More info: Instagram My body had been through a lot. By September of 2020 I was finally back at home but had been away for months. At that time, my daughters were doing the best they could to take care of me, I was in remission, but there were side effects from the procedures that saved my life. For starters, I had severe neuropathy in my hands and chronic fatigue. I couldn’t do my day job as a web developer (I had been on disability since February 2020), so I could only lie in bed trying to recover enough to go back to work. Along the way, others joined in the fun and it became a universe of friends: Cathleen, Cassandra, Rob-Bot, Master Gel Cube, Gourdon, Doug, Fred, and other friends from my life have popped in for guest appearances. Even some famous ones like Mallow from Slice of Mallow comics! Over the years I worked for photo labs and advertising agencies, learning and honing skills in retouching and graphic design, but still steered clear of illustration. I actually made a major shift into web development in 1998 which would basically define my next twenty-five plus years. It wasn’t until 2013 that I began drawing again. That’s when, at the urging of my youngest daughter, I opened an Instagram account. My drawing skills were very rusty and it took me a while to figure out what I was doing again. My artistic journey, warts and all, is all on my Instagram page if you scroll back far enough. I had started to go to a lot of comic conventions (we have a plethora of big and small cons where I live in Southern California) around 2013 and making many artist friends at that time and they encouraged me in my artistic pursuits. Enough so that I did Drawloween from 2015 to 2017 and collected each year in little books that I handmade and would sell at events along with some of my other art prints. My diagnosis with cancer in 2019 has mostly interrupted my bookmaking adventures, but since 2020 I’ve been drawing Ghost and Ghost Kitty Universe and hope to get together a collection of those comics in book form that I can release soon. In the mean time, my Instagram account is GGKU’s primary home where the comics are posted between pictures mostly of my kitty, Toffee. It’s the ultimate goal of my comic to try and give comfort. A little something to hold onto and smile about in the tumult of day to day life. And I think I’ve been mostly successful. Many of my regular readers have let me know how one of my comics has helped them in some way, and I couldn’t be more happy about that. Follow Bored Panda on Google News! Follow us on Flipboard.com/@boredpanda! Please use high-res photos without watermarks Ooops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.
