When I was in fifth grade I got it into my head that I was going to write a horror novel.  I'm not sure where the desire came from except that I think that may have also been about the time I discovered Stephen King.  The auspicious title was "Bloody Murder" and I think it kept to it's desired genre for about thirty handwritten pages... and then I introduced a talking cat.  Somehow that caused a shift in the storyline and the next thing I knew there were no people but just a bunch of talking cats.

Being influenced by such cartoons as Voltron, Thundercats and Silverhawks and the collectability of Garbage Pail Kids, I began cutting up sheets of notebook paper to create hundreds of "trading cards" featuring my characters who I came to call the "KatKins."  I continued writing about the characters through the rest of fifth and into sixth grade, but somewhere in my sixth grade year I lost focus and turned my attention to more sophisticated interests... comic books.  Although I hold my mother responsible for the mysterious disappearance of all the cards I had created, I still have fond memories of the characters.  Last night, while enjoying my time at Webster's (see my previous post) I revisited one of my characters, the leader of the KatKins: Cooler.  (While ambitious, I wasn't always the most clever.)  I wish I had one of the original drawings I did almost twenty years ago but here's the most current incarnation:

It was fun to hang out with my old friend here - I also did a few drawings of his girlfriend, Fastmove (what kind of name is that for a girlfriend and why didn't anybody try to clue me in to the NC-17 implications such a name could bring?)... but I don't have any ready yet for public consumption.

I also had a chance today to color Bonnie... what do you think?

Finally, I'm currently involved as an advisor for SAE (Student AIDS Educators) which is an organization run through The AIDS Project with the intent to equip high school students with the knowledge to educate their peers on the importance of safer sex.  Particularly when all they're being taught in school is abstinence, it's important that those who don't choose that route are informed when they make decisions regarding their sexual health.  As a part of tonight's meeting, we were talking about how to use condoms correctly when the conversation shifted to the excuse that some people make saying condoms are too confining.  As Gordon demonstrates in the following picture, if you can't get a condom to fit then you've probably got bigger issues (pun intended):