Mouse splash page from Icon Devil, vol 1 #2

1987: A beloved indie blast from the past! Splash page, first page appearance of my character Mouse, an alien martial artist. I wrote, penciled, inked, hand-lettered, and did greytone overlays.

Before I got work with other publishers, I self-published a comic called Icon Devil. It was picked as the 'pick hit to click' with the largest distributor in their order booklet for that month. I had great orders. Unfortunately, this was well before the coming internet and the current slick process of indie comic publishing. And I was very young. So I did everything wrong. Including printing at a non-comic-experienced printer in Canada. And shipping via a trucking company to a lot of drop-ship addresses in the U.S. Printing, shipping, and customs entry fees just killed me. Despite great orders, I lost money.

This page is from Icon Devil, volume 1, issue #2, published by my own indie company in April of 1987. I had to stop publishing after this ish. Ah, the fun of indie publishing! I then drew a bunch of books (mainly Whisper) for First Comics. Then in 1989 I tried again with Icon Devil. Again, great orders, but I still hadn't learned enough. Again, I lost money. Again, stopped after two issues. I'm noticing a familiar cycle here...

Total number of Icon Devil books: 4 issues. Two in 1987, two in '89. Beloved to me and had strong fans, but I never published it again.

This character, Mouse, was one of many characters in that series. He was my mom's fave character and this was her fave page. She passed away recently and I found this among some pages she'd long ago squirreled away.