These are pinups of two of my characters, from the long defunct comic book Lunar Donut, that my bud Ted Tucker and I used to publish. A fan from back then (hi, David!) recently tracked me down and wrote me , asking if I’d draw him a sketch of one of the characters, Lyla, from my book, for his original art collection.

Nick Steed
Lyla

I of course obliged, and sent him the original. These two were done later, since I was still feeling inspired. It was cool to hear from a fan, and also cool to reimagine these characters. I’ve changed so much in the past decade, and hopefully my art has evolved, and improved over that time. So many new influences have come into my style, changing it, that it was fun to see how I’d draw these characters if I did the book today.

Publishing Lunar Donut seems like a lifetime ago. The name was nonsensical, but catchy. It was intended to be our anthology title, the features of which we would’ve spun off into independent series. At least that’s what we told ourselves. Probably, since I was the only one with more than one feature in the book (Nick Steed and RubberRoy and MonkeyBoy), it was really just a reflection of my own very short attention span. Looking back, with 20/20 hindsight, I don’t know that drawing a regular title, month in, month out, would ever have been a good fit for me. Sounds like a nightmare, truthfully. Back to the short attention span.

Anyway, Lunar Donut was actually beginning to get some steam going in the mid-90s, and got some positive press from the trade mags and the infant internet. Then, reality hit. Ted and my “real jobs”, drawing caricatures at Disney, kind of imploded on us. So, my wife and I started our own caricature company, with Ted as our manager. Drawing here in sunny Florida, we were able to make it, but it sucked up ALL of our time, just to keep afloat. THAT’S what really happened to Lunar Donut. If we’d stuck with it, if we’d had the time and resources, who knows what could’ve been? Maybe nothing, but who knows?

Fast forward ten years since our last issue. Ted and I are doing pretty well now, thanks be to God (we both reconnected to God in the past decade), and our families and business are doing great. We both “keep our toes” in the comic biz, so to speak, occasionally doing projects here and there for other small press publishers. Lunar Donut Press has published my book, “Let’s TOON CARICATURES”, available through my site and Amazon, and, most recently, Ted’s sketchbook. We may even have some other projects in the works in the near future. So, Lunar Donut is FAR from Dead.

Thanks for letting me draw these characters again, David. It was a blast.

Rock n Roll, Daddy-o!