Hey folks, it's been a while since I've updated this website. Since I've been "retired" from the comic strip business for about three years now, it hasn't seen much action. There's a lot to catch up on, so let's recap:
The short version: I'm doing a new comic strip once-a-week for
The Bryan-College Station Eagle called "Freelance". It's an off-shoot of "Fish" but with Ryan, Flower, Scoot and Tisdale out of college and now living in the real world. Yay!
The long version: I started rdeluna.com back in college when I was doing a comic called "Fish" for my college newspaper, Texas A&M University's
The Battalion. The comic ran for six years while I finished college and grad school, and ended up being the longest-running comic in the school's history. At the end of twelve semesters and over 1000 comics later, I self-published two compilation books: "Fish Out of Water" and "Gone Fishing", which are still available on-campus at the
MSC Bookstore.
Since then: I finished my thesis, got my master's degree, moved to California, did freelance illustration work for about a year before starting full-time as a graphic artist for
Free Range Studios where I've been for almost two years now, and I married my wife Sarah (on whom "Flower" is based) in September 2006.
Then in July 2007, I was contacted by
The Bryan-College Station Eagle, the city newspaper where Texas A&M is located. They were re-vamping the weekend Spotlight section, an Entertainment insert that's published every Thursday, and were tossing around the idea of adding a comic strip done by an A&M alumnus. Thanks to the support of some die-hard fans and some friends at the newspaper, my name came up. They contacted me to see if I had any interest in resurrecting my comic.
I've missed doing a comic strip, I even attempted to launch "Freelance" as a web comic a couple years back when I moved out to California. But I quickly found out that it was impossible for me to try to do a daily comic and balance a regular job/personal life. I only did a couple dozen comics, and since then I haven't really had the motivation or audience to make time for it again.
So when The Eagle came along with their proposition, I jumped at the opportunity. Especially since the once-a-week schedule is something I could feasibly fit into my daily life. My main condition was that I didn't just want to pretend like "Fish" never ended. I wanted to make sure that chapter was closed and the characters were allowed evolve and deal with more grown-up, non-student problems.
So "Freelance" is a fresh start for some familiar faces (although they did get grown-up makeovers... Scoot even gets to grow up a little). I'm excited that I get to enter the realm of comic strips again, so I hope you'll check them out.
If you're in the Bryan-College Station area, you can pick up the Spotlight section in The Eagle every Thursday. Otherwise, I'll be running them here on the site (about a month behind) every Wednesday. Thanks for reading!
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