Warning! Long nostalgic post. . . . 25 years ago, I released Fiona and Eva, my first mini-comic, while I was still in high school. I wrote it in one sitting. I cut out the panels from my sketchbook and the narration from my Dad’s typewriter, taped them together, and photocopied around 30 at Kinko’s. At the time, I thought the story came from nowhere, but looking back, it was a loosely-based caricature of my friends. It also served as a veiled attempt at coming out. I showed it to friends and family, noting their reactions. I figured if they were cool with me writing this story then later on, when I was ready to actually come out, it wouldn’t be a shock. By the time I came out a few years later, hardly anyone was surprised. Maybe this comic helped, maybe they already knew. Either way, I was lucky to avoid any of the coming out horror stories I’d feared may have happened to me. Even now, I constantly remind myself reality is mostly less scary (or interesting) than my paranoid fantasies. Aside from personal giveaways, I left copies at local comic shops for free. I was too shy to leave any kind of contact information, plus I liked the idea that someone would pick up this random free obscure zine. I’m sharing it in full here digitally for the first time. A lot of artists cringe at their first material. While there’s plenty of past work I do cringe at, I don’t with this story. Is that weird? I still think it’s kind of charming in it’s roughness and simplicity. Perhaps I feel attached to it because it was also one of my first experiences with the natural high an artist achieves when they let themselves go and create from a purely instinctual place. It just came out of me fully formed. In that way, it’s less about the actual material. My life may not have been free, but in making this, I was.