Neighborhood Watch has been a pet peeve of mine for more than 10 years.  While I was going to college, I hooked up with a group of like-minded artists and writers that aspired to start their own comic company.  This was one of the most exciting and creative times in my life.  I stayed up all night on the weekends writing scripts and plotting episodes.  We spent nearly every weekend together discussing, planning, plotting, but in the end very little work was done.

One of the guys was a terrific artist, and we did manage to produce a ten-page episode together.  Shortly after finishing the pencils he took off for Hollywood and has been working in SFX ever since.  For a long time after that, it seemed like I would never be able to get my comic off the ground. 

I switched gears for the next few years, writing screenplays, poetry, prose.... but still in my mind I dreamed of doing comics.  I continued to spend most of my nights writing, although I never really pursued trying to get anything published.  I always hoped I would just luck into meeting an awesome artist that would have the vision to join up with me, but...that never happened. 

I moved to China for a few years, then came back, got married, had a baby.  Life moved on.  Then one day I came across the City of Heroes game.  I was instantly addicted.  Naturally, the first character I created was based on my original concept for “Doctor Night” from more than 10 years before.  A couple of months later, I came across the Comic Book Creator software just after it was originally released.  I didn’t think twice about buying it- the plan hatched immediately: I could use COH and the CBC software to finally bring the comics I’ve been dreaming of to life. 

Of course, working with COH creates some limitations.  Obviously, I’m not free to do whatever I want.  Sometimes figuring out how to make things work from script to final comic is tough.  I’ve made a lot of adjustments to the story and the telling of it.  In fact, I would say that the Neighborhood Watch you see now has no relation to the story I originally conceived.  There are some elements that are still there, but as I got to work on the comic, I found things just took off in a different direction. 

Few things give me the satisfaction I feel when an issue is completed.  It’s great to finally see my stories complete in some form.  Thanks to everyone out there that has been reading and supporting Neighborhood Watch.  I plan to keep putting out the books as frequently as I can.  I still hope one day to meet an artist that is interested in helping me make the transition from a COH based comic to the real thing.  But until then, I’ll keep on doing what I’m doing.