Hi! My name is Dan and I’m the creator of Ghost and Ghost Kitty Universe. I started GGKU in September 2020 as what I thought was going to be a one and done four-panel comic. Just one of the many drawings I was busying myself with during that time.
It was the dark days of the pandemic, lockdowns were still implemented in many places across the world, and people were already fearing the cancellation of Halloween that year. Halloween?! The best of the holidays… CANCELED?! NEVER! So Ghost was born to try to bring hope and a little clarity to the situation: OVER HIS… ummm… DEAD BODY!…? He was only meant to be here for a moment, but he never went away.
More info: Instagram
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You see, it was a very tough time for me. I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in November of 2019. This after just finally starting to feel better from a minor stroke that I had mid-2018. I went through many hospital stays receiving intense chemo, full-body radiation, and, finally, a bone marrow stem cell transplant (made possible by my brother, Mike) by the end of March 2020. It was a race against time and a whirlwind of hurt.
My body had been through a lot. By September of 2020 I was finally back at home but had been away for months. At that time, my daughters were doing the best they could to take care of me, I was in remission, but there were side effects from the procedures that saved my life. For starters, I had severe neuropathy in my hands and chronic fatigue. I couldn’t do my day job as a web developer (I had been on disability since February 2020), so I could only lie in bed trying to recover enough to go back to work.
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I needed therapy for my hands and mind. Drawing Ghost gave that to me. Ghost was soon joined by Ghost Kitty, and they were soon joined by my good friend, Chelsea… who would eventually be worn down enough to consent to being my wife as of July of last year.
Along the way, others joined in the fun and it became a universe of friends: Cathleen, Cassandra, Rob-Bot, Master Gel Cube, Gourdon, Doug, Fred, and other friends from my life have popped in for guest appearances. Even some famous ones like Mallow from Slice of Mallow comics!
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It’s coming up on four years since my BMT, I’m still in remission, but my health is nowhere near perfect because of what I have been through. GGKU comics have helped me deal with that in many ways. With it, I try to comfort myself and others with little, hopefully, wholesome bits of fun and insight. It ends up being rather eclectic, and isn’t always published regularly due to my day job and my ongoing battle in my recovery, but it’s something that I enjoy and am glad that I can share with others. I hope you enjoy it as well!
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I have always been interested in drawing ever since I was a child. I took art classes in middle school and high school, but started to lean more heavily into photography in high school. This led me to more or less stop drawing at that time, but my photography skills opened doors into jobs in the field of digital photography, retouch, and graphic arts that had really started to come into their own in the early 1990s.
Over the years I worked for photo labs and advertising agencies, learning and honing skills in retouching and graphic design, but still steered clear of illustration. I actually made a major shift into web development in 1998 which would basically define my next twenty-five plus years.
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My current day job is as a web designer/developer at a community college and I work on my GGKU comic in my spare time. Working on my comic is something that is quite the opposite of programming, so it's a way to switch gears, use a different part of my brain, and get away from my day-to-day work.
It wasn't until 2013 that I began drawing again. That's when, at the urging of my youngest daughter, I opened an Instagram account. My drawing skills were very rusty and it took me a while to figure out what I was doing again. My artistic journey, warts and all, is all on my Instagram page if you scroll back far enough.
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I would say that it was sometime in 2015 when I started to really hit my stride and feel more comfortable drawing. During that time I was playing with different styles. But buckling down and deciding to give Drawloween a try and drawing a single frame comic every day that October really brought me back into the art scene.
I had started to go to a lot of comic conventions (we have a plethora of big and small cons where I live in Southern California) around 2013 and making many artist friends at that time and they encouraged me in my artistic pursuits. Enough so that I did Drawloween from 2015 to 2017 and collected each year in little books that I handmade and would sell at events along with some of my other art prints.
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In 2018 I gathered together a series of digital ink drawings of trees together with my poetry to create a book for that year called "The Nature of Ink and Words". I followed that up in 2019 with a sequel book called "Defying Gravity: Featuring poems from the Lonely Astronaut".
My diagnosis with cancer in 2019 has mostly interrupted my bookmaking adventures, but since 2020 I've been drawing Ghost and Ghost Kitty Universe and hope to get together a collection of those comics in book form that I can release soon. In the mean time, my Instagram account is GGKU's primary home where the comics are posted between pictures mostly of my kitty, Toffee.
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The ideas for my comics come from everyday life. It may be something that happens to me, something a friend said (several GGKU characters are based on my friends), or something from that day's headlines that I feel I need to comment on. We live in "interesting times" and there has been no shortage of topics in the news to comment on and try and give people a little hope and comfort.
It's the ultimate goal of my comic to try and give comfort. A little something to hold onto and smile about in the tumult of day to day life. And I think I've been mostly successful. Many of my regular readers have let me know how one of my comics has helped them in some way, and I couldn't be more happy about that.
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I can't say that any one artist has particularly influenced my work or style. I have many artist friends. I live in Southern California, after all, and there are many film and animation studios here. Many people I know from my years of comic con wandering work in these industries. I know I'll never be at their level in my art, but that's not really my goal. I think I've become comfortable with my artistic progression. But the key is that it is still a progression. You should never stop learning and trying new things. I'm lucky to have the friends that I do that constantly encourage me and teach me new things.
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How it all began...
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I must say that I do love going to cons and hanging around in artist alleys: WonderCon, San Diego Comic Con, Lightbox, L.A. Comic Con... and the list goes on where I live! It's the best place to get inspiration and give you a kick in the brain to think outside the box. I leave those events with so many new ideas. Every artist I encounter inspires me in some way and adds to me as an ever-growing artist myself.
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