Ever had something in you that you just had to get out of your system? No, I don't mean as a result of eating bad oysters. I mean something creative, an idea, a project -- something you just had to give birth to? Something that you did just to please yourself, regardless of what anyone else thought?
Well, I've had a character I began toying with sometime around 1993, and I've only picked it up again in the last couple of years. After creating half-a-dozen completed pages of comic art, I'm thinking of going in a different direction with it. 
I originally, back in 1993, was going to go for something retro-looking in terms of art style. And then, when I picked it up again recently, I was going to do something very campy and silly. After showing it to a friend recetly, I was advised to divert from the direction I was headed because, well, what I had so far really stunk. Yeah, I know, I previously mentioned doing something that I liked regardless of what anyone else thought. So why am I listening to this friend of mine? First, because I'm not a writer, and he is. It's wiser to humble oneself, acknowledge one's weaker points, and defer to someone who knows better. As for the art-style change, I'm really just changing back to a closer ideal of what I had originally intended my main character to look like, facilitated by the new digital tools one has at hand these days. Changing existing art will mean tossing out a couple of pages and doing major revisions to the rest. But that's just the nature of the beast -- part of the learning curve and so forth.
I'm going to take my time and have fun with this. Hopefully, when-and-if it ever gets completed, people will enjoy the finished product as much as I enjoyed creating it. 

I recently read something in the book Brush With Passion wherein Dave Stevens mentioned Zeke Zekley. That name sounded familiar, and I now recall why. I actually met Zeke in 1990 at the now defunct L.A. Art Expo. He came by my booth and offered nice comments about my work, which, at the time, was when I was in my Maxfield Parrish phase. He gave me his card, and I subsequently visited him at his home and met his wife. The two of them were very kind people. 
Zeke was very encouraging about my work, and seemed to want to direct me in some way. He even took me to a gallery show (I don't recall who the artist was, except that he painted pictures of empty fields lined with eucalyptus trees, which reminded me of Etiwanda, an area close to my home. Upon inspecting the little card-descriptions posted next to the paintings, it turns out he was painting Etiwanda). 
While on that first visit to his home, Zeke pulled some large boards out of a closet with the original art he had done for the Bringing Up Father strip. Being young and stupid, all I could say was that the character reminded me of that rich, little Monopoly character. Well, what did I know? 
After recently recalling that I was actually acquainted with the man  -albeit briefly-  I looked him up online only to find that he died four years ago. To be honest, I actually didn't expect Zeke to be alive, being as it was almost twenty years ago that I had met him, and as he already seemed along in years at the time (or so I perceived). It's too bad, because I would have liked to get in touch with him again.
I never did visit or talk to Zeke after that first visit, and, looking back on it, I realize I should have cultivated that acquaintance into a friendship and learned a thing or two from an old pro.