Yenny and Me

Believe it or not, Yenny has been with me since I was 15 years old.
My grandma bought me a Garfield comic strip book and I became another Garfieldholic for this world instantly. Curse you Jim Davis!!!
Garfield inspired me to create comic strips of my own.
Comic strips where saturated by male characters. Female characters only supported the guys or simply they were just the main character's loved one.
I wanted to create a female character and give her a leading role and that's when I created........................................................................Zacha!
Gotcha! Yup. The strip was called Zacha & Anyelín.  Zacha was a wisecracking lizard, (and still is) and Yenny was simply.....her owner, a geeky-looking girl with big glasses and cutoff jeans.
Being a Garfield freak as I was, Zacha took the leading role. Everything was about Zacha and her life as a pet.
I was 18 and my first big chance was in a hometown newspaper called 'El Manatí'. They picked up the strip and paid me........$15 bucks per month. Talk about cheap skates!
Later on when I entered college, the strip was published by yet another hometown newspaper called 'El Norte'.
The problem with these small newspapers was that they live out of sponsors and if a sponsor wants your page, then you are out.
And so..... I was out.
Later, Vicente Avilés, creator of the wonderful latin comic strip 'El Profe' wanted to see if I could enter the strip to a REAL newspaper, 'El Nuevo Día', by that time, Puerto Rico's leading newspaper.
To make the story short... This is what I saw from trough the editor's office window;
Vicente showed her the strips..... then she stands up....then she gets REALLY angry...like shouting... and then....she slams my strips to a wall and storms out of the office.
I saw Vicente picking up my strips from the floor. He comes out and said:
'She says that you'll never get anywhere drawing Acme anvil jokes!'
Years passed since I ever touched that strip again. My hands where full with Changuy and the Looney Tunes by that time.
Then the wonderful world of the internet entered my life. I noticed how people posted their comics and got feedback from readers in a matter of minutes. So...I took 'Zacha & Anyelín' and re-created the strip all over again.
This time Anyelín took the leading role. I changed her name to 'Yenny'. Why?...because it was shorter! I also shaped up her body. The idea of having a sexy cartoon character in a leading role who doesn't act like a bimbo was practically new for me.
Ignorance is daring so I started to post Yenny strips in THE COMICS JOURNAL FORUM! ....Yeah...THERE.
Maaan...my first bad reviews came from that page. People hated me to the most! I was acussed of being a pervert for posting comics with a sexy girl in shorts.
Later on, Mr Jim Morandillas from MTJ gave me the chance of publishing Yenny inside the pages of his fetish magazine.
It wasn't really what I had in mind by that time but the fact that Yenny's big feet were ticklish by default made her very likable among readers.
  Those stories have nothing to do with the actual strip, though.
Jim is a great guy and became a very good friend, so he understood very well when I decided to leave to continue my search for what i originally wanted to do.
I don't know about you, but everytime I create a character I feel like it's already part of me. Like a son or  daughter in this case, which for nothing in the world you'll leave him or her behind.
Months later, while searching for comic strip syndicates I found the Ucomics site from Universal Press Syndicate. They have this cool thing called 'Comics Sherpa' where you can post your strips and receive critics from the same people that read their mainstream comics like Ziggy, Calvin & Hobbes and...hey...Garfield! (ironic, isn't it?)
This help me shape up the strips and all the characters involved in it. Since then, I've joined great websites like Modern Tales and Komikwerks, Komik werks is Stan Lee's site for his Sunday comics. In KW Yenny is drawn by the great Richard Cruz.
And, ironically as well, Yenny is published inside of Puerto Rico's newspaper 'Primera Hora'; another leading newspaper owned by 'El Nuevo Día'. (Yup, the newspaper who gave me the kick out the first time).
I'm still in the middle of the 'Yenny Adventure' and I've met a lot of great people and artists on the way.
There's a lot to do yet and some great news that I will share with you as soon as  I'm allowed to publish them.
So there's another story from uncle Dave, folks!!!
'Till next time!