Hi there!

Watusi the Talking dog (the character) is a talking cartoon dog who makes his home in Wonder Valley, the kind of town in which classic characters of children’s fiction (think Encyclopedia Brown or The Three Boys) would feel at home. He has a lot of friends there, but his adventures often take him to exotic locales far from his home.

Watusi the Talking Dog (the comic) began life as an experiment in quick storytelling and a desire to produce an all-ages comic. The idea for the original jam comics came about after I had the chance to teach cartooning workshops to jr hi school students, and wanted to come up with a more “hands on” activity for them as a way to complete a comic during a short class session. Contributors drew one panel at a time, building a story in a (more or less) logical manner, without worrying about the whole story or becoming frustrated by a blank page. Fortuitously, this technique also caught on with other cartoonists I knew, who collaborated on stories which have been collected as issues of the Watusi the Talking Dog digest comic series.

Since these humble beginnings, Watusi has proven to be an unlikely nexus for my comics work. Growing in scope, the Watusi comics have included longer, more involved stories– most notably in the long webcomic storylines– and incorporated new and old characters from my other comic projects. Watusi may have turned into a bigger project than I ever expected, but it’s been a happy accident indeed!