I have been drawing comics for over 20 years now. I got into Anime in High School and started drawing my first fledgling Manga in 1991. I actually started my first Serial comic “Dokuko’s Angel” in 1995 where it ran in the Denver Anime club’s magazine “DAIjest”. I drew 18 pages of that comic and I stopped working on it (Mostly I lost interest).

But it was that comic where I learned a lot of the tricks of the trade: I learned to draw on 11×17 paper and shrink it down at Kinko’s (Which covers a great many foibles ). I learned to use ink pens instead of ballpoints (!). And I did my first reverse-engineering (I took a manga page to Kinko’s and blew it up to 11×17 to see exactly what thickness the lines were and how they were used)

Dokuko’s Angel was a story about a Japanese girl who picks up a locket in a construction site that allows her to see the ghost of an American pilot whose plane was shot down over Japan during WWII. The plot was simple (It WAS my first story): She had to get 5 scrolls of the ghosts’ life and give them to the Gods in order for him to “pass on”. Otherwise, he would haunt her forever (She discovers early on she can’t get rid of the locket).

I wandered for a while, doodling mostly, until I wrote a story called “Spirit Masque”, which is still one of my favorite stories, it’s an epic story about the end of the Earth and the exodus of mankind to another world and all kinds of stuff…

I wrote 20 pages of that one, too before I lost interest.

Then I wrote a story called “Letters Home”, which was a story about the 817th fighter squadron based on a planet in the Orion Nebulae. I built the characters around the people I worked with at the time (Because they were a very tight, dynamic group I was with at that point), the story was based as a loose analogy to World War II (I have a fascination there, can you tell?).

I made 20 pages of that comic.

The last comic I made was called “Legend of Innocence”, a Steampunk story (Long before Steampunk was an “In thing”… in fact, I had never heard of Steampunk, so I thought I was being all kinds of original) in which the world would come to an end in the year 2000 and our heroes had to stop it by resetting the galactic clock… but it was from the point of view of 1880, so the heroes included a Martian and they had to fight the Dragons of Jupiter, and they had a propeller-powered spaceship. It was a fun experiment… and I drew 20 pages.

I decided, being extraordinarily frustrated with my inability to finish a project, that the next comic I started, I’d stay with, hell or high water.

Which was when a friend and I were watching Next Gen when he reminded me about his quote when TNG first came out (In junior high): “I just wish they’d make a show called “Star Trek: the Rest of The Federation”

We talked for a while about some of the things that really irked us about Star Trek: “Janeway was the first female captain, but you notice that they had to make her a real butch woman because they still don’t think a warm personality could be accepted as the captain a ship.” When my mother was a very warm, loving woman, and she still ran the house and her own company just fine. She didn’t have to be butch or mean to run a company of 200 people…

We also talked about how in every fan story it was always the biggest, nastiest battleship you could ever find…with more and more warp nacelles…. what about the stories of the older, smaller ships?

And what if the Captain can’t actually put up much of a fight but knew to put strength around her?

I started to compile characters based on these traits.

And I pulled out my old Franz Joseph Tech Manual, picked a small ship (Destroyer), and found a name I liked, “Tamerlane”, Then I started penning the comic.

That was in 2005.

As of 2011, there are now nearly 200 pages penned for Tamerlane.  It wasn’t my intention to make the first real webcomic be a Star Trek Fan comic, but I’m kinda pleased with my characters, and frankly, I’m enjoying the world of Julie Cochrane and her misfit ship.

In 2008, I sheepeshly asked Karen Dick (Franz Joseph’s daughter, and the owner of his estate) permission to use the Tamerlane and Joseph’s design for my project.  A lovely lady she is, she granted it.  So, though I have a lot of Star Trek elements, the real thing I am using (Joseph’s design for a Destroyer and the registration number, name, etc) is used with permission.