StarR Blog #5: The Seed Before the Garden

When I was in high school, I had a story living in my head. I drew character designs, sketched panel pages, and filled a notebook with story beats and prose. That story was "The Remidy Saga". I started it sometime in my sophomore year, long before I ever thought about writing midterms.

By the time my junior year English class asked for a midterm essay, I realized I had a choice. I could write about someone else’s book, a current day topic, or I could turn in something of my own – something I had already been building for years. I asked my teacher if I could submit a short story outline based on my existing work. She said yes. I took the notebook, pulled together the essential beats, and wrote a seven‑page sci‑fi outline called The Remidy Saga.

I got a 95%. Then I set it aside. I always kept it and the notebook with the full version stored with the artwork it was meant for. Until recently I haven't looked at or read it for over 30 years.

The comic itself never got finished. The sketchbook, however, kept growing. By the time I graduated in 1991, that same sketchbook became part of my portfolio for art school at Pratt Institute. And in 1992, it helped me land my first professional comic book interview. I was interviewed by Jim Shooter on a Friday, and then again by Bob Layton the following Monday. Bob Layton hired me. I was nineteen years old.

For most of my professional career, I never thought of myself as a writer. I was an introvert, a pure artist, an illustrator for comics and other media. Writing still feels new and unpolished to me. But I realize now that I had been creating stories in my mind for characters for years, unconsciously. I spent thirty plus years absorbing story structure by drawing other people’s scripts. That’s not a disadvantage; it’s a different kind of apprenticeship. I learned what works on the page, what flows, what lands emotionally and visually. I internalized pacing, panel flow, and visual storytelling in a way that pure writers often struggle to learn. Now I’m applying that intuition to my own work.

That brings me back to The Remidy Saga.

Thirty six years after that midterm, I pulled out the old notebook. The pages were yellowed, stained, probably by flood water, but the ink was not smudged, the ideas were still there. A global defense organization. An alien emperor forcing human commanders to fight his war. A mysterious hooded figure who believed his own people had gone too far. Moral questions about power, coercion, and good intentions.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the same soil where Evany Starr & Midnight Penn would eventually grow. The same distrust of institutions. The same tension between survival and morality. The same belief that dragging innocents into someone else’s conflict leaves scars that don’t heal.  I wasn't aware of any overlap while I wrote it.

I cleaned up the spelling, standardized the names, and kept every plot point, character, and theme intact. What you’ll read below in the link is the story I wrote as a teenager.

You’ll see the seeds of everything I’m still writing today.

Read *Remidy Saga: Unwanted War*. Then look at *Evany Starr & Midnight Penn*. The parallels might surprise you.

The Remidy Saga: Unwanted War

The original "Remidy Saga: Unwanted War" 2 page intro opener and final page summary + moral addendum midterm paper.