From "One More Nerd Who Wants To Make a Webcomic"

By Clark J. Pufft

Originally published in the Vesper City Chronicle

OUTER SPACE - As a child, Dave Vincenty dreamed of being an independent comic book artist. He also dreamed of being CEO of a large corporation, being a theoretical physicist famous for creating a new theory of everything that put both relativity and quantum physics to shame, and world domination; however, the comic book thing stuck.

Seeing him now, in his secret space station, hidden somewhere orbiting on the other side of the moon, Dave is still every bit as ambitious. "You don't see a whole lot of people wanting to rule the world," Dave says, "and if somebody does, it's usually some kind of deep personal thing... or they just want to kill everybody who has a different ideology from theirs. But just look at all the wars and riots and all these horrible crimes that are going on. Heck... look at the music industry and where it's going. I think somebody needs to step in and take control of everything... to make the world a better place!"

"I may not strive towards world domination like I used to, says Dave, "but there are other ways to change the world. Take my comic, for example. It's a simple thing. It's just words and pictures. But if you get people looking at it, then you've got their attention. So doing a comic is kind of like conquering the world, two eyeballs at a time."

The inherent drama in Dave's artistic approach - a kind of surrealist noir that can turn on a dime from whimsical fantasy to action-packed superhero space opera - is a novel take on the decades-old comics medium, which some believe is beginning to dwindle away into nothingness. This, Dave says, is what led him to put his comic online.

"I was thinking one day," Dave explains, "I can go on the Web and check the stock market - even though I don't have any stocks - and read the news. I even saw this poster from the MPAA once that says you can find illegal copies of movies to download online. This World Wide Web thing is huge. But I thought to myself, there aren't any comics on the Web! It wouldn't be hard to do. Really, I just do a comics page like normal, but I scan it into a computer and put it on a Web page. I guess nobody's thought of doing that yet."

The story becomes even more confusing when one considers why the comic has yet to actually start. Originally scheduled for the summer of 2004 or 2003 or something, CowSuitGirl's online debut has been pushed back so many times, some have questioned whether the comic will actually debut.

"I know there are hundreds of fans out there who are anxiously waiting for this comic," says Dave, staring out into the cold blackness of space, "or maybe a few dozen fans. Okay, five fans are anxiously awaiting this comic. I get asked all the time, 'when is CSG going to hit the store shelves?' And I have to say to the voice in my head that keeps asking me this, 'listen, Emilio' - that's what the voice in my head is called - 'Emilio, the comic will come out when it is ready! Now quit rushing me! I'm not lazy!'"

One constant in Dave's approach will remain his inexplicable obsession with both cows and ninjas; having spent a little too much time sitting too close to the television at a young age, he is not likely to make anything without repeated references to both.

"So you've got ninjas and you've got cows, which are a different sort of thing altogether," he says, "and you wonder who would win, don't you? Who would win in a fight between somebody with the powers of a cow and somebody with the powers of a ninja? That's an exciting concept... but it's not just about that. At the its very core, CowSuitGirl is a comic about two college students who play video games and make jokes about pop culture, and I think that makes for something that's very original."

___