About Stewball: A note from Kate
I drew my first horse comic while completing an editorial internship at Mother Jones magazine in San Francisco. For about a year, after finishing each issue of the magazine, the interns (there were between five and ten of us at any one time) would create and distribute to our colleagues a zine called Undermatter, which poked gentle fun at the eminent issue of Mother Jones we had just released. The horse character -- an underdog with an existential dilemma, ambitions to cultural greatness, and few remunerative job prospects -- was a fitting antihero for our group, though much less sarcastic than we. The horse had no name; rather, he toiled in anonymity, much as we interns did.
During my years working for The New Republic in Washington, DC, I published several more horse comics, under the title "Beyond the Box," in a DC zine called The Wash. "Beyond the Box" was meant to draw attention to, and push the boundaries of, the media boxes (TVs, web pages, newspapers, smart phones, and, yes, comics) that parcel the complexity of life experiences into digestible forms. The horse's search for meaning was both spurred and frustrated by the limits of these media.
After moving back to San Francisco, I began self-publishing "Beyond the Box" and distributing it to cafes and bookstores around the city, traveling on foot with my photocopies in a backpack. Finding a place for my little pile of photocopies amid the stacks of advertising in any available nook of every cafe and bookstore reminded me of the existential dilemma the horse struggled with in each issue of the strip. Most of everything ends up in the Cosmic Recycling Bin; yet we strive for beauty, connection, and humor anyway!!
Around this time, I hit upon a permanent name for both the horse and the strip: Stewball, the name of the champion racehorse in an old folk song. (This was also the time when another key character, Hammergoat -- a Zen-like hammerhead shark-goat from the swing state of Flohiowa -- made his debut.) My Stewball, however, is not this celebrated champion, but a descendant, with great expectations but few accolades. The last line of the old song goes, "If I'd have bet on old Stewball, I'd be a free man today." Perhaps my Stewball could never win for anyone else the remunerative rewards that elude him in his own world, but drawing his story is one of the purest forms of creative freedom I've found. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. -- KI
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