Origin of Cpt Link128: I used to just go by link128 (before that link64) but too often that name was taken, so I figured to make the name my own I'd just throw one of my real world nicknames (Cpt=Captain) in front of it and voila! Cpt=Captain Who'd of thought a John Smith would have nicknames, huh?
Most active online presences: Xbox Live, on once or twice a week in Halo 2 or Call of Duty 2, mostly; "The Wotch" and "The Wotch: Cheer!" forums, mostly reaction threads but sometimes a few others look for Jo in my signature.
Other things in my life: football GO BRONCOS!!!, school, several other comics that I read (unfortunately I haven't had time to get involved in anything other than Wotch forums), partying whenever possible, snowboard instructor with Eskimo Ski Club incase any of you are in it bug me.
Back in high school I played four years of football, 2 of rugby, did a year of JROTC drill team (which sucked 'cause we sucked, bad), and worked far too hard at the school stuff. Never was much of a nerd's nerd, I knew plenty and called 'em all friends but frankly most everyone at my high school was a bit nerd and a bit jock so I never had to deal with any of the typical high school BS. Don't expect too much of this part of life to leak into the comic. My a-typical experience kinda ruins my ability to write it.
2 years later and I'm your typical broke college student, party when I can, bitch about homework, and consider Jalepenos their own food group. I'm physics major at a bruttally difficult engineering school in Colorado (unhappiest in the nation WOOO MINES!! Go Donkeys! Or is it Orediggers...). So where does the comic come in because that's what you really care about right? That's a bit of a long story but one I'm happy to tell cause well if you're reading this you're probably have nothing better to do and neither do I, 'cept sleep but that can wait.
So let's go back to the begining. Before college, before "Angel" was even a dust bunny collecting in the back of my mind behind the couch I was bored in high school. Every day instead of taking notes or really doing anything in class, don't follow my example my classes were easy, I would doodle. After a while I got to where I was actually good enough to be able to draw stuff kinda the way I wanted. So I figured "Hey why not actually try to develope this?" So I rummaged through my old books and found my old copy of "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way," which for those of you who don't know may be the best anatomy and basic sketch instruction book ever made. After a while I actually was able to do stuff and figured again "Hey why don't I try drawing an actual comic book?!" Well that idea failed miserably, I moped around and only planned out like three pages and drew half of one. However, I did learn a few things (some of the themes from this first comic became heavy influences on "Angel" later on). Well this all happened in the waning months of my sophmore year, I continued to build on my abilities and at the eve of the following summer I felt it was time to try again. I convinced a friend of mine to help out and we began brainstorming ideas, which resulted in nothing of any use. It wasn't until I took a week long fishing trip to South Dakota, we only caught three fish but I came back with an idea, or more accurately a title. That's right folks "Angel" was born from a doodle of the title (still pretty much unchanged) I did in the car on the way to South Dakota.
My friend and I continued to play with the idea for a couple of weeks before he lost interest. So I was left alone to develope the comic and develope I did. Now armed with a moderate amount of skill I planned and developed the world of "Angel." After a few months and after I had completely re-invented half the characters. I felt it was time for me to try to write a book. Problem was I didn't know where to start. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do for the begining but not enough to begin to build a story. I had a later story arc planned in detail in my head so I did the very illogical. I began with the second chapter and decided to save the first until after I had developed the story more. In retrospect this was a blessing and curse, it allowed me to develope the characters, my skills, and the story a lot but at the same time it left me with a comic I don't know how to use. The art is sub-par and some of the pages don't quite mesh. That, and it took me two years to do just thirty pages half of which aren't even inked (in all likelyhood I'll redo the pages I have to but keep the rest and increase the update schedule to compensate).
This was all before I discovered the wonders of web comics. You see up until that point I had always figured that I could eventually market my stuff on classical touchable format, if I ever published at all. However, after finding "The Wotch" by accident, all that changed I suddenly realized that now I had a way to not only publish "Angel" but I could do it at the reasonable pace of a few pages a week. That was midway between my freshmen and sophmore years of college, I took a few months but I was finally able to find a host and design the site. And this is where we stand now I've built the site, mostly, and have started to spread the word about the comic, word of mouth is the best advertising with this distribution method I need your helps guys!.
My school work has suffered a bit but it was worth it to finally get this out after three years in developement. The good news about that is that I have at least a year's worth, maybe more, of plot worked out which means fewer fillers due to writer's block. So now that you know the story of "Angel" don't forget to tell me what you think it'll make the comic better and get me on your good side if we get enough people we'll even get a forum somewhere. Now, my minions, go forth and spread the good word!
"Angel" is hosted on ComicGenesis, a free webhosting and site automation service for webcomics.