So here's the story. Many years ago, back in the early to mid-1990's (I forget when exactly), one day I was trying to draw Bart Simpson. I did a terrible job of it, so I just decided to change everything (except the spiky hair), and made up a totally new character, who I called J.J. 'Muggar' Simpson, an ancestor of the Simpson family we all know and love. Subsequently, I made up a whole cast of characters living in and around the old west town of Western Gulch, and I was planning on possibly doing a series of comics, just for fun, that I called "D'WARD's 1890's." (Back then, I called myself D'WARD as a nickname, a contraction of my real name, David Ward. I insisted that the letters be all caps and the apostrophe be straight. I was always weird, but also liked to think of myself as cool. Or as I spelled it in those days, "kool.") I should also mention that I had a drawing I did of Muggar and bartender Jake Westman, in which Muggar demands a sarsaparailla, "on da house." I called this drawing "Classic Muggar," as it was something he did all the time. I have a poster-sized version I drew once in art class in high school, which is hanging on the wall in my bedroom at my parents' house. It's too big to scan, of course, but I took a pic with my phone...
Um, so anyway. I never got around to doing any comics. (I'm not even sure now if I was thinking of something like a comic strip or comic book.) But maybe someday I'll get around to doing little stories, I dunno. I'm really not a visual artist, as you'll see when you look at the drawings I've scanned and put on my site for posterity. It's more likely that, if I ever do anything with the characters, it'll be to just write textual stories about them. (Though it's still most likely that I'll never do anything at all.) Meanwhile, I'm having fun rereading the bios I wrote for each character along with the drawings, and I'd like to make a few updated notes about each of them. Um... also I should mention that there are tie-ins to various intellectual properties I didn't create, because I've always been a fan of such things. Homages, or what have you. Also there are alot of intentional anachronisms (and sometimes I wasn't even sure if something I came up with was anachronistic or not, but nowadays it's much easier to look things up, what with the Internet and all). And I played with alot of cliches when I made up characters, though many of them may have been things I merely perceived as cliches at the time, even if no one else ever did. I dunno. It was all very wink-wink, tongue-in-cheek sort of stuff....
So, anyway.... here's the list:
Doris 'Kitty' Carlisle
Mayor Hilton Chase
Tex Colorado
Lt. Samuel Drake
Jerry Frankly
Harold Geiger
Rev. Jim Hallister
Perry Knight
Milo MacKeast
Dr. Quentin 'Rinny' Martin
Miller Mason
Jack McKin
Sheriff Simon McSlick
Joe Sampson
Jason 'Frenchie' Shearer
J.J. 'Muggar' Simpson
Muggar's Boys
Tom Smith
Mary Tambo
Peacie Tokken
Vinny Vincenzo
Lucas Wayne
Jake Westman
Judge Roy Zima
Attorneys Tony Kelly and Zack Marz
Western Gulch (maps)