After his 30th birthday, Tony Breed started to feel life's potential slipping away.
According to Panel Patter, a news blog dedicated to web comics and cartoonists, Breed decided creating comics was an impractical dream in college and gave up to pursue something, "unspecified and white collar." More than 15 years later, following encouragement from his husband and a close friend, Breed conceived the comic Finn and Charlie Are Hitched.
Loosely based on Breed's own marriage, Finn and Charlie Are Hitched is a Web comic about the daily life of two gay men and their dramatic ( but hilarious ) family and friends. The comic was launched in April 2006 and ran for eight years, gaining a strong readership in both the LGBT and web comic communities.
Very recently, Finn and Charlie Are Hitched was put on hiatus and a sequel was introduced called Muddlers Beat, featuring many of the same characters, but structured more as an ensemble strip. Breed was nominated for two Ignatz Awards in 2011 for "Outstanding Online Comic" and "Promising New Talent" as well as travels throughout the country to exhibit his work and connect with other cartoonists and readers. In other words, Tony Breed's aspirations of escaping the mundane and creating comics are truly coming alive.
His process begins with writing: Breed prefers to go for a walk and talk through a comic strip's plot and dialogue. After writing the story down, he thumbnails the narrative to figure out blocking, expressions, and gestures. Breed works on a Bristol Board, pencils in non-photo blue, inks with PITT pens, and shadows with a wash of yellow dye-based ink so black lines aren't obscured. Then, he scans the comic to his hard drive, utilizes color separations, and fixes small errors before digitally coloring in the comics using a specialized program.
Raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Breed moved to Chicago to attend college and never looked back. He came out as a freshman and, two years later, met his now-husband Eric. Although Tony Breed is not quitting his nine-to-five anytime soon, the future is limitless for his innovative comic-strip endeavors. See www.hitchedcomic.com to read Finn and Charlie Are Hitched, and www.muddlersbeat.com to read Muddlers Beat.
THE STATS
Age: 42
Neighborhood: Ravenswood
Relationship status: Married, since 1997 ( legally since 2008—"We did it in California right before Prop 8." )
Hobbies: "I'm on the board at CHIRP Radio, which is a local, music-focused independent community radio station. I help run the station and I also DJ every Friday morning from 6 to 9am. You can listen at www.chirpradio.org ."
Little-known fact: "Years ago, I had a side gig writing pronunciation guides for a series of Cities of the World children's books. "
