Deddrie, the Cornsbrook Killer

Deddrie the Cornsbrook Killer was my first comic. I started drawing it when I was in high school, and then put it online for the world to see in 2003. I kept making them until 2016, which means this pun-laden serial killer was actively online for 13 years of my life. I meant no harm, despite the violence of the earlier comics. I was using these comics as a kind of art therapy before I understood what that really meant.

Cornsbrook is the name I gave the world I always seemed to go back to in my dreams/nightmares. The school, hospital, alleyways and so on are the same, and I learned where things were over time. Since so much of my work, Deddrie included, was inspired by nightmares, it only makes sense that they live in the town of Cornsbrook.

Deddrie, like all of my characters, always embodied aspects of my own personality. He said things I couldn?t say, and he?d defend himself in a way I?d never be able to. I was so full of anger and felt so helpless as a kid, that I was a ball-of-frustration by the time high school came around. So, in walks The Cornsbrook Killer, right?

Artistically, all the earlier comics were done analog with pen, paper, and whatever I had around me at the time. When I was put on a forced medical leave from my first college, I learned to write with my left hand, but I could still draw Deddrie with my right. Kind of. There was no one to impress when it came to these characters, so I was free to experiment.

I even completed a minute and a half long Deddrie animation in pencil while wearing an arm brace just to prove some imaginary point to no one in particular much later in my third undergraduate college. That?s still on the Team Manticore YouTube channel here:

Eventually, I started learning Photoshop. The earliest comics during that era were arguably the worst looking, but again, I was learning. I learned what a word balloon should be and how to use them, I learned about character design, and I learned a million other things that have served me in my later work through Deddrie the Cornsbrook Killer.

You can buy prints and merch, including the complete collection of comics in a hardcover book here