'Stormfield'.
Wesley "Wes" Alexander was an American cartoonist, who is best-known as the creator of the syndicated gag comic 'Stormfield' (2000-2008).
Early life and career
He was born in 1966 as Wesley Don Alexander in Texas, where he got his interest in cartooning from reading his grandmother's copies of Charles M. Schulz' 'Peanuts' collections. He also ranked Jeff MacNelly, Bill Watterson, Will Eisner, Jim Borgman and Jeff Smith among his influences. Alexander began his cartooning career while living in Homestead in the south of Florida in 1988. He contributed to several local publications such as Paradise Times and The Homestead Merchant, before moving to Utah and then to Ohio.
Stormfield
Alexander had been developing his comic strip 'Stormfield' since the late 1980s. In April 2000, he finally got it distributed to newspapers through DBR Media, a small syndicate founded by three former King Features Syndicate staffers. The comic dealt with a smart-aleck kid called Alex Stormfield and his pal Dalton, whom the author saw as his own modern-day rendition of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (Stormfield was also the name of Mark Twain's mansion in Redding, Connecticut). At the height of its popularity, the strip appeared in about 450 nationwide rural weekly newspapers.'Stormfield' was also present in the kids comics' trade paperbacks Comics Library International, Vol. 3 (2000) to Vol. 6 (2001), and in an anthology published through the author's own Stormfield Press. The latter also featured work by Polly Keener, John Kovaleski, Aaron Warner and Elena Steier. Stormfield Press published cartoon books by other authors too, such as Glenn McCoy.
In-Toon
Wes Alexander was also co-editor and publisher of In-Toon!! Magazine, and additionally worked in print-shops. He has been praised for encouraging other cartoonists in their work, and for his keen sense for high quality book production.
Later life and death
Wes Alexander eventually returned to Texas, where he passed away on 18 March 2008, at the young age of 42. Shortly after the news of his passing, DBR Media cancelled its activities, which brought an end to the syndication of 'Stormfield' as well. One of Wesley Alexander's final projects was the planned graphic novel 'Marvin Ghastly', about a boy who possesses an extraordinarily dark side and struggles to cope with the ordinary world.
'Marvin Ghastly'.