Dom Orejudos was a prominent cartoonist and illustrator in the Chicago-based gay leather scene. He was born in Chicago as Domingo Stephen Orejudas into a family of Italian and Philippine descent. With his partner Chuck Renslow, he established the male photography studio Kris Studios, leather bar The Gold Coast Bar and the International Mr. Leather contest.
As Etienne, he made erotic and pornographic drawings and paintings, that appeared in magazines like Tomorrow's Man. He used the pen name Stephen for creating some of the first widely published and distributed explicit pornographic storybooks, full of S/M, fetishism and his other erotic fantasies. His erotic work also included parodies of superheroes ('Meatman') and TV series ('Startrick').
Orejedos was also known in the ballet world as a dancer, choreographer, costume designer, and set designer. After a long battle with AIDS, he died at his home in Boulder, Colorado, in 1991 at the age of 58. Other comic writers/artists who passed away from AIDS have been Allen Shapiro, Copi, Henfil, Keith Haring, Neal Pozner and Ted Stearn.