30 Years of Catfight Art

At the time of this writing I have been creating female fighting art and stories for around 30 years.  My love for female fighting began a couple years earlier than that, and is the subject of an unfinished blog I will probably post soon enough, but for now I'm just going to talk about my drawings and how they have evolved over the years.

These are the earliest drawings I ever did.   I was trying to visually capture the female fight fantasies I wanted to see, where bikini clad women warriors beat each other bloody until one dropped unconscious (or perhaps even dead) to the ground.

The drawings were quite crude but I really enjoyed making them.  I was probably around 15 years old at the time.  All my "artistic skills" at that time were self taught and I had very little in the way of photographic assistance.  I just made these straight out of my mind with pencils on paper. 

Every time I made one of these I had plans to turn it into a whole set but I usually never got very far. One "series" I actually managed to make four panels for featured a blue skinned alien girl beating the crap out of an earthling girl in a savage fight to the death.  (This concept would be revisited many year later.

By the time I finished high school and moved out on my own, I only had about a dozen of these crude sketches, which I kept hidden in a plain manila folder in the bottom of a filing cabinet.  Not one other person ever saw these, and it would be many years before that would change.  I never revealed my fetish for female fights to anyone.  After high school I moved to a relatively big city, had a girlfriend for a minute, and began to live a different sort of life for a couple years.  Then at age 20 I found myself setting up shop back home in my parent's basement (ridicule if you will) and it was during this hot lonely summer that I started my most ambitious project yet.  It started with a ring match between two characters I created:  Tygra (in the tiger striped bikini, ans Stephanie, in the red.)

I should point now that every one of these drawings (from then until present) were rendered on standard 8 x 12 copy paper with pencils, colored pencils, and inked in black felt tip pen.  At this time I began to store them in sheet protectors inside 3 ring binders, which I still do today.

With this new project I had found some new motivation that had not burned in me before.  I cranked out drawing after drawing, creating a complete series that consisted of 32 panels, featuring a wild back and forth fight that Stephanie eventually emerges victorious from.

Something else that was different about this series, and may have been a contributing factor in my interest in seeing it through, Stephanie was actually sort of based on a girl I had dated for a while when I was out on my own.  In fact an updated version of her appears in my current Green Tower City storyline.  

Once I finished this series, I began to work backwards, turning the Stephanie vs. Tygra match into the final fight of  a 16 girl elimination tournament.  (A concept I have used many times now.)

I got pretty far on it.  All together there are well over 100 drawings in this series, but then I got tired of it and moved on to something else, my first foray into drawing my girls topless.

By this time I was in my early 20's and was living a pretty wild life though, unlike most of my friends I also maintained a job and more than one hobby.  I lived in a sort of party house for the alternative/ punk rock crowd of the early 90's and had LOTS of girlfriends for that glorious few years.  Many of my creations were based loosely on girls I knew during this time.  (This was also the only time in my life I ever came close to actually having two girls fight over me, but that is subject matter for another blog, as this one is already likely to get quite long in the tooth.

Unlike the last attempt at a 16 girl elimination tournament, I was working on this one chronologically. Many of the characters would later get revamped and are currently in rotation in Green Tower City.  I had a job working third shift in a quiet little gas station and usually worked on this series while I was there, finishing 3 or 4 panels a night between customers.  By this time I had also collected a small stack of catfighting and women's wrestling magazines which I was able to use for reference material.

This was the last panel I completed in the series, as I had once again gotten bored with the project and wanted to start something new. The girl in purple was named Lori Williams and would eventually morph into Lori the Fighting Ballerina, though that was still a few years off.

I began yet another project at this time, Once again intending to turn it into a 16 girl elimination tournament.  With this series I wrote full pages of text, which I glued onto construction paper and place into the sheet protectors in such a way that they appeared on the left side of the drawings. 

This series I didn't get far on at all, completing only 3 bouts and beginning a 4th, though again, many of the characters, who were based loosely on girls I knew, would resurface later in Green Tower City.

Around this time I got a new apartment and also happened to recollect every issue of the original Marvel Star Wars comic book.  (A comic I had read when I was little.)   It was while I was reading through these that I suddenly became inspired to begin yet another 16 girl elimination tournament, and to date the only one I have actually completed!  The Solar System Queen Fight To The Death Elimination Tournament. 

This series I will probably post in it's entirety to the blog at a later time.  As I worked on it mostly in chronological order, I feel like you can actually see my art improving throughout it.

There were a few other projects at this time, and I found something called the Am-Fem directory, which was a paper directory (like an old school phonebook) you could get that gave you the addresses of thousands of people who were had an interested in female fighting.  Also I had acquired a nice scanner/printer/copier and had the idea that I could sell printed versions of my drawings.  I created a catalog and sent out sample to people in the directory, actually getting a few responses and sold a few printed versions of drawing sets.  At this time the internet was just getting started, though it would be a few years before I was able to get an internet worthy computer for myself. 

It was also during this time that I created my Green Tower Illustrations logo, which I have no plans to alter.

Inspired by the works of Stanton, Glenn, and others I began trying my hand at black and white renderings, as that seemed the way to go.  (I have since included many of these older works into my Green Tower City timeline, along with an in context explanation as to why they are not in color.)  

Truth be told I always have preferred doing my work in color. 

It was now 2002 and I had been going to a community college in the relatively small city I was living in.  When I wasn't busy with school or work my drawings continued, and a few characters were created who would, in a few years, become recurring characters in the Green Tower City timeline.

Lori the Fighting Ballerina, Andrea, and Janie were among them:

Then, in 2003, I made my big move to a much larger town where I would continue my studies in University.  I got some student loans, which allowed me to buy my first decent computer, and at long last I discovered the wonders of the internet.  I was blown away by how big the female fighting fetish community was, and began sharing my artwork via a Yahoo Group.  This group was very successful and lead to me getting several commissions, which typically ended up being much different from my usual fare.  Such as

Chics fighting with weapons:

Chics fighting under water:

Anime chics:

And even fat chics!:

This was, in retrospect, a very busy time period for me.  In addition to all the commissioned work I was still doing my own stories.

Then around 2006, I began yet another 16 girl elimination tournament.  It all started with the creation of this character:  Emily, and a new venue, this one where fights would take place on a large tan mat.

From here my fictional universe began to expand  Over the next ten years I drew more characters, more fights, and began introducing earlier characters into my new continuity. The 16 girl Mat Tournament has been put on the back burner several times, but I am still quite determined to finish it, and in fact just completed, as of August 2019, the second fight of the second round.  It is my plan to focus almost exclusively on this tournament until it is completed.  Emily is still around, and the last set I have completed has her in a viscous back and forth brawl with Mary.

But that is best left for a new blog post.