Oddly enough, September 11 is The Hero's birthday. A bit after
midnight on the ill-fated morning of 9/11/01, I got frustrated
reworking character descriptions for the comic I was thinking
of doing, so I sat down at my artboard, pulled out newsprint
and pencils, and roughed out sixty-some pages of Books One
through Three. By the time I went to bed at dawn, the world
had a couple of hours left before it went insane.

I had very little idea how to do a comic book, and almost no
idea how to do a website. I just knew I had this story I felt like
telling, and the best way to do it was to make it an on-line comic
book. I've learned a lot. For one thing, I draw a little bit better
than I used to. The comic was supposed to go on-line in time for
Koinu's coming-of-age day, October 26, 2001, but I didn't
understand the vagaries of large-format scanning, or of web
hosting. We missed Koinu's birthday but not Christmas; at
midnight Christmas Eve, when the bells were ringing and the
animals were talking, we went live. We'll have a bigger party
for that anniversary.

But one year ago—almost exactly, as I type this—the weirdness
started. Eleanor made me an anniversary picture to celebrate.
That's it above. I'm still having fun.

Kristine Batey
September 11, 2002