About

Hi! I’m Gale Galligan, cartoonist, rabbit friend, and longtime fan of things. I first got into making comics because I was really, really into Garfield and wanted to make something funny like Garfield. Then I shared them with my family – and they laughed at my jokes! Not all the time, just sometimes, and possibly just because that’s what family’s supposed to do when you’re a tiny baby doing your best. Regardless, I was encouraged, and it was all downhill from there.

I was a preteen in the early 2000s, which is when a few funny things started to happen:

My friends and I began communicating online. It took full minutes to download images and sometimes your kid sister would pick up the phone while you were trying to chat with your pals on AIM it was a different time okay.
Anime and manga started to become more accessible in the United States.
I got really, really, really into Yu-Gi-Oh!.

So I got really into Yu-Gi-Oh!, looked it up online, and found out that there were fan groups and those fan groups had fan art on them sometimes, and they would talk to each other about the show and each other’s fan art. This is a really roundabout way of saying that suddenly, there was a place where a bunch of people all liked the thing I liked, and I could get even more encouragement for drawing things I was already into, and before I knew it I was making a bunch of comics about Yu-Gi-Oh! and making friends through that.

But secretly, I was also honing my craft!!

Engaging as a fan with fanstuff helped me to figure out my own sensibilities as a young artist, brought me encouragement and critique, and honestly just made me really happy during a weird and wild time (being a teen is hard, you guys). It’s not as easy for me to tap into that pure enthusiasm today, but I remember it, and finding ways to get myself back into that headspace can be a great comfort and inspiration.

So I thought it’d be fun to talk to my pals about their own experiences! We all like stuff, and we all like to yell about the stuff we like!

There’s the mission statement! I hope this brings you some joy.

Yours in fandom,

Gale