consists of Spencer Thompson (me) and my lovely wife Debi. I write and draw the comic strip (with occasional help from her), and she does all the business and technical stuff, website creation, posting, etc…
This all started around 1995, when I first created the Wind Junkie character for a former friend’s windsurf shop tee shirt. The shop went belly-up around 2001, so around 2003 I decided to start writing a comic strip using the basic character (slightly modified), and adding others as situations dictated.
I was just goofing around, really, trying to show the concept of brain shrinkage in a visual form, and originally in black-and-white. Well, when I finished Brain Shrinkage, I wanted to draw a comic depicting something that happened to me in the parking lot of Cabrillo Beach, a local sailing site (Helpful Advice). When I did that, I… Well, it just kind of took on a life of it’s own! After registering my work with the U.S. Copyright Office, I decided to send a couple off to Wind Surfing magazine, just because I’d never seen a windsurfing comic before, and guess what? They bought it!
So with Wind Surfing magazine’s permission, I sent it off to Boards magazine in England, and they bought it, too! Suddenly I’m a gen-u-wine paid professional comic artist, published in 2 countries, virtually overnight! WHEW! (Note: Previously published Wind Junkie Comics can be found here: Comics)
What I REALLY am is a carpenter at a small community college in Southern California. Debi is a Web Developer/Designer. Debi’s the one who wanted to get a website going, and I thought it might be fun to create one, too.
We’ve both have been sailing since around 1991, and are currently team riders for Sailworks, Promotion Wetsuits and Maui Fin Company.
Thanks for visiting Wind Junkie, hope it was fun for you. We’re going to try to keep it up-to-date (as long as it doesn’t interfere with our sailing schedule!), very non-commercial (no annoying ads), very true to the sport, semi hard core, and most of all, very FUN!
Wind Junkie Comics are created using Adobe Illustrator, the website with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and WordPress.