Meet the real Longo!

The character Longo is based on my real friend Jason Longo, who I've always simply called Longo. He was pretty much my first friend in New York when I moved here in 2007, and just like his character, when I met him he was a talented comic artist with a fabulous sense of humor.

Originally from Connecticut, he currently lives in Brooklyn not too far from me. He works as an art director for Mud Puddle Books and loves to have cook-outs. He's worked on various illustration & comic projects, ranging from the webcomic We Make Clouds to being one of the initial artists featured on Zuda Comics. I'll always be grateful that he loaned me the second graphic novel I ever read, "Blankets," which had a big influence on me.

This is an old pic of him back as a teenager!

Here we are at a house party of his...

And here we are rocking out at a Harry and the Potters show...

And this is us with my friend Juliet who was the original inspiration for the Jules character...but more on her later!

On to the art! This is a drawing Longo made of us in 2007:

Which I referenced in Page by Paige:

This is another one of his drawings where I appear as a character:

And a couple more fun drawings of his...


And finally, this was the original character sketch I made for Longo back when I first wrote out the book script. He definitely evolved as I drew him over and over!