Recalling Louie and Bruce, Part 1

I used to draw comic strips for fun. It was a hobby, nothing more. I loaded sketchbooks with my ideas, jokes (mine and others), and actual finished projects, which I shared with my friends. One of them, a newspaper publisher, published them in a local newspaper she owned. But that happened years after I stopped drawing comic strips.

Louie and Bruce, the comic strip in my sketchbooks, was born when I began writing and drawing funny incidents that happened at a sawmill I worked at when I was 24. You may think the last place to find humor would be at a sawmill, but life was a laugh there. Every day. Seriously. My coworkers and I always did our best to make each other laugh. It made the laborious workday a bit easier for us all.

The following 3-panel strip is an idea that never made it out of my sketchbook. It’s a twist on an old tongue twister. The characters in it are Frank, Bruce, and Leroy who work at my fictional sawmill. They’re just sketches—not fully realized drawings yet. But it was the beginning.

The larger strip below, Working at the Sawmill, was the first large-scale production of Louie and Bruce. The first panel shows Bruce feeding a board of wood into an edger saw. At the other end, in the second panel, are two minor characters, Joe and (I think) Carl. They’re in the third panel with Louie, the main title character and the strip’s lovable patsy. His twin brother is Leroy, another patsy.

Thanks for joining me for a look back at the beginning of Louie and Bruce, one of the most favorite and fun endeavors in my life.

Until next time, peace, love, and laughter to all.

Steve, 1/11/2025

This post “Recalling Louie and Bruce, Part 1” copyright © 2025 Steven Leo Campbell at stevecampbellcreations.com – All rights reserved.