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I had been talking to Dave Simons because Dave's an old friend of mine, he's like a brother, and I'd been helping him with some storyboard work that he'd been mailing to me from California, so then he told me, "Why don't you come out here and see what you can scare up?" So I moved back to Cleveland and from there I left to California and started to get into the animation industry for around three or four years.

The last year I was at Stan Lee Media working with Stan Lee in developing new shows for the internet and was even scheduled to develop a show that I had created and written, which I still have all the model sheets to, and the script, and I think it'd be an incredible success. It could have been pitched to software companies and they'd have definitely wanted Stan Lee's name promoting their software. I still have the stuff, it's still a do-able project and it's still pertinent today. Then Stan Lee filed for bankruptcy, this is cutting a lot of corners in the story, but when they filed bankruptcy because of Peter Paul, he took a bunch of money when they were doing some investigating into insider trading at Stan Lee Media then there was a margin call and there was no money, so he took off with a bunch of money. Everyone was given a few minutes notice to pack their stuff and get out. Suddenly I was out in the middle of California with no work and right before Christmas when no-one is hiring because everything is going into post-production.

I called up the people at Stretch Films in New York. I'd done a little bit of work for them. I was a background guy on the Courage The Cowardly Dog series. I had been doing backgrounds for them back in New York and had gotten a call from Jim Salicrup who told one of the production managers, "Hey, why doesn't he come out to California and work for Stan Lee?" I'd have been better off with Stretch Films because they were more steady. So when Stan Lee Media fell apart I called them and they wanted me to come back out there and help John Vilworth develop a couple of shows for Courage The Cowardly Dog. I got the chance to help co-write one of the shows and storyboarded both of them.

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