How Ironport Came to Life
Ironport has come a long way from when I first thought about it.
A really long way.
The original idea came to me back in 2016, while I was going through a dark moment in my life... divorce.
I dealt with it by writing.
At the time, I wrote a lot of poetry—which eventually became my book When Love Dies. I also wrote a screenplay called, at the time, Crossroads.
I completed it as a pilot episode for a possible series, and then it did what many great unfinished projects do.
It lived on my computer.
For years.
At the time, I was focused on making short horror animations and trying to put out as many short films as possible to build my YouTube following. Taking on something as large as Crossroads just seemed like too much.
But I never really stopped thinking about it.
Last year, I started experimenting with comic books. I was using my animation program, iClone, to create images and turn them into comic-book pages.
After making two comics, I realized something.
Maybe this was finally the right format for Crossroads.
So I dusted off the old script and started working on it again.
I reworked the story, added more character development, expanded scenes, and tried to make everything stronger. In January 2026, I officially started turning the script into a comic book using iClone to create the characters and environments.
Here is one of the pages I created using the program.
It looked good.
But it didn’t look good enough.
There was nothing technically wrong with it. It just looked too computer-generated and didn’t quite match the image I had in my head.
Still, I was going to release it that way.
At that point, I had been sitting on this story for nearly ten years, and I really wanted people to finally experience it.
Around that same time, I kept hearing about AI.
And I was actively avoiding it.
I honestly thought it was something I wanted nothing to do with.
Then I started seeing some of the images people were creating with it.
Okay...
Now I was curious.
So I started experimenting with it and reading books about AI and image generation.
Yes, books.
I am old.
When I want to learn something, apparently my first instinct is still to find a book about it.
My original thought was simple: maybe using AI—ChatGPT specifically—would help me take the images I had already created in iClone and make them look more like comic-book artwork.
There was only one small problem.
I had already created 87 pages in iClone.
So naturally, I started over at page 1.
The results looked better.
Much better.
But I still felt like something was missing.
Again, I was prepared to settle because I really wanted to get this story finished and out into the world.
But I kept reading and experimenting.
Eventually, out of curiosity, I started creating pages using prompts while using my iClone characters as visual references.
That changed everything.
Below is an image of Alexis as I originally created her in iClone next to the version generated using AI.
Now I was excited.
The character still came from the design I had created, but suddenly I could push the visual style much closer to what I had always imagined.
There was only one problem.
Of course there was.
I came to this realization after I had already recreated around 80 pages by converting the original iClone images into the earlier AI-assisted version.
Which meant...
You guessed it.
Back to page 1.
Again.
While working through all of this, I also realized that ChatGPT could help me proofread my writing.
That really got me excited.
It honestly doesn’t take much when my creative brain gets going.
Around that same time, I decided the story needed a new name.
Crossroads had been with me for nearly ten years, but it no longer felt right.
The story had become something bigger.
Something darker.
Something that belonged to this city I had created.
So Crossroads became Ironport.
Much better name, right?
At least I think so.
Then something else happened.
I decided to turn the story into a novel.
I used the screenplay as my guide, but writing the novel allowed me to go much deeper into the characters, their thoughts, their motivations, and the city itself.
And I absolutely loved it.
It reminded me how much I enjoy simply writing.
Once I started using ChatGPT as a proofreading tool—while still deciding what suggestions worked for my story and what didn’t—I felt creatively energized again.
Suddenly, I wanted to write everything.
I started pulling out old notebooks.
And believe me, I have a lot of notebooks.
I still prefer writing with pen and paper because, once again...
I am old.
I already have plans for a collection of short stories that I hope to release soon.
But that is another story.
Ha!
You see what I did there?
Anyway, that is the short version of how Ironport went from an idea sitting on my computer for nearly a decade to a screenplay, then a comic book, then an AI-assisted visual project, and finally a novel.
The comic version of Ironport is being broken into several issues. Issue #1 covers approximately the first ten chapters of the novel.
So if you finish the comic and want to know what happens next, you have two choices.
You can wait for Issue #2...
Or you can cheat and read the novel.
The novel tells the complete story and naturally has room to explore more of the characters, their thoughts, and the world of Ironport than the comic can.
Both versions tell the same story in different ways.
And after almost ten years, several redesigns, hundreds of images, multiple trips back to page 1, and probably far too much caffeine...
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