Christina “Steenz” Stewart‘s Heart of the City comic strip has been collected in a book.
The Riverfront Times features a story on local cartoonist Steenz and their book.
St. Louisan Steenz Stewart finds inspiration everywhere — from the moment they wake up till the moment they fall asleep — they’re finding ideas for their nationally syndicated comic Heart of the City.
These ideas show up in the comic strip, which has now been compiled into a book: Heart Takes the Stage, out on May 3.“Heart Takes The Stage is really cute,” Stewart says. “I really enjoyed starting my journey into syndicated comics. So I’m mostly excited to see what other people think. … There’s not exactly a comment section in the St. Louis Post [comics section], you know. It’s gonna be really interesting to see what people think of it when it’s out in the wild and collected into one book.”
The Times article tells of Steenz taking over the Heart comic strip two years ago and how they see the characters today, Steenz’s early influences and career, and advice for beginning cartoonists.
Steenz, as do all cartoonists, thinks this early work is just prologue to their current output:
“It’s hard because I’ll look at what Heart looks like from the book that comes out in two weeks and I’m like, ‘My art is already better than what’s in this first book,’” Stewart says with a laugh. “It’s very hard for me to be like, ‘Yeah, read Heart Takes The Stage because it’s good,’ and in the back of my head, I’m like, ‘But it gets better. So keep reading it.’”
The Amazon preview shows that the book collections starts from Steenz’s very first Heart strip.
The Andrews McMeel Publishing blurb:
This first book collection of Heart of the City comics by the strip’s new creator, Steenz, is packed with outstanding art, a diverse cast of characters, and engaging, positive storylines about friendship, pop culture, ghost stories, and a wide range of real-world issues.
disclosure: The Daily Cartoonist is part of the Andrews McMeel Universal universe