This is Eric Millikin. Foreground.

Hi. My name is Eric Millikin. I'm the son of a laid-off auto worker, I grew up in a trailer park, I've got an IQ around 150 and I'm the last motherfucker most Americans want to see drawing comics for their newspaper.

Which is exactly why your newspaper needs me so bad.

I paid my way through art school by, among other things, 1) cutting up cadavers in the human anatomy lab and 2) selling my artwork. I also happened to get into a lot of trouble with the law. When local law enforcement discovered that someone left a dead human fetus in a jar near one of the gallerys where I showed my art, I naturally became their prime suspect for the crime of stealing dead babies and making sculptures out of them. At this point my lawyer would like me to remind everyone that the case never went to trial and I'm innocent until proven guilty, so there, bitches. Thank Lord Satan and Baby Jesus that this was all before the USA PATRIOT Act, otherwise I'd probably be posting this mesage from death row right now.

This was the story a local newspaper ran on the incident:

I don't care what arts magazines ever writes about my comics -- that will always be the best Fetus press ever.

After good cop Det. Sgt. Alicia Nordmann and bad cop Det. Douglas Monette decided that entering my home without a search warrant while I was in the shower and later harrassing me at two of my jobs was an appropriate way to serve and protect my community, I decided there was only one way to fight back: Comics.

I decided to create a comic that would appeal directly to police officers who enjoy dead fetus humor, and then sold it to the newspaper the police read every morning. The goal was to make them choke to death on their doughnuts.

I thought it was very important to make sure I had the word "Fetus" in the title. I think I may have originally added the "X" while thinking of "Malcolm X" or "Static X" or "Planet X" and what not, but after realizing that if you say "Fetus-X" fast enough it sounds like 'Fetus Sex" I knew I had a winner. Plus, since everyone has been a fetus at one time or another, I figured a title like "Fetus-X" would really help my comic have a broad appeal among all ages and social backgrounds. Everybody loves babies.

Unfortunately, newspaper editors tend to run things like this instead of our comics a bit too often:

So I get fired a lot and now most everybody reads Fetus-X on that mysterious internet contraption through their subscriptions to the wonderfully wonderful serializer.net

Oh, remember when I said I didn't care what arts magazines write about my comics? Well, I apparently cared enough to cut this Achewood vs. Fetus-X paragraph out of a recent issue of The Comics Journal:

That's right, "It's a pleasure to see strips like ... Fetus-X use the newspaper format for far more daring, entertainingly perverse work ... [Fetus-X] would be perfectly at home at a good alternative weekly or a great college paper."

Take that, Family Circus.

If you'd like contact Eric Millikin for speaking engagements or interviews, email eric-at-fetusx-dot-com.