As a child, Tony Lawrence was told that he'd be unable to support himself. The young man was obese, and suffered from dyslexia and attention-deficit disorder. But Lawrence wanted more out of life than an SSI check. He fought back against his disabilities, and has worked for a number of years as a tour guide at Disneyland. And he continues to blossom. After changing his eating habits to, as he puts it, save his life, a new Tony emerged. The slimmed-down Lawrence is now the proud author and publisher of a new comic book, Western Nightmares.

The innovative book puts a daring spin on familiar old legends. Set in the American West circa 1880s, Western Nightmares tells the tale of vampires and werewolves who are gay!

Lead character Marshall Starbuck is actually an "awarewolf," a variation of the wolfman legend. Starbuck, who is patterned after the same-named character played by Dirk Benedict on the 1970s TV series Battlestar Galactica, is quite the cut-up. While protecting the good people of Dead River's Junction from an attack by a mob of vampires, the Marshall gleefully jokes with his opponents. The story's other lead, Kid Poison, is cold, dark, and evil. Lawrence admits that both characters are variations of himself.

As a child, Lawrence wasn't particularly interested in comic books. His disabilities made reading next to impossible. Television was his escape. Battlestar Galactica, cartoons, The Wild Wild West, and the 1960s Batman series fueled his adolescent fantasies.

"I grew up not knowing what love was," he says. "I had no interest in women or men." At 18, he realized he was gay, and began to explore sex, discovering that sex was not all that he wanted.

"As a gay person, I see that sex is always in the foreground. I think sex is great, but it's not everything, we are more complex than that. Love is great, too. We all want love, and this comic is, in part, about finding love where you least expect it.

"Like me, Kid Poison doesn't know what love is until he finds it."

Western Nightmares is nothing like the comics we remember from our youths. It's graphically violent and very sexual. There's frontal nudity and same-sex kissing. It's not the sort of book that Marvel or DC Comics would publish.

"It's erotic, but not explicit," says Lawrence. He is talking about doing a separate, more erotic title with his artist.

Though he calls his new publishing empire Red-Tail Comet, Lawrence says, jokingly, that it's really "Out of My Ass Productions." It's a two-person show, with Lawrence, under his pen name Skylar, acting as writer/publisher, and his friend Iceman providing the art and lettering. The first issue took 2 1/2 months to write, and a year to publish. But they got their book out there, and Lawrence has been getting some positive feedback.

"It's moving slowly, but it's moving. It appeals to a wide range of people: gays, cowboys, horror fans."

When he appeared at the recent Wizard World Convention in Los Angeles, Lawrence was approached by the creators of the new X-Men comic, who praised his work. "They were impressed that I did it. I was humbled. It meant the world to me."

Lawrence is now hard at work on his second issue. He has written enough material for six issues, but says that Western Nightmares will continue beyond issue six if people keep buying and reading it. He sees his book as an opportunity, a chance for a new career and to meet that special someone. "I want love, not just sex."

Western Nightmares is available through http://www.PrismComics.com or the Western Nightmares page at http://www.MySpace.com.