Jimmy Gownley

Who is Jimmy Gownley?

Jimmy Gownley is an American comic book writer/artist best known for his award winning comic book Amelia Rules. He grew up in the small town of Girardville, Pennsylvania and started to write and draw his own comics at an early age. His first published work was Shades of Gray, which he self-published. Two issues, self-distributed in an edition of about 100 copies, were published in 1988-89 while the artist was still in high school. Twelve additional issues, starting over with #1 and titled Shades of Gray Comics and Stories, had national distribution in the low thousands of copies, with color covers and black and white interior art. Gownley called his publishing company Lady Luck, Ltd.

In 1998, Gownley published a Shades of Gray graphic novel, titled Fiction, Part One. Included with the graphic novel was a CD of songs, purportedly written and sung by the characters, actually written by Gownley, and performed by a group of hired musicians. Fiction ends on a cliffhanger, but as of 2011 no Part Two has appeared. Instead, Gownley turned to a new set of characters with Amelia Rules.