Hey all, I'm Wilfredo S. "Fred" Duran. I'm an eighteen-year-old writer out of Southern Connecticut, USA, trying to get my foot in the door of the comics industry before I graduate high school this year (and stay in the industry afterwards as well). I came in the top ten of the Global Comic Jam Script Jam a few years ago, and made it to the second round of the 2007 Small Press Idol, and in December of 2007 I had a ten-page sci-fi/fantasy anthology piece called Ruin, published by Dimestore Productions in Mysterious Visions Anthology #4 (Script- Wilfredo S. "Fred" Duran, Pencils- Sean Patella-Buckley, Inks- Tomm Gabbard, Colors and Letters- Adam Chowles), with a special dedication to Joe Pruitt. You can buy that online here. The anthology also includes a futuristic take on Jack London's classic, To Build a Fire, by Troy Boyle, Gary Francis, and Tomm Gabbard, Beyond Human by Hal Jones (better grab this up, it's the last production of Beyond Human before it gets its own title!), and a Possum at Large story by Chad Lambert.
Ruin will make another appearance in the upcoming Ronin Illustrated #4 from the awesome people at Ronin Studios, due out in April 2008.

With luck, I'll be published again by Dimestore by the end of my senior year of high school (June 2008), the story being my second-round entry for the 2007 Small Press Idol, The Manifestant (with all art chores handled by the tremendously talented Teddy Riawan, who has fixed his computer and is back on the case!). In addition to that piece, I have a graphic novel in the works called Project E, which is currently on financial hiatus (Script- Wilfredo S. "Fred" Duran, Pencils- Giuseppe D'Elia, Inks and Colors- Chuck "THE HUN" Zsolnai, Letters- Richard Nelson).

I had hoped to have a webcomic go live on May 1st, up on DrunkDuck that parodies Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers by placing the story in a maximum-security Federal penitentiary. It would have been called Mighty Shankin' Prison Rangers! (yes, with the "!" at the end), but due to the craziness of senior year (college apps, testing, etc.), I never got around to fleshing it out. Hopefully this will be completed someday soon. Mighty Shankin' Prison Rangers! concept and creative development by Gabriel Ariori, Wilfredo S. "Fred" Duran, and Jason Jolles; scripting, pencils and letters (unless I learn to digitally ink without a Wacom) by Wilfredo S. "Fred" Duran; I'll be looking for a colorist and perhaps a digital inker (again, unless I learn to do it myself), but that will come later. I need to make sure that this is ready and that I'M ready to do this before I start looking for people to help out. I don't want to waste anybody's time.

Sometime in the foreseeable future I'll be in another issue of Dimestore Productions's Mysterious Visions Anthology, the story being a four-page humorous story called EPIC HEROES! (I seem to have a thing for exclamation points), about a two-year-old Epic Hero named Manny and his battle with a giant chocolate cake. All I know for sure at this point credit-wise is that I wrote it, but there are several strong candidates for penciling, and I'd like my buddy Joe Pruitt to ink it, as he unfortunately had to pull himself out of Ruin last time around and the opportunity to collaborate with him again would be one I'd jump at, given the samples I saw of what he could do (of course, that's not a knock on Tomm Gabbard, who saved Ruin at the last minute with his sweet inks).

For my writing samples (comic, prose, and poetry), go here. If you like what you see, drop me a line and we'll talk.
Hoping to see some fellow Digital Webbing-ers and Penciljack-ers around here, and I'm looking forward to making some good connections here that will be mutually beneficial.

-Wilfredo S. "Fred" Duran