About Ervin...

Ervin Johnson is the creator and illustrator of the Single Dad Diaries comic strip. His family and friends new he had a gift for drawing at a young age. His mom always encouraged him, and would show off his "works" on the job. He was attending Chancellor Ave grammer school, when an art teacher encouraged him to apply to the prestigeous Arts High School of Newark NJ. He also had a curiousity for the science of things, and applied to Science high and University High, also prestigious schools. He was accepted at all three, but turned them down for the local high school where he could have graduated early, but preferred to work during the summer helping his mom, instead of going to school for his remaining credits. As luck would have it, the family moved from Newark to Trenton at the end of his junior year in high school. There, his interests took a new direction in the arts, to music, and he began a fascination with computers. Having only one new requirement at his new high school, he took up the piano, and programming.

Ervin continued his interest in computers in college, but was at odds with some of the math. He thought he learned to program faster by picking programs apart that he had found on the web, and left school. He landed a job in technology, and put his creative talents to business, where he founded Swap the Beat Internet Publications. Initially an online entertainment magazine, it wasn't long before STB scored a big interview. He interviewed Ed Gordon of BET after a lecture at Burlington County College.

While he cherished the interview, STB failed to take flight. He struggled with finding a successful format, landing interviews, publishing, and promoting. The company went dormant for years until it was repurposed for the comic strip. Since then, it has won awards for comic of the day and landed interviews for Ervin on The Rob Redding News Review, and other radio show requests. The Single Dad Diaries had achieved a million page views within a year of publication, and has published the collection "Superdad: Adventures in parenting".