Jim French, (aka, Luger), began his career in commercial art in the 1950s after having gone through four years of art school and two years in the military. At the suggestion of an old Army buddy who had seen some of his early, mostly unpublished homoerotic art done under the name Arion, he and Jim formed a partnership to start a company Jim named “Luger” (with an uncharacteristic umlaut over the U). This name was chosen because of the strong suggestions of masculinity associated with this German pistol.