The quirky world of Down South was created by writer/cartoonist Stephen Enzweiler. As a young boy, he always had a pencil in his hand. Growing up, he quickly acquired a reputation as an artist, and he frequently won or placed at art shows and exhibitions where he lived. He was known particularly for his oil portraits and freely admits to drawing and doodling his high school years away, sketching page after page of drawings and cartoons during class rather than studying. He still wonders how he managed to graduate at all.

He worked briefly as a cartoonist at Paramount Kings Island Amusement Park, where he learned the basic concepts of rendering charicature and he began teaching himself how to draw newspaper cartoons. While in college, he created his first comic strip called "Patsy", and he submitted it to the syndicates. But he was told that while the drawing was good, the strip wasn’t funny. For years after, he worked on making it funnier, but he could never quite get the syndicates interested. He graduated college with a degree in Journalism and went to work for a local paper. But after a few years, he quit the paper and joined the Air Force.

It was finally in that military community that he discovered the motherload of characters and sweeping varieties of human behavior from which his later comic strips and art have been derived. He then created a second comic strip called "Winfield", which centered around an insecure, self-doubting young boy named Wally Goodhart. In 1987, "Winfield" was published by a small paper in Nebraska, where it enjoyed a successful three-year publication run. At the same time, he teamed up with a squadron-mate, Brent Lavers, and the two of them produced a politically incorrect publication called The Crew Dog Gazette. It was published anonymously and was a kind of underground Mad Magazine that specialized in good-natured lampooning and satire of the military flying community, with Lavers as its skewering editor and Enzweiler as its unhinged cartoonist. In Enzweiler's view, the Gazette audience was an ultimate proving ground for both editorial and comic strip humor. It was a tough, sophisticated, and discerning community of technical and professional minds who didn't tolerate crude humor, obviousness, or wishy-washiness. The experience ultimately taught him that good writing--not necessarily good drawing--was the more important skill in cartooning.

Enzweiler created three more comic strips for the Gazette: FUNDIMENTALIST JIM, PILOT’S CORNER, and THE SHOE STORE. They appeared in issue after issue from 1988 until 1993, making The Crew Dog Gazette so popular, it was said to have readers in all four military services, including many high ofices in the Pentagon and in the halls of government. Enzweiler eventually left the service and moved back to Kentucky to pursue a full-time creative career. He ran an advertising agency for a time and then taught at The Art Institute of Cincinnati before starting his own art studio and again taking up the pen to begin writing.

In 2004, he became a columnist and illustrator for Y'all Magazine in Oxford, Mississippi. In 2006, he created "Down South" with its unique characters and commentaries on life, southern culture, and our own human frailties. Next to Doug Marlett's comic strip "Kudzu", Down South" remains the only regular cartoon strip that is Southern in its orientation. In June 2007, the strip debuted in the magazine and in February 2008, it became a weekly online edition. Today enjoys a growing popularity with more than 250,000 readers nationwide.

Enzweiler is a full-time artist and commercial illustrator in addition to being a prolific writer and author. A "Down South" book is in the works and he is also working on a first novel.