Introducing Fickle Bean Comics
Welcome to the Fickle Bean Substack! This newsletter is the digital home of my independent, self-published mini comic series, Fickle Bean Comics. Becoming a free subscriber will keep you up-to-date when each issue of the series is published. Every Fickle Bean comic story will be free to read in full on this newsletter.
What is a Fickle Bean?
The name Fickle Bean comes from a nickname my friend gave me stemming from a playful alliteration on my last name, “Fickle Hickle Bean”. It’s my small metaphor for how I see the internet today. There are so many nuggets of internet matter that have the growth potential to become something bigger, but our attention span is too short for them to be fully realized. Our minds’ loyalties and affections are always changing.
This mini comic series will abandon loyalty and affection. If you are looking for superheroes, or horror, look elsewhere! Fickle Bean Comics is about putting whatever small tasty morsel I want out there, and not being asked to stick to any one idea.
Every few months I will create a new comic issue containing a small collection of 2-3 short comic stories (8-12 pages). These issues will be physically printed and copies will be available for sale in Denver, but they will always be cross-posted to this newsletter for free!
Get Seen, Get Good
Tom Hart, creator of Hutch Owen and Sequential Artists Workshop published a video series called “Get Seen Get Good” in which he argued that above all else the mission of the cartoonist is to get things made and get feedback. That’s how we get better! I used to think that there was so much in the way of me getting my work seen, like I had to perfect my process first, or I had to go hide away and prepare a manuscript for a graphic novel before I could even think about publishing. After watching Tom’s videos, I started to realize just how much the opposite was the case. So many of my heroes had humble origins in self-publishing. Chris Ware started small with ACME Novelty Library, Adrian Tomine with Optic Nerve, and so on. Fickle Bean is about starting small, getting work out there, and getting feedback quickly.
Today’s internet is a great place for creators to build an audience, especially by putting their best content online for free. If the goal is to get seen and get feedback, then why would I choose to create physical comic books in conjunction with this newsletter? There are two reasons, one is about promotion and one is about permanence.
In one of his Substack writers in residence pieces, cartoonist Adrian Tomine argued that even in a digital era, a physical mini comic is a great way to share your work with people you meet. Almost like an XL cartoonist business card. To this day, he admits he is more likely to leaf through work shared this way than to follow up on Instagram. Tomine also mentions that there is a lot to learn in the process of heading down to your local Kinkos and attempting to print out a book. It is easier than ever to put content online, translating pixel for pixel from your editor to a web browser, but there are additional considerations when you attempt to make something that holds water in the physical world. Fickle Bean is about creating something permanent, even if small and disposable.
Becoming a free subscriber to this Substack is your ticket to come on this journey with me. In addition to getting an email in your inbox when a new Fickle Bean story drops, this newsletter will regularly include how-to articles on my comic making process and literary critique essays of independent comics that I’m reading. These posts will be a behind the scenes look at what is going on in this “fickle bean-brain”. Thank you for the support!