My attempt at a comic strip was called Jeanie Beanie. The cast of characters…
Beckle, aka “Feather Duster”
Wendell Wilton, aka “Blubber Buns”
Jeanie, aka “Bean Head”
The camcorder Beckle is holding gives away the vintage. Jeanie was named after my twin sister. The bird and the walrus were childhood characters I performed, called Ba-Bird and Wally. Walter Lantz had a Wally Walrus cartoon character that spoke in a Swedish — or was it Norwegian? — accent and had a broken tusk. Wally was mediocre at best, and somewhere around age 10 I felt I had a better idea for a walrus character.
The premise of the strip at first was the characters would run a bookstore. I eventually realized that, like Jon being a cartoonist in Garfield, the setup was unnecessary, so I abandoned that idea, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll start at the beginning in the next post.