Category: Cartoony Looney

HAPPY EASTER!

As I said, the setting for Jeanie Beanie, created in the pre-Amazon era, is a bookstore. I drew an introductory series that I redrew after getting warmed up. I’ll present it later, but this strip is from the original bunch of samples that I created.

The fact that I started doing these when Calvin & Hobbes was about to end was not coincidental.

As I hope will become apparent, my drawing developed rapidly after this awkward beginning, although I struggled for a long time trying to find a workable design for Jeanie.

Early on, doing a good job with the artwork was secondary to me. Later it became an obsession to a fault, but at first I put most of my effort into establishing the relationship between Wendell and Beckle, with Jeanie being the straight man of the trio.

This is one of the first Jeanie Beanies I drew. It’s quite apparent that my drawing hand was badly out of practice!

Take note of the date, October 24, 1995, only a few months after Amazon began taking book orders online. So I felt relatively safe in setting the characters inside of a bookstore.

This example also shows that after it was finished I felt Beckle needed something. That was when I came up with the hat gimmick.