Proffy!

Larry,

This week is Spring Break for the local schools, so my 5 year old daughter was hanging out in the store this morning with us as we put out the weekly comics.

On a previous time that she’d hung out with me at the store “just the two of us”, she got the idea to draw pictures and hand them out to the customers as they came in. She’s done this each time since, and this morning was no exception.

She drew a small stack of 4-color masterpieces, using a black sharpie and yellow, orange and blue highlighters. Most of her drawings are stick animals or people, with occasional near-abstract nature scenes.

She handed a few out to the early customers, and then left the rest to me to hand out the rest of the day. I didn’t look at them until after she and my wife had left. There was the usual assortment of animals and trees and such, much better than her most recent batch of drawings at home.

Most of her animals look similar. They have a head, neck, four legs, and a tail often the same length as the legs. Most of her people look similar as well. A head with arms and legs attached directly to it with a smile, two eyes, and sometimes a nose. We usually have to ask her who or what each one is.

And then, this morning, there was Proffy.

Her drawing this morning of Professor Garbanzo is the only time I’ve seen her draw a specific fictional character. Proffy was immediately recognizable, and had more attention to detail than I’ve seen my daughter put into a single person before. When I saw it, I cried happy tears. I think she may love Beanworld as much as I do!

She has all of the original issues of TotB, and she loves looking at all of the fan art in the letters pages. While I don’t expect you to put any in Here/There, it would be cool if you had a spot on your MySpace or blog for stuff like that, or some new Do-It-Yourself Beanworlds.

Thank you for Beanworld. You keep making them, and I’ll keep pushing them onto unsuspecting customers!

Brian Jacoby
Secret Headquarters
Comics and Games for Everyone!
Tallahassee, Florida

ps--Her name is Fiona Grace, and she wrote some of her name on the picture, in different places. (She’s still working on learning the whole reading and writing thing.)

Sometimes I feel like I'm still working on that too!
Thank Fiona Grace for me!
Getting this really lit up my day.
Thank you for sending this along, Brian.

In the old days, when Beanworld was a comic book with the traditional lettercol and such, getting fan drawings was the best part of the job.
Now that we live in a more interconnected, immediate world, that sort of slow, private communication has blossomed into fast, public broadcasting of sorts. And lettercols have pretty much faded away.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again; as soon as Here There is out the door, one of my Beanworld priorities for this summer is to get a proper website up and running.
I plan to archive all the old stuff and relaunch DIY Beanworld in some form.

And I encourage anyone who wants to send in any sort of fan sketch of Beanworld characters or situations--your stuff will be welcome here.

Larry