Cool Beans: An Aborted Comic Strip from dot.com Era!

Some time in the early 2000s, my entrepreneurial partner asked me to create cartoon characters for her educational website, S'Coolbeans. Little more than link list, the site aspired to be a clearing house of educational resources for teachers and educators. The characters were used in fridge magnets and promotion, and the logo I designed became a keychain. The site didn't take off, but the sample comic strips I developed independently, I thought, had some potential. My partner, however, spitefully demanded I kill it off. (Not long after this, we were divorced.)

Selling a comic strip to newspapers is billion-to-one prospect at best, and I've never seen myself as having the sensibility for such a grueling production schedule. Still, I am fond of these strips and thought it could have gone further. Oh, well. Enjoy!

All characters, character names, likenesses, words and pictures are ™ and © Don Simpson 2021, all rights reserved.

Penciling CRAZY! (and Some Sketches that Never Flew!)

Below are scans of the original pencils for my contributions to CRAZY!, the one-shot published by Marvel Entertainment in October 2019. "The No-Prizes" was drawn from a plot by Frank Tieri and John Cirelli; the "Galactus Go-Kart" pin-up was written (if you want to call that writing!) by me.

You'll either have to imagine your own funny dialogue (it shouldn't be hard!) or buy the printed comic to see how it all turned out! You'll see inking by Dexter Vines and colors by Federico Blee ("Galactus Go-Kart") and inks by Walden Wong and colors by Dono Sánchez Almira ("The No-Prizes").

A lot of the ideas discussed with editor Mark Paniccia revolved around the Thanos Copter in one form or another. The Galactus Go-Kart was intended as one in a series of "Crazy Villain Vehicles" I had in mind along the lines of the Thanos Copter, but none of 'em got off the ground, so to speak. (I did work the copter into "The No-Prizes," but somehow it came out purple instead of yellow. Go figure!) Here are the sketches:

For more finished art that didn't make the grade, click here!

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