About the Comic

Easily Amused is a punchline-a-strip humour comic about the real-life misadventures of myself and my best friend, Rebecca. Each strip is a stand-alone joke and almost always self-depricating, as neither of us is afraid of making fools of ourselves. The humour is light and family-friendly, and highlights the sharp contrast between our personalities. Reby is bubbly, warm, and hyperactive. I, on the other hand, am sarcastic, prickly, and OCD. This combination creates a whole lot of ludicrous situations that are sometimes so cartoonish that it only took a few months of being friends before we started recording our exploits in comic form.

Origins

The comic was originally created for our college’s weekly student-run comic paper called The Drawing Board. I was already well-known amongst my friends for drawing comics, so they pestered me endlessly for weeks to make something for the paper. Finally I caved after shouting ‘My comics aren’t funny! They’re about blood, death, and squirrels!’ The next week, the first strip made its debut. After my outburst, Reby outlined the theme for the comic: a Pinky and the Brain-esque dynamic. She also gave the strip its name.

I am frequently asked if ‘you guys are really like that in person’.
The answer is yes.

At first Reby did all of the writing, but as the weeks progressed we began to share writing duties, and eventually when Reby became too busy to write strips, I took over the whole process. She did, however, continue to contribute ideas for the strips throughout our college years, and still acts as the main inspiration for many of the strips today. Once college was over, I dropped the comic for several years before picking it up again for a few more strips.

Current

It is likely that had it not first begun on an incredibly conservative campus wherein everything was heavily censured, I would have made the humour a great deal more raw. It was never meant to be posted online since the first few dozen strips were aimed at a closed community with all its inside jokes, but once upon a time I had to take a hiatus from my story comics and posted a few Easily Amused strips as fillers. It got such a hugely positive reception from my online audience that, by request, I gave it its own archive. Even now that I am free of the restraints of censors, I decided to keep it family-friendly since many of my young relatives like to read it.

In the spirit of leaving the past in the past, the previous college arc that made up the bulk of the Easily Amused archives was taken offline. Many people enjoyed those jokes and I still look fondly on them myself. However, years after I discovered that my old college has helped to push anti-LGBTQ legislation in the government. This is a political stance I cannot condone, and I do not want my work to have any association with them, however distant. I strive to keep my site an LGBTQ-friendly space that welcomes people of all identities, ethnicities, and creeds.

The Process

Originally, Easily Amused was created in Photoshop, but I now draw it in Clip Studio. It is almost always sketched by hand and then scanned into the computer where it is panelled, inked, toned, and lettered. I try to keep the art simple so that it doesn’t take more than an hour or two to complete once scanned.