Freaks N Squeaks is about smart kids in our dumb world. Though there are visual differences in their world and ours, being they are mice mostly living in a little boy’s bedroom, you’ll find their problems and adventures are a very typical human experience.
Jump to the latest Freaks N Squeaks strip!
Cast
There are the core four characters in Freaks N Squeaks:
Ginny
Ginny is a smart teen girl who is pretty level-headed. She often finds herself pulled into various situations by her best friend, Janis, or her little sister, Janie. She is dating Schmoikel.
Janis
Janis is a smart teen girl who is slightly rebellious and interested in politics and bringing about change. Her views and goals often lead her into situations and adventures, which she usually brings her best, friend, Ginny, into as well.
Janie
Janie is a middle school girl who is very goal-oriented. Her major goal in life currently is to get a pet of some kind, but her parents aren’t convinced yet, so they’ve given her a plant to take care of. When she is focused on a goal, she will often go to extremes to achieve it, bringing her big sister, Ginny along with her, and often involving her friend, Al, the boy genius.
- All Janie Comics
- First Appearance (coming soon!)
Al
Al is a middle school boy genius who also is an inventor and scientist. When something needs a crazy solution, he’s the one everyone goes to. His inventions work, but there’s usually some sort of unintended consequence. He is friends with Janie, and by extension Ginny. Al also has as enemy in Emil, who moved from “the old country” and is clearly an enemy agent evil boy genius whose evil plans can only be thwarted by Al.
And the rest…
There is a large, Simpsons-esque cast in Freaks N Squeaks. Here is how a lot of the people you see around are connected to the four main characters, Ginny, Janis, Janie, and Al.
Reviews
Wow, just wow. I never, in my life, found out something that instantly attract my eyes to a comic page, in a really, really bad way. Like, I was fast scrolling in r/comics, looking for something interesting, until a wild random page of this comic appears and makes me stop dead, and scroll back to assure what the heck I just saw. Oh, but when I started to enter to this rabbit hole, then I realized about the art is not the only thing that is bad. You’ve been warned.
ZenForce, Bad Comics Wiki
FAQ
Why mice?
There are two answers to this, the real one and the clever one. The real answer is I was in Scott McCloud's seminar at MCAD in the summer of 2002 and I was sick all week. It was time for the final and I had a fever of 100.something. For our final, we all brought in a random object, and we all traded object, and we had to make a 2-3 page story that featured that object. I got a LEGO plane. My fevered brain went to The Mouse and The Motorcycle, and combined it with all the Daria reruns I had been watching. That's how the mice started.
The clever answer: The mice *continued* because once I started doing this as a strip, I realized that using anthropomorphic mice let me get away with a lot more in terms of drawing style and lowering the bar for the suspension of disbelief for the weird things, like time travel, child geniuses, or where I go with politics.
How do you make Freaks N Squeaks?
My methods have changed a lot of the last 20+ years, but it's always been digital. I started drawing in Adobe Illustrator with a small 4x5 inch Wacom Graphire tablet. Eventually, I bounced back and forth between Illustrator and Photoshop and graduated to a 20ish inch Wacom Cintiq. For the past few years, I've been using Clip Studio Paint EX either with my 24 inch Huion tablet monitor or using Clip on my iPad Air M2. I like Clip these days because it has a lot of comic specific tools and can be an all-in-one solution for drawing (color separations for print notwithstanding) and it's the exact same software on my desktop computer or my iPad when I'm out and about.
I'm new? Where should I start?
I try to make 99% percent of my strips accessible to new people, because every comic can potentially be somebody's first. That said, with 20+ years of comics, the archive is daunting, which is why I keep only the past five years (and the first year) for free, so no one feels like the need to go all the way back and only the really dedicated people do it. That said, the beginning of any story you see in the chapter drop down makes a good spot to start, and here are a couple of quick favorite links:
Who's your favorite character? Which one is the most like you?
This sooooo hard to answer. At any given moment, I think I have a new favorite. I think it's because they're all like me in some way. The one who is probably the most like me is Schmoikel, Ginny's boyfriend. We're both pretty dorky and aren't the most self-confident in social situations. That said, Ginny is a lot like my optimistic side, Janis is my political outrage, Janie is my impatience, and Al is my imagination.
Where do you get your ideas?
It's really just whatever I'm thinking about or interested at the time. When I read through old material, like when redoing the site or putting books together, it's like reading through a journal for me. It's like, "oh yeah, I remember I was really into Dr. Who at that time." For Janie and Al, these days I watch what my kids who are around that age are into. I also try to remember my own self at the ages of my characters and what I was into. Basically, I just live my life and watch things and talk to people, and then I make a note on my phone if something sparks. Sometimes, it's just the barest bones of an idea, and I don't touch it for years until something comes up and I go back over my notes and think, "hey, that bit about football, maybe I could do this and that with it..."
I thought the mice lived in a kid's bedroom? But then they're in school? Or the mall? How does this work??
Okay, so when I started it was back in 2002, I was hard and fast on the mice live as mice, but they're all in a little boy's bedroom. And they only could do what was in there, and their homes were in the walls, and they used objects in that room and made stuff out of thing in that room. And any time I wanted them to have "something," I had to explain it, like TV was invented by the mice, and their school was inside the wall too, and... it just got really limiting. So then I decided that the family would move out of the house, and so the mice would have to move too, and this let them go outside. Again, it had a be a big thing and it just wasn't fun. It was all getting in the way.
So, these days, here's how it is: The mice live in a little kid's bedroom. And if they need to be at school, or at the movies, or outside, or the mall, or whatever, it just works. Their world is their world. Don't think about it too hard.
Or, you can use my daughter (also named Ginny)'s explanation: "The walls contain a pocket dimension, and it holds everything, and they're talking mice, it's not that far off.. just make it work."
How can I get started in comics?
Honestly, just start drawing. Don't worry about it being perfect or good, just make it done. The trick isn't starting, it's keeping going. Post it somewhere. Don't read the comments. Make another one. Never read the comments. People will only comment if they really really really love something or if they don't like it. Either way, they don't matter. Just keep going. That's all it is. Make one. Make another and make it a little better. Post it. Tell people. Make another.
How can I give you money?
Okay, to be fair, this question is not frequent enough. That said, I have a lot of good stuff for you to buy, both physically and digitally. If you want to buy some physical books of Freaks N Squeaks just in case the Y2K hits, head over to the store. If you want some merch, as the kids call it, that's available too.
If digital stuff is more your speed, you can also get ebooks of Freaks N Squeaks, and subscribe on Patreon. There are various levels of the Patreon for you to purchase, starting with just getting the comic delivered to you before it hits the website for $3 and going up with more rewards like time lapses, full archive access, and more.