The Bums Are As Holy As the Seraphim

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At long last, the rumored (I assume) Christmas strip is completed, finally allowing me to fulfill my lifelong dream of including a barbershop quartet in one of my comics. Uh, pretend Snuggs is singing, too.

I believe I'll take a week off for the holidays next Wednesday, but the strip will be back on course at the start of January. That way we can end 2013 on a more solumn note, illuminated by the quiet majesty of a flaming trash can...  Sigh...

Quick Update on the Lack of Update

In case someone stumbles here in search of your regularly scheduled strip, it should appear here exactly 24 hours late, God willing. I was strangely busy this weekend, and am now playing catch-up on art duties. Please bear with me at the moment, hypothetical concerned audience.

EDIT: Make that 48 hours, actually. Had to reinstall my scanner after updating my operating system blah blah etc. at the last minute, and I got jack accomplished. All the appropriate people were fired immediately thereafter, and this should neeeeever be an issue again. (Offer good thru December 2013)

A Tale of Too Pitied

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Snuggs, as a former artist, takes a romanticized approach to begging for loose change. Rita, meanwhile, follows the Helena Bonham Carter method of acting.

Selling Out

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It's kind of hard to justify spending all this time on a strip that generates no money, so I've decided to start advertising products in the Bean Counter to make a little extra scratch. As you can see, this hasn't changed the strip in any appreciable way, as the characters and dialogue are as spot-on as they've ever been. I just felt I should address it in case one or two of you noticed the subtle change in direction. NEXT WEEK: Six straight panels of the gang praising Mr. Suddsy Dish Detergent. It's sure to be a classic!

God Bless the Snuggs That's Got His Own

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I'd consider this a notable strip in the vast annals of Bean Counter history, simply because it reveals the origin of Snuggs making terrible puns. Oh, and we meet his parents. I guess that's something, too.

Pun Title About Snuggs Being a "Card"

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It seems as though everyone has a more interesting life than Snuggs.  Then again, he's befriended a raccoon, which beats my accomplishments by a long shot.

Foliage Funnies

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Really, is there any gesture more romantic than the plucking of trees? I didn't think so, either.

All the World's a Stage, and All the Men and Women Merely Bums Performing Comic Operas on Harmonicas

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You'd think the patrons of a Beat coffee house would be open to an opera reinterpreted for the harmonica, but it seems Snuggs is just too ahead of his time. Like most great homeless guys.

B&W: Dumpkin Pumpster

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Little bonus post-Halloween comic for both of you fans out there.

Zombies, Zombies Zombies (Also, Zombies)

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We've reached the end of our little Halloween two-parter, so I'm afraid the strip will no longer meet America's insatiable demand for zombie-related content. However, the homeless people jokes will continue unabated. That's the Bean Counter Guarantee.

People Still Like Zombie Stuff, Right? Part One (of Two, Don't Worry)

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Time to jump on that zombie trend that, perhaps fittingly, refuses to die off. Yes, from now on, the strip will be about a trio of zombies running a zombie coffee shop that serves zombie coffee that turns people into zombies, at least until that idea becomes unmarketable. It'll save me a lot of time on writing dialogue, and spare the rest of you from exposure to more Snuggs puns! Win win, amiright?

Showin' Some Skin

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In a perhaps ill-conceived attempt to nab some extra pageviews, I've added some lumpy, emaciated beefcake to this week's (ahem) strip. I'm thinking Twilight fans need a new figure to turn their affections toward, and Snuggs is the saggy, angular man for that job.

B&W: Everyone's a Critic

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In another bonus black & white strip, Snuggs' career as a Beat poet is cut tragically short by his considerable lack of writing talent. Wait, maybe "tragically" isn't the word here...

Scream Queen

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Fun fact: If you really want to freak me out, don't bother showing me a horror movie. Just ask me to draw a comic featuring a car interior drawn from multiple points of view. Now that's terrifying.

Cigar Affician-aaah, No!

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I can easily say the cigar-eating makes this is the manliest comic I've produced in recent memory. My left hand was coated in a mane of fiery red hair by the time I finished, which is standard for a drawing of this testostitude.

Nightmare Chair

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Apparently I couldn't wait for Halloween to do a horror-tinged comic. Blame it on all the pumpkin spice latte ads I've been bombarded with. And as a lazy man, I can think of no subject more spine-tinglingly spooky than poorly upholstered furniture. WoOoOoOo! 

Ebony and Ivory

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For something a tad different, here's a quick comic presented in glorious black and white! Okay, actually with this one I'm going all classy and trying to imitate the style of magazine cartoonists from the forties and fifties. I'll leave it to you to decide if I succeeded at aping this style, since you're all no doubt familiar with the oeuvre of Hank Ketcham.

It's a great maddening exercise for working on your inking skills, since you can't fall back on coloring and shading to hide the flaws or help it read better. Really, anything that makes you feel like a fraud is gonna help your art in the long run.

Man Literally Versus Nature

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Raccoon battles are simply one of the many trials every dumpster-dwelling individual must face. And pigeon skirmishes. But pigeons are the raccoons of the sky, so that just goes without saying.

Troubled Loners Are Big This Year

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Like most girls her age, Rita finds herself dating a 500-pound greaser who's consumed by existential dread. Like most adult men their age, Sonny and Snuggs just regard the proceedings with detached bemusement.

Career Day: Part Last

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And so ends the Bean Counter's first storyline, and like all great epics, it all wraps up with a smoldering school bus. Thank you for soldiering along through my awkward, fumbling first attempts at serialization, and I hope the underlying commentary on nuclear proliferation was as apparent as I intended it to be all along. Seeya in a week!

Career Day: Part Four

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Full disclosure: This story is just repurposed from my old spec script for Speed 3: Shake N Brake.

Career Day: Part Three

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Snuggs is as unhelpful at a negotiation as you'd expect.

Career Day: Part Two

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Enter Floyd Smitherson, hard-nosed principal and perpetually perturbed pedagogue! Will Sonny be able to convince him to reluctantly re-hire our recently reformed robber? Find out on Friday, which is when the next update will be! Same Bean time, same Bean channel!

EDIT: I'm not sure why the comic is showing up with inverted colors on the full-size image, but I'll try to fix it ASAP.
EDIT #2: Fixed!

Career Day: Part One

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And thus begins the saga of Sonny helping a lummox get his job back. Tune in next week, when I bump up the updating schedule to Wednesday and Friday for two weeks to pick up the pace on this storyline. Hopefully you guys can keep up with that dizzying, breakneck speed.

Harmed Robbery

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This innocuous visit by Big Imposing Robber Guy heralds the beginning of our first multi-part storyline at the ole' Bean Counter, so I hope you viewers are all well-versed in the vast, Gordian web of Bean Counter continuity that you'll need to know in order to follow along!

...okay, that might have been an exaggeration. Really you just need to know that the characters are humans, and what a janitor is. Try to catch up on all that by next week and you should be able to keep up just fine!

Rooftop Ruminatin'

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I kind of depressed myself with this one.

Fat Balding Robber Guy Returns

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Let it not be said that this comic doesn't provide gut-cratering levels of gritty, high-octane Parental-Guidance-Suggested action on a weekly basis. We see the return of that robber guy (the breakout character of 2013 in beatnik-themed webcomics!) as he graduates to full-scale bank purloining! This provides Sonny with an opportunity to demonstrate his talent for tripping up dumb guys Bugs Bunny style.

Corruption of the Innocent

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Kids, men who live in dumpsters are terrible role models. That's the single most important lesson I can teach you through this comic.

Muggsly's Inferno

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Snuggs's attempts to gain a shred of dignity often end with him in the fetal position.

Snuggs Be Not Proud

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I suspect this strip will get exponentially more interesting once Snuggs contracts rabies. 

Take the Money and Empathize

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Charles Schulz once famously said, "no comic can succeed unless there's an armed robbery within
the first month of strips," and so nearly every comic artist since has adopted that sage philosophy.

Actually, he never said that.  I did.  But it still seems like a pretty universal rule of thumb to me.

Lessons in Bargaining

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In grim economic times such as these, the people need someone to represent their collective anxieties. That man... is Snugg Muggsly. 

Not that the people would claim him, because, c'mon. Look at the guy.

Dig This

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Welcome to the Bean Counter, a comic about a coffee shop, a beatnik, and a homeless man. Yeah, I know, that old chestnut. But if you give it a chance, I'm sure you'll decide it's worth one or two moments of your time. (DISCLAIMER: Moments of your time can not be returned by the author, the webhost, or any real or imaginary third parties. Other restrictions may apply. Results may vary.)