Covert Operations (Part 1)

To be continued! In the meantime…

Author’s commentary

The original intention for this comic was to present Franky Banky’s origin story but, like most of my comics, the origin story idea ended up becoming a collection of gags. Mostly because I never sat down and fleshed out Franky Banky’s complete history and family genealogy like J.K. Rowling did for her Harry Potter series. That kind of stuff naturally reveals itself the more I draw.

I included three homages in this comic. The first is an homage to Stutter Social, the organization I co-founded which facilitates weekly group video chats for people who stutter around the world (though Franky Banky isn’t in a group video chat in this comic). Some of the avoidance methods his friends mentioned are stuff I did myself. Like pointing to menu items and pretending to forget.

The second is an homage to a friend’s son who drew out his day when he was in kindergarten or younger. I thought it was the coolest thing when my friend told me about that. So I thought what if little Franky Banky used that tactic as a way to avoid stuttering?

The third actually happened to me when I was in my late teens and started lifting weights. Embarrassed by making bad impressions with my stuttering, I had once thought to build myself up as the strong silent type! But that plan didn’t see the light of day because I liked interacting with people and quickly realized that any girl who would like me based on my level of success in the gym wasn’t truly worth my time. So that part of the comic was my way of drawing out what might have happened if I had gone ahead with the plan.

September 5, 2020