Franks and Beans comic book ads

Have I ever mentioned that I sometimes write comic books?  Even in passing?  Ever?  Probably not, as I rarely self aggrandize or post meaningless links to other projects that aren’t innately tied to Franks and Beans.  I’m much too classy for that.

In any case, I do write Teddy and the Yeti, a comic with great intrinsic value that will perhaps one day spawn a cartoon series and various merchandizing opportunities, and I take every chance I get to advertise for my other great love (besides Funyuns), Franks and Beans, and I thought that it would be at least a little bit interesting if I posted the various F&B ads that have taken up residence in Teddy and the Yeti comics throughout its publication history.

At the top of the post, you’ll see the very first Franks and Beans ad, appearing in the pages of Teddy and the Yeti #1, and perhaps you’ll notice how quaint and simple it is.  This is because everything must start somewhere, and also because I was still learning how to use Illustrator at this point (not that I’ve mastered it in the time that followed).  Still, we did get the slogan that adorns this website, a bastardization of the Kix cereal slogan.  It replaced our previous slogan, “Better than anything YOU could come up with”, which I’m sure will one day make a comeback, as all things trite and spiteful do.

Next up is a familiar image, as a colorized version of it serves as the background of the official Franks and Beans YouTube page.  The ad showed up in a black and white version of Teddy and the Yeti #2.  This photoshoot was a fruitful one, as we got two ads and a background for our business cards this day.  Born from this ad was probably our best slogan ever, “comedy worth fighting for”, which also finds itself on the YouTube page.  I should/will put this day’s photoshoot online at some point.  There were some good shots taken this day by friend of the show Mitch Mitchell, who just so happens to have a really nice DSLR camera.  And we take advantage of that whenever we can.

I’m fairly sure we stole the background image from this ad from Google (take that, Internet!), before we realized that we could just take our own damn picture of baked beans.  The ad itself refers to the “Franks and Beans Beans and Franks” episode at the end of season two, and we keep the label facade up with our own mock nutrition facts.  This ad appeared in Teddy and the Yeti #3.

Space was tight in the tiny Teddy and the Yeti’s Back! promo issue, so the Franks and Beans ad had a minimum of space to work with.  The end result, though, might just be our best ad yet, in which both Larry and I are perhaps about to have the life crushed out of us, which is always good for a laugh (a literal side-splitter).  This was from the same photoshoot that begat the “comedy worth fighting for” ad.  I particularly enjoy seeing the very top of my Thing shirt as well as my apparently stroked-out face.

Lastly, we have the newest Franks and Beans ad, straight from the inside back cover of Teddy and the Yeti #4.  This image comes from the still promotional photo for the “Double Delivery” episode and features obvious worldplay and also mustaches.  When people see these ads placed in my comics, I’ll bet that they nearly kill themselves in a desperate attempt to locate a computer and access this very website.  Who knows, maybe putting these ads online for all to see will draw the masses to this site, where they will laugh and laugh their lives away.  I’m about 85% sure that this will happen.

So there we have it – Franks and Beans comic book ads.  So why don’t I just use the same one all the time?  Why make new ones for each appearance?  I do it for you, loyal readers.  I do it for you.  And also me.  Perhaps the next one will feature one of my cats.  Only time will tell.

Blog 34 – Kill Switch

 

When the Borg first appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation, they immediately struck a chord with fans and viewers of the show, not because they were particularly unique in the world of sci-fi, but because of the timing of the show.  1960s Star Trek saw the wonders that technology could bring, reflecting a society that looked at the future through the eyes of the Jetsons; that is, they marveled at and were hopeful for a future in which mankind harnessed technology to create a utopian world where robot maids tidied up and dogs walked on suspended treadmills.  1980s Star Trek, though, reflected a society that was wary of technology and its ability to take control of our lives: they say just how ingrained technology had become in the everyday and bristled at our interconnectedness.  Thus, the Borg were born, threatening to use technology to turn each and every one of us into a mindless drone, a slave to the machine.

And in this episode of Franks and Beans, I get killed by a garage door opener!  So you see the natural progression to which I’m alluding, from the halcyon days of the 1960s to the anxious period of the 1980s to the utterly distopian early 2000s, the war is finally, terribly among us.  Plus, isn’t Skynet supposed to have gone online by now?  I never watched the Sarah Conner Chronicles when it was on.  Actually, that’s not true – I watched the first two episodes of it and it was terrible.  Summer Glau, why?!

I’d like to think that this episode of Franks and Beans is a very complete one, and even though it’s probably not too difficult to figure out what the punchline is going to be from early on in the episode, it still comes across as funny in that hey-Jeff’s-getting-hurt-and-falling-down kind of way.

One thing that I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog (that everyone reads) is that Larry has a way of working references to his favorite items, either fleeting obsessions or long-term passions, into the show, as evidenced by the many appearances to his Jeep (another one in this episode) and his insistence on mentioning his Blackberry in “Replacement Larry”.  Leading up to this episode, Larry took a tumble and scraped up, of all things, an index finger, and thus we can see the band-aid in full profile when Larry flicks the light switch in several scenes.  I have no evidence to prove that Larry intentionally brought the spotlight to his injured appendage, but it just seems too convenient to be a coincidence, you know?  Maybe I’m being paranoid, but there it is.

The biggest challenge we faced with this episode was, of course, the garage-door-to-the-head stunt that we had to pull at several different points.  This was difficult to coordinate, because as you might realize, I didn’t want to actually be hurt by being struck in the head. Larry stood off camera and held the top of the door and gently lowered it into my path as I walked toward the garage.  The first few tries were pretty unsuccessful not because of any technical aspect, but because Larry didn’t want to concuss or kill me when he brought the garage door down on my head.  It took some convincing, but we were finally able to get a realistic strike, I think, and the joke really only works when that’s the case.

And if one blow wasn’t enough, the reinforcement of the theme came by way of a second, third and fourth strike, which, as far as we can tell in this episode, kills me completely.  There you have it, folks!  This is how you know you’re watching Franks and Beans.  I die in it.  Hilarious!

Our “No!” ending is a strange one, but a good one, I think.  Larry, apparently, is desperate to get into the room, no matter what lies in his way, be it a miniature dresser or other tiny piece of furniture.  What I think is funny is that, as Larry struggles to squeeze into the opening, his voice also strains, letting us all know just how much effort he’s putting into this.    Guess what, folks?  Larry always gives it 100%.  I’d say 110% or something higher, but it’s literally impossible to give more than 100% and anything, and I refuse to do anything but completely adhere to the laws of physics on this show.

 

If you watch this episode on YouTube, you’ll see that the suggested viewings, as evidenced in the screen shot above, are both eerily accurate and hilariously misguided.  I wonder if any of the videos pictured lead back to Franks and Beans.  I really hope so.

You may notice that this blog doesn’t have the preface of “originally published on” at the top – that is because this blog is brand new for the first time in more than two years.  This also explains why there’s been such a lag between recent posts.  Because now I have to actually write these damn things from scratch rather than just go to the store of previously completed blogs from former iterations of this website.  Oh boy.  I’ll try to do a better job and make time for this blog because dammit you deserve it, Franks and Beans viewers!  And I might as well put off the things of actual importance in my life for one more day.

YouTube makes Franks and Beans look important

 

Ever check out our YouTube page?  This is not a rhetorical question: I compel you to answer.  But take your time; I’m not going anywhere.  Here’s what I’m getting at: YouTube has suggestions for further viewing after a video cycles through, and a little while ago, after watching an episode of Franks and Beans (for…research.  Always for research), the above 12 episodes were suggested to me.  This collage makes it look like Franks and Beans has a bevy of entertainment to offer.  It also looks like some of the episodes might be funny.  If you look at the screen as a chronological story-in-pictures, it looks like I show Larry something I saw online, we make some food, I introduce him to someone else, we discuss it, and then Larry kills me.

That is all.

Visit Franks and Beans on YouTube!

The Franks and Beans homepage is great.  I love it, in fact!  It’s more streamlined than the last one, but at the same time there’s more variety and we (sometimes) do more than just post videos and rambling production blogs.  And we’ve got a new masthead, an “about” page, and background images that have changed at least once!  Now that I think about it, the last homepage we had was dumb.  It was the worst homepage in the history of mankind.  I’d take a crap on the last homepage, if such a thing were possible.

The thing that this homepage lacks, however, is a fresh, clean feeling that can only come from current episodes.  While we wade our way, in numerical order, through episodes and blogs in a steady fashion, there are still a great number of Franks and Beans episodes that have been finished for quite some time but have yet to show up on this page.  Rather than despair, acting in a self destructive, even Oedipal manner, though, you can catch up on the future of Franks and Beans by simply visiting our official YouTube page at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/user/FranksandBeansOnline.

At the very top of this post is a screenshot of the YouTube page, and I have to say that I’m pleased with the overall layout.  Our previous attempt had a background of baked beans that made it difficult to read what was in front of it, and now it looks like something I wouldn’t be ashamed to show other people.

There are other videos on our official YouTube page that have nothing to do with Franks and Beans, and thus will never be seen here, such as a video of the Thunderbolt at Kennywood amusement park:

and a nosebleed seat view of a Steelers playoff game:

Oh heck…now I guess they are posted on this site.  Oh well, so much for that.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that the new homepage of Franks and Beans is awesome, but it’ll take some time before it gets caught up an has all of our episodes embedded.  In the meantime, our YouTube page is a good alternative.  So go there!  And leave some comments!

The plan.

The new Franks and Beans website is up and running and looking halfway decent.  The web address – http://www.franksandbeansonline.com – is functional again and takes everyone (hundreds of thousands of you typing it in daily) directly to this page.  The “About” page has content on it for the first time ever.  There are links to the right of the page that lead you to pertinent sites like the YouTube page and our other projects.  The time is right to start adding videos again and putting content back out for all to see.

There are other things that will be changed: the background image (I searched Google for sunrise images…IT’S A METAPHOR) will become something F&B-centric.  If I can make the sidebar links less generic, I will.  Also, I’ll start being funny again in my blog posts, if I can ever break out of this spiraling, enervating melancholy that I constantly feel at the depths of my soul every waking moment of my existence (there we go!).

In any case, videos, blogs and other info will be re-posted in an expedient fashion in order to get us up to speed on all things Franks and Beans.  The sooner this becomes a more complete website, the better!  Then, the advertising push begins.

You can’t keep a good website down…

…at least not for too long, that is.  The original franksandbeansonline.com went dark a number of months ago, and this is one step on its slow crawl back from oblivion.  I guess I shouldn’t use “step” and “crawl” in the same sentence as that is mixing metaphors, but then again charming wordplay is just one reason so many people love Franks and Beans, the irreverent internet video show.

For now, we’re using franksandbeansonline.wordpress.com as the official homepage, but I’ll soon be linking the official domain name directly to this site…so either address will eventually take you to the same place.

It’s been a while since I’ve used WordPress, and I’m a bit limited with this current incarnation.  I will, however, strive to make this a fully functional site as soon as possible, with videos, blogs, behind-the-scene stuff, and news all making a triumphant return…or a return at any rate.  In the meantime, our reliable YouTube page is still up and running over at http://www.youtube.com/user/FranksandBeansOnline, and you can watch all 53 episodes there plus some other random videos…such as my Camry reaching 300,000 miles (it’s great, really).

Once I drag Larry back into the fold he’ll be posting here, too, and I hope to have some interesting stuff to reveal before too long.

Thanks for the patience, as it’s been a long road back.  But there is a mustache-shaped light at the end of the tunnel.  More to come.