Crafting Happiness Across an Ocean

FREAKADOO By Rob Wuest & Ian Baker Featuring

Story by Felicia Frazar

Rob Wuest grew up with an interest in art, cartoons and comics.

While art wasn’t a career path he followed, he kept feeling the pull to his artistic side, which led him to create his cartoons and comics.

Most recently, he, along with his cartoonist, Ian Baker, has crafted the comic Freakadoo. Wuest modeled the comic after “The Far Side,” comedic without being overboard.

“I try to be funny,” he said. “I don’t try to be cruel or vulgar. I also avoid stereotyping and politics. My goal is to make people happy and have a fun time reading. We use people, we use animals, all kinds of things to make people happy.”

Despite the pair living an ocean apart, they still work well together. Wuest sends his ideas to Baker, who then draws it out and emails it back.

“When I send cartoon ideas to him, I flip through my books and think, I really like this one or not,” he said. “A soon as I give him the descriptions, he puts in his artistic style.”

Baker finds some way to incorporate the comic strip’s name into the image. It can show up as the name of a business, a doctor or a street, Wuest said.

The pair have submitted their work to three major syndications. They’ve received a rejection from one and nothing from the others.

To help get the ball rolling, they’ve taken to social media.

When coming up with the name, Wuest said he found what he liked after thinking outside the box. His initial name idea of “Weird City” was taken by a book written about Austin. He began searching for domain names in search of something similar, yet different.

“I started looking on GoDaddy, typing all kinds of various names similar to weird or freaky or unusual names similar to the Far Side and Bizzarro,” he said. “Every time I put in a term, it would tell me it was taken. So then I thought, I’m gonna make a word that doesn’t exist. One day I was driving between the stores for work, and it came to me, Freakadoo. I was excited to get back to the office and search. It wasn’t taken.”

The Author

Most of my inspiration comes from daily life. It just pops in my mind.

Wuest is a 1984 graduate of Seguin High School and currently works in the family business at Wuest Corporation. As a comic book enthusiast growing up, he found himself surrounded in graphic novels.

“I’ve been a comic book collector since I was 8 years old, and still am,” he said. “When I was in high school, I was interested in art, but I was the type — and, I regret this — who was a scared artist, scared of trying to make a living.”

Instead of following his artist passion, Wuest chose business school.

“I entered an art contest and was accepted to an art school in Minnesota,” he said. “I ended up not going, and going to the University of Texas instead and studied business. I was afraid of being that starving artist. I never went down that path; I went the safe path of going into business and accounting.”

After he started his family, Wuest wanted to ensure they would know their father’s passion for art, so he began “Rob & Chelly”, a Peanuts-style comic strip.

“It was my wife and me, but as kindergarten-age children,” he said. “I was in a few weekly newspapers.”

After the couple’s third child, Wuest put his craft on hold until late 2000 when he paired up with an Italian artist and self-published a comic book called “Monsters Among Us.”

Once his children hit high school age, Wuest placed comics on the back burner again so he could focus on their events.

However, that didn’t stop Wuest from writing down ideas for future works.

“I would just start thinking of things and start writing them down,” he said. “I had these little notebooks at home, and I would just write these down and thought that someday I might want to do something with this. Most of my inspiration comes from daily life. It just pops in my mind. Rarely do I sit down and think, I need five cartoons today.”

In just a few years, Wuest filled hundreds of pages of notebooks with ideas — some only a few words and thoughts; others were full descriptions.

He then decided to start looking for an artist that matched his style.

“I read somewhere that a comic book was like a musical band,” he said. “It is good to not do everything by yourself, and if you can find someone who does a certain aspect of a comic book or a cartoon strip better than you, get them, and it will make it a whole lot better.”

Wuest found the British cartoonist, Baker, through an internet search.

“I thought his style was just perfect for the cartoons I was writing,” he said. “Our styles really matched.”

The two have worked together since January 2019 and so far have completed almost 90 comics.

The Cartoonist

I have been an obsessive drawer since I was a toddler but started to develop cartoon style work by the age of about 10.

Baker, who lives in Sheffield of South Yorkshire, England, describes himself as a life-long artist who began honing his craft at a young age.

“I have been an obsessive drawer since I was a toddler but started to develop cartoon style work by the age of about 10,” he said. “After studying in graphic design, I went immediately into freelance cartooning, illustration and comedy writing and am now in my 30th year ... I’ve never had a ‘proper’ job!”

While he’s not working on “Freakadoo,” he’s on various other projects and worked for many major publications, including “The Times,” Nickelodeon, Reader’s Digest, National Lampoon, “The Sun,” Esquire, Maxim and People, among many others.

“I do this full time and always have done,” he said. “I also work extensively in book publishing, greeting cards, advertising, and have worked as a comedy script writer in television here in the UK. I always have various projects on the go. At the moment, I am writing a new book, and working on several other books in collaboration. I’m also currently doing a weekly cartoon in ‘The Times of India’ and am hoping to launch some character merchandise in the near future.”

Rarely does Baker work on comics outside his own; however, he made an exception with Wuest, and it’s going well, he said.

“We have a very good working partnership with ‘Freakadoo.’ It’s an easy process for us both, I think, and we share a similar sense of humour,” he said. “I look forward to drawing new ‘Freakadoo’ cartoons when Rob sends them over. It’s been wonderful working with Rob on this and being able to concentrate on the visual side of it. The long-distance really isn’t an issue at all; technology makes it very easy. I also think Rob and I have similar interests outside of the strip, which often manifests themselves in the strip.”