Origin of an Evil Squirrel

Hello, I have some news that I’m excited to share: Scholastic/Graphix will publisher three Evil Squirrel graphic novels starting in 2027!

I mention Evil Squirrel like everybody knows what I’m talking about, but it’s very possible that you in fact do not know what I’m talking about. Evil Squirrel and Agent Ruffles are two characters in an ongoing series of cartoons that I sometimes draw. I never intended it as an ongoing series but it became one nevertheless and now I get to write a bunch of stories about them.

This is the first Evil Squirrel cartoon that I drew (with zero intention of ever drawing these characters a second time):

This is based on a true story. My daughter was less than a year old and my dog Crusher was adapting. He likes to bark, but he learned pretty quickly (he’s a smart boy) not to bark in the baby’s room, particularly when she’s in her crib. One day while she was sleeping, Crusher followed me into the room and outside the window was this squirrel hanging out on a branch peering in. Crusher wanted to bark so badly but knew he couldn’t, so he let out these ridiculous muted grunts while the squirrel stood there, staring at him, daring him to bark.

He seemed pretty evil so I gave him an evil character’s dialogue, in a tone somewhere in the range of Hannibal Lector, or Blowfield from the James Bond franchise or Phillip Vandamm, James Mason’s character from North by Northwest. Evil.

Later that year I was working on a batch of cartoons. It was winter, and I was thinking about squirrels stashing their acorns. I had also recently watched Hitchcock’s Notorious. Something about those two mixed together in my brain and resulted in this cartoon:

This is when the Squirrel started to get a wardrobe. He’s since lost the gun and robe, but the cane is still part of his accoutrement. That was two evil squirrel cartoons, but that didn’t really occur to me until a little later, when Instagram introduced carousels. Before carousels, you would post one image. Now you could post up to ten, and rumor was, the more you put in one post the better traction it got. Trying to game IG’s algorithm is a futile exercise that many cartoonists (me) obsess over. Anyway, at first it felt weird just posting random cartoons in one carousel. For whatever reason it felt more appropriate to choose a theme, like five desert islands cartoons or whatever. This got me thinking about topics I had several cartoons on, which led me to my two squirrel cartoons.

But they weren’t just squirrel cartoons, they were evil squirrel cartoons. Also, two cartoons was not enough to establish a true theme. So I decided just for the heck of it to draw a few more:

A couple of things here: first, Squirrel gets his bowtie, which sticks with him for good. Two: Ruffles returns, but also “Mr. Peppermint,” who never comes back. Ruffles’ look isn’t nailed down yet. I submitted these cartoons but no one bought any so I posted my first Evil Squirrel carousel post.

The post did well. People liked this evil guy. I liked him too. Writing his dialogue is very fun. With that encouragement, I decided it would be fun to draw more. I stopped submitting these, they were just for IG. They felt contextual, best communicated within my own budding universe. I started drawing quickly in the morning and posting right away. At first I was leaning into the Bond villain angle:

Then I decided to go full-on movie references:

I had a series now, and the possibility of a book. People really seemed to like these guys and wanted to see more of them in a longer form. While working on a book proposal, I drew more, hoping that I could keep up the enthusiasm for the characters and make my pitch stronger. That’s when the characters became more consistent. Here’s a bunch more from that period:

And that’s about it! I’m currently finishing up the script for book one and I can’t wait to share it. In the meantime I plan on drawing more of these cartoons just for sharing.

If you are a fan of these characters you can buy a print of any of these from my store (just choose custom print and email us which one you‘d like.) You can also get this this Evil Squirrel baseball hat in black or green:

OK that’s it! If you have any thoughts about Evil Squirrel, or anything really, let me know in a comment! Also please ‘like’ this post and/or subscribe if you haven’t. If you want to. Thanks!