Check Out Bentley Boyd’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bentley Boyd

Hi Bentley, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Before social media, before the internet, before cable TV even . . . there was a piece of paper, a pencil and the long, quiet summer days on my grandparents’ hog farm in north central Ohio. So I drew my own stories. Made my own worlds.
That turned into drawing for the school newspaper. Which became printing my own black and white comix and selling them to classmates for a quarter. Which became undergraduate studies at Harvard and more drawing for the student newspaper.
I thought I would spend my life drawing political cartoons in the newspaper, and I was doing that for a Virginia paper in 1995 when the editors asked me to create a four=day series for kids about Earth Day on the 25th anniversary of the celebration. Chester the Crab was born. He proved so popular that he started narrating stories on a wide variety of educational topics. There was syndication and some nice awards, and in 2003 I got permission from the newspaper to spin the stories into my own business.
In 2024, I am back in my home state of Ohio and have just published my 39th book about American history, in full color comix form. There is social media and internet and cable TV now. Doing historical stories in printed comix form seemed bold to many teachers and librarians in 1999; it seems quaint now in the sea of Tik Tok videos. But each year there’s a new crop of fifth graders who need to learn about Harriet Tubman, and they still love discovering Chester.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
No one expects the Great Recession housing crisis.
No one expects a global pandemic.
Both were severe blows to my business. The COVID-19 pandemic literally closed the schools and museums that I sell my educational comix to!!!!!!!
But I’ve digitized a good amount of my content, and I paid my bills through both economic crashes.
There’s a small margin on the business. But in the Great Recession I cut my costs to the bone and survived. So that’s been the model ever since. I depend on word-of-mouth instead of big marketing buys. I lean on the museums who have carried my books for a dozen years. I’ve held my prices the same even in the face of inflation (because I prioritize keeping my longtime customers).

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am known for being a cartoonist of American history stories. When I began this work in the 1990s, there was only one other professional who was doing the same kind of work (someone who graduated from Harvard the generation before I did). Now there is a rainbow of young artists creating nonfiction comix, and I love to see all the variety and energy. I have my little corner of the American comix ecosystem, and I’m happy with my corner.

Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
My work depends on the desktop capabilities of Adobe Photoshop. I’ve been using it since the 1990s. Without it, I could not be a one-person creative shop doing my own self-publishing.

Pricing:

• $6.95 per book

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chestercomix.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chestercomix/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chestercomix/