Best Bear Ever!

Hello! Welcome to the best year ever, where everything is fun, nothing is too sad, and everyone gets along with everyone else—just like in real life!

Since sarcasm is sometimes difficult to detect in text, and chances are you’re about to give up on this intro anyhow (do people read intros?), let me cut to the chase—this book is meant to make you happy and to take your mind off the heaviness of real life, because life can be a real bummer sometimes. This book is meant to make you laugh, and hopefully, it does.

I started doing these comics about seven years ago, when I was still relatively new to social media. There was no grand purpose for them—just a way for me to tell some jokes and force myself to draw something other than The Simpsons (the show I was working on as an animator at the time). I credit the broad reach of social media for much of the success that the comics have had, and I am eternally grateful to Tumblr for being straightforward enough that even I could figure out how to use it. (I’m not exactly tech-savvy. Sometimes I open the calculator on my iPhone and try to call people with it.) But as grateful as I am to social media for helping these comics get exposure, it is also a very scary place: the trolls, the constant fighting, the daily reminders of how horrible the world can be. It can all be heavy.

Though social media terrified me a little, I continued posting comics (sometimes hiding behind the couch afterward, as if it might shield me from the negative feedback). Eventually, I started getting messages from people who were going through a hard time. They’d tell me that the comics provided a bit of comfort or distraction in the midst of their sadness, and I felt (still feel) incredibly humbled every time I’d receive one of these messages. I’ve been through these terrible periods of hopelessness—we all have. It’s really nice to know these comics could provide even just a little bit of a distraction.

This book is dedicated to two people I knew through social media (although I never had the pleasure of meeting them in person), Louie and Guillaume. They left this world far too soon, but they clearly left an enduring impression on everyone who was lucky enough to know them. I think about them often, and they remind me that even in darkness there can be a little bit of light, and that life is too precious to not at least try to be good to one another.

Hopefully, this book inspires you to see the good, or at least cheers you up a bit. Or, maybe you’ll think it’s dumb and throw it across the room because you’re in a really bad mood today. That’s fine, too! Just please buy it first, and don’t throw it in the bookstore, because they really don’t like that. And if things have been extra hard for you lately, I hope that, starting today, you have the best year ever.