Doing Fionn McCabe's "How To"

A really fun exercise!!

As I’ve mentioned here before, I absolutely love Fionn’s work and his substack - just nonstop hilarious gems.

His most recent post absolutely insisted on being tried out, immediately:

How To "How To"

There is nothing that warms my shriveled, vitamin deprived heart more than taking stupidity seriously.

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What you need:

Paper and pen or pencil
Post-It notes (if you’ve got ‘em)
A passion for education

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What to do:

1. Think of an activity that no one needs to know about.

2. Make a comic explaining how to do that activity.

3. Don’t worry about describing your activity in a way that makes sense. In fact, you can do the opposite! Or don’t! Riff on the idea of explaining something because… you don’t owe anyone an explanation! You can do what you want!

4. I can’t remember the this bit of the instructions, but… I’m sure it will come to me. Fuck. It’s a crucial one! It’s, like, the most important bit of this... ahhhh! Fuck. FUCK! Uuugh. God, I hate when this happens! Shit. Nope! Nope… it’s totally gone.

5. You did it! Good job! Education is a crucial building block of a functioning democracy.

Hilarious. Because I drew William Steig’s Shrek in my last post, that big green ogre was still on my mind.

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Wooo, total nonsense. Now I want to do more “How To” comics! Also, putting a definite article in front of “Shrek” is a Richard Herring joke - he often references “a” Shrek, and it makes me laugh.

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This exercise and Fionn’s comics for it made me think again of this book I have by Shel Silverstein, Uncle Shelby’s ABZ. It really was one of my favourite books for quite a while when I was about 8-10 years old. It’s just hilarious anarchy, and as I’ve said here before, was an inspiration when I wrote How to Make Good Choices in 2022.

More pictures and thoughts on this book here!