The first "informative strips"
The newsletter usually contained articles about things volunteers did, an interview with someone (usually a fellow volunteer) by me, news of upcoming events and (if someone submitted anything) artwork or short stories.
I was thinking about doing a comic strip for it, but I couldn't think of a story. Then I remembered something a discovered years ago..
The Rudiments of Wisdom were a series of informative strips that were published in The Observer from 1973-87. Researched and drawn by engineer/cartoonist Tim Hunkin, each one looks at a different subject and tells you several (usually odd) aspects about the subject. Subjects range from machines (such as Jumbo Jets) to countries (such as Ireland).
They were published into books and can be viewed online (just click the hyper-link at the start of this paragraph).
I thought it would be a great idea to do an informative strip (like The Rudiments of Wisdom) about Autism. I suggested the idea (along with a few examples of Tim's work to help explain the idea) to the the person who I do the newsletter with and the head of publicity in the office. And they liked it. It took a while to compose the text (and have it proof-read by staff to make sure it met organization guidelines). After that, it only took a week to draw the images and compose the final strip in Illustrator (with some help form Photoshop). The final strip can be viewed here.
Since then I have made a number of "informative strips" on a wide range of subjects.
"Snacking Otaku"
Originally called "informative strips," in 2020 this series gained its current title - The Snacking Otaku.
Sometime in the past I discovered an other Japanese word that describes the opposite of otaku - tsumamigui, meaning "snacking." Its the opposite because while an otaku will eat up every piece of information on their obsession, a person who practises tsumamigui will only eat a bit or so of information at a time.