Effin' Birds Migrates to Denver for Events

The internet sensation that is Effin' Birds describes itself pretty bluntly as "a daily comic by Aaron Reynolds that keeps winning awards despite being nothing more than birds and curse words." That level of self-effacement is part and parcel of the charm of Reynold's creation, which he said was unashamedly crafted so as to entertain as many readers as possible and maximize the merchandise and overall profitability of the concept.

So it only stands to reason that Reynolds is doing his level best to maximize the value of his upcoming visit to Denver. He'll appear first at a pre-con party at Mutiny Comics & Coffee (3483 South Broadway in Englewood) from 4 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, July 2, in advance of his four days tabling at FAN EXPO Denver from July 3-6 at the Colorado Convention Center ( 700 14th Street).

On Friday, July 4, Reynolds will be joined by real birds, local rescues from Rocky Mountain Wildlife Alliance. There will be a tip jar for the birds — all proceeds going to RMNA, of course — and in return for the donation, Reynolds will draw that bird in a purchased book.

Reynolds, who lives in Canada, has been making a living off his creativity — specifically writing — for a long time. He covered the Toronto Blue Jays for what he calls "a popular, semi-renegade website" called Batter's Box. "The Jays respected us enough to give us press credentials," says Reynolds, "so we were able to show up and be in the press box and the camera bays."

That is, until the MLB decided to crack down on bloggers. "They said if we weren't a typical newspaper, we weren't allowed in. That was the end of our access. It sort of sucked. Another gatekeeper deciding we didn't deserve the keys."

Around that same time, Reynolds became a dad, and with that came the realization that he couldn't responsibly fly by the seat of his financial pants anymore. "So I took a job with a big tech firm and worked there for eleven years," he says. "That was great, until it wasn't, and about halfway through that job, I recognized that I needed to go back to making things for me again. And there was this thing called Twitter and I could just go do it. So I did."

Reynolds said he just started experimenting with the platform to see what worked and what didn't. "I'd make all these weird accounts that were each mono-focused on one very stupid idea, and then see what happened. They'd either catch on or they wouldn't, and I'd take whatever I learned from both the hits and the misses into the next one, and so on. Do another one, and another one."

The experiments Reynolds did started to gain some traction, and he earned some attention in turn. "At one point in that process of refinement, I was contacted by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to pitch them some stuff for CBC Comedy on social media. I was doing pretty well by then, and they were not so much. The conservatives were upset and saying the CBC Comedy wasn't funny, that the government was giving them all this money and all the CBC did was mock them. My pitch deck to them was this: lean into that. Lean all the way into that. Talk about all the ways you waste their money. This made them very, very afraid. So I switched up and pitched some more gentle stuff, and they didn't like any of them. I felt like I'd blown my shot to work with this legendary organization. I mean, these were the guys that gave us The Kids in the Hall and iconic stuff like that. But then I realized: they're striking out all the time right now. What I should do is pick one of these ideas I think is good, do it, and show them that they're wrong. And the easiest of those was Effin' Birds."

So Reynolds did it: released it himself on social media. And after only two weeks, Efiin' Birds was more popular than CBC Comedy. At first, I was like "this will show 'em," but then I realized "wait, why do I need them? This is already happening."
Over time, Reynolds landed book deals and calendar deals and sold multitudes of prints, t-shirts, enamel pins and patches. "It slowly took over my life," Reynolds reports with a smile. "And eventually, the birds were making enough money that I didn't need to work the day job anymore. It's dozens of little revenue streams from webcomics that add up to a reasonable living."

But the Effin' Birds are the stars, and Reynolds has a couple of reasons for choosing birds as his graphic element — his characters, as it were. "Everyone knows what a bird is," he says. "It's not an audience-limiter. If I write a Star Trek-themed webstrip [which he has], that's only going to appeal to a slice of the available readership."

It's the same reason that Effin' Birds isn't really about the effin' birds. "I get mail from some people complaining that I'm not making enough jokes about the birds themselves," he says. "About bird behavior. But the slice of the public that knows enough about birds for that to be funny is way too tiny. Sure, bird experts might be on the floor laughing, but you can't survive on an audience that small."

Reynolds says he owes it all to a spam email he got back when he was coming up with ideas. It was something for a bird rescue, and he says it had this photo of a sad owl on it. "It made me think that, 'Oh yeah, birds. Birds exist.' There are a limited number of them, with so much reference material. And you can map human emotions onto a bird pretty easily. They have very expressive eyes and brows. They have facial expressions. So to look at a bird and give it not only emotion, but opinion? Turns out it's pretty effective."

Aaron Reynolds of Effin' Birds will be at Mutiny Comics and Coffee, 3483 South Broadway, Englewood, for a Pre-Con Party from 4 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 2, and at FAN EXPO Denver for the weekend immediately following. For more information, keep an eye on Mutiny's website and Reynolds' socials.