Brian Bose, a former Saratogan now living in Aptos, recently published his first book, 'A Freak of Nature.'




Photograph by Tsutomu Fujita







Cartoonist makes a freak of nature

By Shari Kaplan

A Freak of Nature--it's not the most conventional of names for a publishing company, but Brian Bose is not the most conventional of people, either.

The former Saratogan and Saratoga High School graduate--now an Aptos resident--began the business earlier this year and has already released his first book, also titled A Freak of Nature. The small paperback consists of original black-and-white cartoons--many with irreverent, witty captions--interspersed with more serious quotations dealing with nature, environmentalism, society's foibles and other topics close to Bose's heart.

"You hear all these stories about the environment, but it's just not getting through to people," the 33-year-old says. "I'm trying to get through to people through the backdoor--with humor."

Thanks to his college degrees, combined with his own creativity, Bose has plenty of material at his disposal. A graduate of UC-Berkeley with a degree in resource management/forestry, Bose did forest service work for several years under the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

He later obtained a master's degree in environmental journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder. While there, he got his feet wet as a published cartoonist when some of his art ran in a newspaper called The Mountain Sun.

Cartoons with messages behind their humor are a Brian Bose trademarks.




Illustration courtesy of Brian Bose







After leaving Colorado, he lived in the North Lake Tahoe area and wrote for The Bonanza, a weekly newspaper. One day, while on a lunch break beside a creek, he watched a small fish swim upstream until it reached a manmade dam. Bose says the fish stopped for a while, contemplating the obstacle, then turned and high-tailed it back downstream.

"It was probably saying 'dam!'" Bose says he imagined at the time. This incident helped spur him to marketing his unique brand of single-panel cartoons, which combine humor with various messages for society. The Bonanza picked them up, and other publications have since begun running them as well.

The name shared by his publishing company and book has a double meaning, Bose says. Not only does "a freak of nature" connote something strange and different, it also describes someone who loves the environment--a "nature freak."

"With pollution, housing developments, swamps being drained and deforestation, I think people sometimes do it without thinking about it, and without considering the results down the road," he says with disappointment. "It's going to bite us in the ass someday--it's just a matter of how hard!"

In the meantime, Bose is busy promoting his cartoons to various periodicals, and is getting A Freak of Nature onto the shelves of Amazon.com and various Bay Area bookstores. This includes Borders Books, Music & Cafe in downtown Los Gatos. He's also at work on a second book of cartoons, which will probably not include quotations, he says.

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For more information about A Freak of Nature publishing company or book, call 831.685.9291 or visit www.afreakofnature.com on the Internet.

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