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Before BOHICA: A Long, Long Time Ago....
🕑 Added 2020-04-02 16:00:00 +0000 UTCI thought this layout was pretty clever; incorporating a panel break (a "gutter") and making this a two-panel comic while in truth it is all one picture but with two different dialogue events happening in it. Of course this is pretty normal stuff in a lot of comics but for me experimenting in these things meant pushing new ideas.
Not a new idea was giant bugs, especially mosquitoes, that required the use of crew-served weapons to deal with. I think every military cartoonist has done this one before.
The race to Kabul before it was popular! I enjoyed drawing the Soviet BTR-60 armored personnel carrier since there was just something about it that seemed so novel to me. The duck bill, boat shape, eight wheels and dinky little turret just seemed cool. Why someone would want to race for "pink slips" (car titles) in a society that discouraged private ownership was beyond me but whatever-- I got a lot of early cartooning influence from a magazine called "CARtoons" that was about car culture: racing, restoring, modifying hot rods, and so on. Challenges to "go for pinks" featuring bizarre vehicle matches were regular features.
One thing that is probably obvious to anyone by now is that it is very hard for me to NOT make a story out of something. I can't just have three characters in three separate comics pursuing three separate stand-along jokes on their own. I feel compelled to build a structure, a framework, and weave a narrative that relates all the disparate elements together. The relationship I created between Joe and Sharilee was weird and forced and I even sort of suspected it at the time but I just felt that having the characters work off of each other and cross over was something I couldn't just not do.
I actually wrestled with it when I was coming up with ideas for the BOHICA Blues webcomic before I launched it. Would it be individual, stand-alone jokes for each strip? Or would it be part of a larger, ongoing story? It actually bothered me, and I studied the famous webcomic "Terminal Lance" a lot and puzzled over it. If you've read "Terminal Lance", you know there is no attempt whatsoever at maintaining a running overall story. Max Uriarte's Marines could be in Afghanistan one comic, at Twentynine Palms the next comic, and then in Iraq the very next day-- all with no explanation or backstory, because the joke being told stand son its own.
By the time I got to planning the webcomic, I knew what my natural predilection was, and I knew that --even if I tried not to-- I would end up weaving a large narrative linking everything together. It seems to be in my nature, and trying to stop ti would make things worse (and make the comic an unenjoyable chore for me). So I planned from the start to telll a big story in little joke-a-day format, which for the most part seems to be working.
