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PWP - Bob and George

4th installment of the Pixelated Window of the Past. Check out last week if you missed it.

There is quite the story behind the creation of this webcomic. In a way, you could say that it created the whole subgenre of Sprite Comics, and accidentally to boot.

Dave Anez, the author, wanted to make a comic based on superheroes of his creation, namely Bob & George, otherwise known as their superhero names Blitz and Napalm. But Dave had technological problems at first, namely a lack of scanner. And not wanting to delay the start of the comic, he found at random a selection of Megaman sprites that he used to do something. At the time, it was a retelling of Megaman 1 story, inserting his own humor into it.

First case of hand drawn comic, June 2000

Midway through the story arc, he stopped to make way for hand drawn comics… and then quickly self-criticized himself for them. The problem was not in the art style, but rather on the delivery. Took him 10 days to expose what should have rightfully taken months, because he was following more or less the template of what he did with the sprite comic and let the story and jokes come as he goes.

So he quickly returned to more Megaman antics, until Dave took another shot at the hand-drawn story he wanted to make, several months later.

Second attempt, October 2000

Already he had used some of the experience he took from making the sprite comic, and had improved the style. But again that wasn’t working, he resigned himself to sticking to Megaman sprites. Instead, he worked into inserting his Bob & George characters from the hand-drawn comic into the Megaman Universe, which led to some of the biggest differences compared to the original game stories.

With some liberties, Bob & George overall story is set in the future of Megaman 7, and uses sprites of different bit-tage to represent when the story is happening (8 bit past, 16 bit present, 32 bit future), weaving in storylines involving X and Zero from the future, while revisiting and (sometimes heavily) rewriting the first six games set in the past.

Dave eventually managed to insert a whole story arc of hand-drawn comics, although he was helped through them, but instead of making it the standard as he wanted at first, it was only a way of showing the alternate dimensions where Bob and George used to live in.

Megaman's idiocy is not accident either, it's hard-coded.

The personalities of the characters are probably the ‘most well known’ and ‘most used’ of the Sprite Comic world as a result of the popularity. Megaman being an idiot, Dr. Light being drunk… Those became, amusingly enough, considered as the canon personalities, although B&G ultimately is a fanwork as well.

Bob & George had its own section for fan-made comics, which ranged in quality widely, but Dave still set aside webspace for all of them at some point, with had them updating daily as well. These were known as ‘Fancomics’ and ‘Subcomics’, and most of the time were reusing the same archetypes, part of why they were so widely considered as the ‘true’ personalities.

-Review-
Bob and George is one that I followed early on, all the way to completion. That’s because it did what it should be doing, it was amusing and entertaining. Maybe it helped that it was using Megaman and setting itself within the official stories as well. Comparing the official along with B&G, how the story lines were adapted, or completely redone sometimes, is something that was highly entertaining for me.

I also was one of the numerous fancomic authors (listed as Franck in the archives), although I don’t consider myself that good compared to some of the others. I may end up reviewing some of those fancomics, as some of them were good, others not as much.

As far as following the Rules of Dos and Don’ts, some of them would not apply directly to B&G quite obviously. For one thing, it’s the one that set the archetypes, to which Rule#A suggest to make your own thing instead.

Self-depreciating joke, Rule #5

In the comments, Dave mentions how much he hated some of these, over the course of the comic he greatly improved to avoid these of course, but that doesn't mean fancomics didn't reuse it.

Rule #10, interfering Author

Fortunately the whole story was not centered on Dave the Author, but used as a means for humor all through the story, even as plot points at times. The star of the show still was the Megaman cast, along with Bob and George of course, and some of the villains that he created for them, like Mynd.

George is going to destroy the whole world.

Art-wise, B&G did interesting things, using effects, modification of sprites and such. The base is really simple, like Bob and George are simply recolors of Megaman and Protoman, but it still was creative with what it had, and improved upon it over time, while keeping the basic of what sprite comics are.

By the time it ended, the amount of effects and modifications were rather impressive.

Still one of my favorite jokes of this comic

Humor, that's why I was there until the end, and while not every strip has to be funny, the overall thing was still such a blast to read through, and I'd still want to read the archives once in a while years later.

One last self-aware joke before I go.

Overall, it's easy to see why B&G was the forefather of the Sprite Comics. Because it had quality, humor, a good script, and followed all of the rules (most of the time). When people talk about inventing the wheel, this is pretty much what B&G did in this case. And it's definitely an amazing read over the 7 years that it ran.