NOTE: ONE SHOULD NOT READ THIS UNLESS ONE HAS READ THE ENTIRETY OF BOB AND GEORGE.
SPOILERS, Y'KNOW.
~To be read while listening to "Robots Eating Ice Cream"~
I must admit, it took me quite some time to really get started writing this piece. Part of it was, of course, a tribute to another series that closed its doors at about the same time, which took precedence because it concluded first. But the other part was this- it’s just so hard to describe Bob and George. It’s hard to pinpoint just what makes it so much fun, what has drawn so many readers to the strip over the years.
But Bob and George is fun. That is undeniable. It’s one of the few comic strips that have made me actually laugh out loud reading the daily updates. Seriously. And its whimsical storylines have captivated audiences for more than seven years.
To find out where it all started, let’s go back to the beginning, and find out what a very unusual thing happened on the first of April, 2000.
Dave Anez wanted to create his own webcomic.
Inspired by such great comics as Sluggy Freelance, Anez dreamed of seeing his name soaring across the internet, becoming world-renowned for his comic artistry, and of course, having a harem of hot fangirls.
His story would be no ordinary story. It would be the tale of a team of superbeings, and the lives they tried to live as they grappled with everything from aliens to college work. And he would call it Bob and George.
There was just one problem...
Anez didn’t have a scanner.
The upshot of this was that he was unable to begin his comic, even though he really, really wanted to. So he put together a comic strip explaining that the strip would be delayed for a time. Of course, the lack of scanner meant he had to make do with whatever he found lying around the internet...
...Which just so happened to be collections of sprites from the classic video game series Megaman.
Yes, thought Dave, that was perfect. He could use Megaman and his friends to entertain the readers with silly, sprite-based filler. Perhaps he’d even make old-school Megaman players chuckle slightly. After a little while of that, he could get down to serious business.
He set a date for himself to begin the real series, April 15th, and set about both finding a scanner and perfecting his art style.
Unfortunately, these proved harder than he’d thought to accomplish. Anez had hoped to use a friend’s scanner, but access to it was difficult to come by. And the art was not going well.
Meanwhile, the filler comics were still going on, and April 15th had slipped away before his eyes. Realizing this, Anez interrupted the story he was working on, a goofy retelling of the first Megaman game, to have the main character loudly complain about the missed deadline, and run off in a huff.
Well, it seemed a good tactic for keeping the readers entertained. It wasn’t like this was anything more than filler, after all.
Of course, somehow he had to keep the plot going, after all. So he brought in a representation of himself to fill in for Megaman and get things back on track. Finally the jealous hero returned, all the problems were solved, and by this time, Dave Anez thought himself ready to begin.
He’d finally bought himself a scanner, and armed with superheroes in hand, he stepped forth to begin Bob and George. The comic would surely succeed now, he thought...
But he was wrong. It fell flat on its face.
The story had started off reasonably enough. But in rushing to get to the good part, Anez had destroyed all the subtle foreshadowing he’d been dreaming of for months, and made a mockery of the story he’d wanted to tell.
Frustrated, he returned to the Megaman filler comics, vented by letting every character cuss a lot about being back in the strip, and tried to figure out how he was going to make this work. He decided to go back to the Megaman stuff he’d been working on, finish that up, and in the meantime, perfect Bob and George. Maybe it was the art that needed to be reworked. Maybe he needed to think about the plot some more.
He went through a lighthearted storyline about Megaman getting his butt kicked by a boss monster, and then returned to the game parody he’d been working on. By the time he brought that to its conclusion, it was September, and he was ready to give the hand-drawn comic another shot.
So he had the evil Dr. Wily kidnap the Author character he was using to represent himself. Then Anez killed himself off, to force an end to the filler comics. Following that, he barricaded himself from any outside influence, and worked solely on Bob and George for the next few weeks. On October 1st, Anez revealed Bob and George 2.0...
...Which turned out even worse than the first version.
The new and improved comic ended up as nothing more than some simple jokes and recaps of the previous version. Finally, Dave killed the accursed thing out of frustration.
Thoroughly pissed off at himself and at everything by this point, Anez went back to the Megaman sprites. And he thought. He thought for a long time about his comic strip and what the hell he was going to do with it.
Eventually, he concluded that his Megaman stuff was infinitely better than anything he’d ever done in the hand-drawn comic.
And the readers agreed. They too, preferred the sprites to the superheroes.
So Dave Anez finally decided to turn the Megaman filler into his masterwork. At that moment, Bob and George truly took shape.
And the world of sprite comics was born.
Certainly Anez wasn’t the first to ever think of pasting pixels into panels. A strip called Neglected Mario Characters, a year older than BnG, is often cited for that. But NMC was made as a side project to another website. Dave Anez was the first to take sprites and drag them, kicking and screaming, into the world of webcomics. He was the first to declare that his real project was with pixels, and said to the world, “Yes, I’m telling my story with sprites. Deal with it.”
Of course, the problem with changing the entire focus of the strip was that its title characters no longer appeared in the comic.
So Dave had to do something about that. He brought in the main characters of his original strip via interdimensional portal, and the fun began at last.
Before long, Anez had mixed random invaders, ice cream, and zany physics into his stories, and BnG was attracting a huge following. People were tuning in droves to check out the antics of our stupid hero and his drunken creator, among other crazy folk. And Dave continued to parody each of the Megaman games, with the results (which were steadily getting more ludicrous) involving everything from time travel to homicidal virus-induced robot rampage.
I first discovered Bob and George back in 2004, during the fifth of these nutty parodies, in which Bob, supervillain from the future, had usurped Dr. Wily’s role as major villain, built an army of robots, and waged war on the world. At the time I entered the plot, Anez had worked an extensive Star Wars parody into it.
Which pretty much describes just what Bob and George is like.
Interestingly enough, I didn’t first hear of BnG on the internet, and it was after I started making comics. A friend told me of a great comic strip he’d found on the internet, and insisted that I check it out. So I did. “Bob and George,” I thought as I typed in the URL. “What a funny name.”
I had the time of my life reading through the archives, trying to follow everything that was happening to George and Ran and Bass and Megaman and Nate and Chadling. I marveled at the interesting things Anez employed, such as Flash animation, to tell the story at some of the more interesting moments. And after I was done with the archives, I continued to follow the story, day after day, to its conclusion.
To deny Bob and George’s influence over the webcomic world would be a serious mistake. If it hadn’t been for this single comic, it’s likely even that sprites would not be well known, and especially not as a medium. They would be shunted off to the side as a strange, gimmicky idea, unknown except by random video game enthusiasts. By insisting that sprite comics be respected as a medium, Dave Anez changed all that.
Some enjoyed Bob and George during its seven-year run. Others found it dull, and lamented the sub-par sprite comics that it inspired. Yes, I say to them, if it weren’t for BnG those comics would never have existed. But neither would the massive spriting communities, the forums dedicated to improving one’s sprite comic skill, and the number of undeniably igoodi sprite and sprite-inspired comics out there, such as 8-Bit Theater, In Wily’s Defense, and Kid Radd. Like it or not, this is the comic that defined a genre, and it should be commended and remembered for that.
Despite all this, Dave Anez has never taken himself too seriously. For instance, no one ever really died over the course of the comic. Oh, sure, they got stabbed in various places, blown to smithereens, and squished. But Dr. Light was always standing by to fix those robots and Demons. (He even died at one point himself, but was brought back by divine intervention.) And those pesky title characters always found some way to dodge every fatal blow. Heck, at times it seems like the only times anyone appeared to die just happened so they could piss off the villains upon their triumphant return.
Not only that, but Anez did his best to fill the strip with the most ridiculous things; ice cream and insane temporal paradoxes and drunken rampages. And he always did love to mess with his readers. He’d devise the most plothole-ridden stories, then go back and fill them in with perfect explanations, years and years later. And he’d go out of his way to confuse and bamboozle his readers, stretching the truth in his blurbs for the sole purpose of shocking his readers with unbelievable revelations.
The ending of Bob and George drew mixed favor from the readers. Some found it weird and hard to swallow. But I think it was perfect.
What better way could there be to end such a wacky, whimsical comic strip than revealing that the protagonist’s imotheri was in the end responsible for practically everything That, of course, and the cosmic bet the Author had been making for the last few years. And what an epilogue! Dave spent ten solid minutes detailing the future for each of his characters, and then finally, at the very end revealed that thanks to a small comment from a time-traveler, none of it even actually gets to happen. What a perfect way to cap off years of constant screwing with our minds.
Thanks for seven superb years of Bob and George, Dave.
Now take a break. You’ve earned it.
~ Mastercougar
