TITLE The Bastich By Hart
PANEL 1 (FAITH knocks on BASTICH'S bedroom door.) FAITH: Hey, Bastich! Dr. who's on in five minutes..! Hmm, no answer... SFX: NOK NOK
PANEL 2 (Inside BASTICH's room, there is a sign on his pillow that reads "OFF TO SAVE THE WORLD" signed "B".) FAITH: (Off-screen) He must have gone to bed early or something. Oh well...
PANEL 3 (BASTICH-MEN stoops over a chimney. He is a super-hero in a cape and a black skintight costume that covers his entire head and body. A stylized "B" clips his cape together and he is wearing large white circular goggles.) CAPTION: Bastich War Journal: Entry BA960417. The city is calling out to me... Saying, "Yo, Bastich!" And so I answer. BASTICH-MAN: What!?
PANEL 4 (A city skyline is shown in silhouette.) CAPTION: And the city replies, "My streets are soiled by the bowels of greed. My parks, overcome with the stench of the underarm of crime. Each home sullied by the phlegm of injustice. You, my champion, shall cleans my alleyways and sidewalks until the mark of this pestilence has been wiped clean."
PANEL 5 (BASTICH-MAN waves his finger thoughtfully in the air.) CAPTION: And I say: BASTICH-MAN: "Cleanse?" "Wiped clean?" You know, that's getting mighty personal, there... You really should take care of your own hygiene.
PANEL 6 (The chimney beneath BASTICH-MAN begins to collapse and topple over with our hero holding on for dear life.) CAPTION: Then I am struck with the realization that the city lacks a sense of humor.
CREDITS (c) 1996 Joshua Adam Hart
Commentary
Enter Bastich-Man! This guy is always fun to draw.
BM was shamelessly inspired by The Tick, and the captions are a riff on Rorschach's journal from Alan Moore's Watchmen and Punisher's War Journal (also lampooned by The Tick).
The entry number was simply the file name for the strip, which in those days was
baYYMMDD.gif(e.g.ba950417.gif). Yup, the Bastich comic strip had its own built-in Y2K bug.When this was drawn, Doctor Who only aired in the U.S. on local PBS stations at midnight, so I figured this was a perfect obscure thing for Bastich and his nerdy friends to be doing. I didn't know that the Fox TV Movie was right around the corner, so at least somebody thought the show could have broader appeal. However, the movie went nowhere and the franchise went back into hibernation for another decade. The 2005 reboot was a pretty amazing comeback that's lasted almost as long as the original run. Not bad.