TITLE The Bastich By Hart
PANEL 1 (BASTICH-MAN poses heroically.) CAPTION: What is... THE ORIGIN OF BASTICH-MAN!?
PANEL 2 (A small space-ship zooms away from an exploding planet.) CAPTION: Some say he was the sole survivor of a dying planet, jettisoned into space as it was torn asunder by years of global neglect and mindless warfare... With him gone, to everybody's surprise, the planet blew up anyway.
PANEL 3 (BASTICH is bitten on the arm by a glowing cat.) CAPTION: Others claim he was bitten by a radioactive cat... Actually it was the other way around. Luckily for the cat, Bastich-Man had had all of his shots.
PANEL 4 (BASTICH stands in front of an injured alien crawling away from a crashed flying saucer.) CAPTION: Another theory is that a mortally wounded alien emerged from a fallen Space Vessel and offered our hero his Mystical Power anklet and his position on the Interstellar Paisley Anklet Corps... Instead, the dying alien taped the anklet to a dog's back, in hopes that a more suitable candidate might be found.
PANEL 5 (A naked BASTICH sucks his thumb while floating in a giant glass tube filled with bubbling fluid.) CAPTION: According to some, he was a test subject in a secret government eXperiment... But the project was scrapped as soon as it was clear no cure for Trekkitis would be discovered.
PANEL 6 (Close-up on BASTICH-MAN, still posing.) CAPTION: Whether the true origin of Bastich-wan is revealed or it remains forever an enigma, one thing remains certain... This hero fights for all that is good, and is a true paragon of virtue and integrity! BASTICH-MAN: Ah, these trunks are nice and tight... just the way I Like 'Em!
CREDITS (c) 1996 Joshua Adam Hart
Commentary
And so, with the final week of the Spring 1996 semester, Bastich's first full academic year comes to a close.
There isn't much in the way of subtext with this grand tour of super hero origin tropes. It includes pastiches of Superman, Spider-Man, the Silver Age Green Lantern, and Wolverine.
The last few weeks of school were always crazy, so this was primarily a mental break from trying to be clever or relevant or even vaguely relatable to the student body at Chico State. I just had some fun riffing on the superhero lore that was baked into every fiber of my being. However, I still managed to crank out a one-panel extra the day before this saw print (actually drawn a few days later thanks to the lead time for print publication).