TITLE The Bastich By Hart
PANEL 1 (BASTICH waits in line at a movie theater.) BASTICH: Ah, the STAR WARS Special Edition is finally out! My nerd heart is about to freeze with joy..!
PANEL 2 (Suddenly, two dome-shaped robots beam in ahead of BASTICH in line. One has a large M on its chassis and the other has a W.) M-BOT: Greetings, Earthlings! BASTICH: HEY! No Cutting!
PANEL 3 (Close-up on M-BOT.) M-BOT: Please forgive us for our rudeness. My counterpart and I have awaited this event for many orbital units, and have traveled great distances to be present here today.
PANEL 4 (Middle shot of M-BOT and W-BOT.) W-BOT: Indeed. The best copy of this Earth film we could obtain in our region was a fourth-generation bootleg dubbed poorly in French. M-BOT: With Taiwanese Subtitles. W-BOT: "Que la FORCE soit avec vous!" M-BOT: HEH HEH HEH
PANEL 5 (BASTICH addresses M-BOT, pointing his finger in the air.) BASTICH: So You guys aren't from around here, then? M-BOT: Did I not say we traveled great distances to be here?
PANEL 6 (M-BOT and W-BOT face each other knowingly as BASTICH shrugs behind them.) BASTICH: Sure, but for some folks 1 know, leaving their parents' BASEMENT is a journey of EPIC proportions. W-BOT: Yup. We got the right planet.
CREDITS Bastich (c) 1997 Joshua Adam Hart
Commentary
We begin Spring 1997 on a similar note to how we ended Fall 1996, with aliens visiting the Earth to consume our science fiction media.
The first of the Star Wars Special Editions was released the week this strip was published. Obviously nerds everywhere were excited, even though the THX remaster of the original version had seen a theatrical release just a couple years earlier. That's how starved we were for Star Wars content.
Process note: The alien robots and beam-in effect were created in CorelDRAW along with the usual panel layout and text.