TITLE The Bastich By Hart: Summer "Vacation" Part 7
PANEL 1 (BAPPER, now with a full beard and chili-pepper bandana, approaches BASTICH, who is sitting at a workstation.) CAPTION: One day, while toiling away at Mothership Inc... BAPPER: Hi there, 'Stich! BASTICH: Whoa, Bapper, what happened to your corporate digs? BAPPER: Huh???
PANEL 2 (BASTICH speaks to BAPPER.) BASTICH: You know. the shaved face, the cropped hair... the PANTS! Finally decided to quit suckin' up to the Man, eh..? How did you manage to grow your beard back so fast, anyway?!
PANEL 3 (BAPPER fidgets with a device on his wrist as one half of him has the clean-shaven appearance of his recent appearances.) BAPPER: Oh no! My RDF must be on the fritz! BASTICH: Your WHAT..? BAPPER: My Reality Distortion Field. It was set to disguise me as a fashionable corporate drone...
PANEL 4 (Flashback to a clean-shaven BAPPER aggressively tappiing and clicking away at his workstation while an off-panel CO-WORKER comments) BAPPER: (Caption) "It also disguised my DIABLO sessions as a Pro-C development environment..!" CO-WORKER: My, isn't he an ENTHUSIASTIC programmer...
PANEL 5 (A panicked bearded BAPPER grits his teeth.) BAPPER: But now its failing, so I have to run and get it fixed... I should be okay as long as nobody sees me like this..!
PANEL 6 (BAPPER is now off-panel as BASTICH raises a finger to comment.) BASTICH: Hey, wait... I saw you! BAPPER: So far, so good. CAPTION: Concept by Mtn. Dewd.
CREDITS Bastich (c) 1997 Joshua Adam Hart
Commentary
We have two consecutive strips with a sci-fi MacGuffin. This time, it's an in-joke explaining how Bapper's character design changed between his first appearance and this new storyline. The real-world reason was simply that the "real" Bapper was clean-shaven at the time. I couldn't really find a clean-shaven design that "felt" right so I eventually brought the beard back for good.
As the end-note reveals, this strip idea was provided by the real Mtn. Dewd. I stole a lot of uncredited ideas from my friends and eventually we would try a more official collaboration with the icon-based series.