A Blast from the Past

Long ago, I had created a small comic series called "Bones Comics", which was all hand-drawn, and had nothing to do with any particular game (unlike the more recent Bones' UO Comics. Also note that this is the "Bones" part of "NecroBones"). I worked on it here and there for a few years, but it got started in January of 1987, and the vast majority of the strips I made were done that year. I would add anything and everything that could be even the slightest bit funny, so there were an aweful lot of horrible puns and the like. I worked on them in class (I was in 8th grade when I started it), and so they tended to be quickly scribbled out on 3x5" notecards. This often influenced the types of subject matter as well. For instance, when I was in biology class, there ended up being a lot of biology puns. They were almost always single-cell comics, only rarely taking two or three cells, mostly due to the chosen medium. Below are two individual examples from fairly early in the series. I've redone the text in Paint Shop Pro, since it was written sloppy and didn't scan well. My skill hasn't improved a whole lot, since I haven't had much practice in years, but these characters below were relatively early in the series. Oddly enough, I can draw cartoonish skeletons and inanimate objects, but not humans or animals.

The comics were arranged into 'editions', which were typically 30 cards or so, including the front and back 'cover'. Below are a few typical cover cards. The shortest edition was only one card, just the cover. In the end, there were 48 editions, spanning over 4 years.

Something that you really can't see from these few examples is that the whole thing was done from the standpoint of these skeletons attempting to put on a show, and screwing-up badly along the way. Scenes in which they're still constructing the props and sets were common. This may have been mildly influenced by my memories of the Muppet Show, since it depicted misfits performing a sort of "variety show", complete with hecklers. Every edition, for the most part, also had an "Intermission" card, in which you'd often see them moving around stage equipment and the like. Significantly later, but still quite a long time ago, I also made some attempts to create some of these things entirely on the computer (I didn't have a scanner back then). These were just test shots, and weren't actually turned into comics. Here are some examples: So as you can see, Osso and Ossis, plus other skeletal characters, have been around for a long time, though I didn't actually name them til much later when Bones' UO Comics came into existence. In the UO comics, which where based on Ultima Online, the skeletal characters only appeared in about a quarter of the strips, but were still the main recurring characters. The entire comic series was made using the graphics from the game itself, and the context and setting was set within the game as well. The normal format for the comic strip was 6 cells. Here's an example: Here's are some attempts at drawing some characters that I did more recently, which went on to become some of the basis for the online Bones Comics. I guess my skill hasn't changed much, especially when you consider I've had practically zero practice in a decade... Some of the characters above are now being used in an attempt to resurrect the BONES comic strip... I've started working on an online version of the hand-drawn series with a new paradigm, and you can see it on the BONES Comics page. Here's the first test-strip from it: Hey, wait a sec... I think these guys were copying me! :-)

(Bones' UO Comics (C) Copyright 1999, Ed T. Toton III, All Rights Reserved)
(Unauthorized duplication prohibited)