TITLE The Bastich By Hart
PANEL 1 Medium view of Bastich waving CAPTION: Crash Course: This Guy's BASTICH BASTICH: Indeed.
PANEL 2 Medium view of Hacker-Lad and Faith. Hacker-Lad is wearing a T-Shirt with an upside-down Apple logo and the words "SMACK YOUR MAC". CAPTION: These are Bastich's two best friends and bunkies: HACKER-LAD & FAITH HACKER-LAD: (Pointing to the previous panel) Who's THAT freak? FAITH: (Crossed Arms) Bastich WHO?
PANEL 3 CAPTION: Now that we've been properly acquainted let's get on with the obligatory joke!
PANEL 4 Hacker-Lad and Faith are holding game controllers while Bastich addresses them from behind the couch they are sitting on. BASTICH: Hey..! I know that game! You're playing "Mighty Mortal Kombat Rangers II - Fanatic Edition!" I get dibs on the next match! FAITH: Koala Upper-cut!
PANEL 5 Bastich enthusiastically waves his game controller in the air while Faith UNenthusiastically rests her chin on her hand. BASTICH: HA--! Yet another FLAWLESS VICTORY..! I quite definitely ROCK! FAITH: Can I plug my controller back in yet..?
CREDITS Bastich (c) 1995 Joshua Adam Hart
Commentary
This was the first Bastich strip published in CSU Chico's student newspaper, The Orion. As luck would have it, I started doing the web comic right as The Orion was looking to start up a new comics page. A friend of mine introduced me to Todd Bishop, the Editor-In-Chief at the time, and thus was comics history made.
The main difference between the print and web formats was the aspect ratio. Each Orion strip had one long row of panels that spanned the entire page width. Each web strip was broken into multiple rows to make for a more square aspect ratio that fit comfortably on the 4:3 computer displays of the time.
To make life easier for myself, I created a template in Corel Draw that fit the Orion strip dimensions. It had the standard title and copyright blocks and a fixed panel break right at the midpoint. As long as I kept that panel break where it was, I could tweak the rest of the layout however I wanted and still split the strip in half and stack them neatly for the web comic.