TITLE The Bastich By Hart
PANEL 1 (Over-the-shoulder view of Bastich as he sits on a couch watching a commercial. The TV has an image of somebody sitting in a forrest with a laptop computer) CAPTION: Meanwhile... TV VOICEOVER: Have you ever sent a fax... while picnicking in the Rain Forest? BASTICH: Eh..? Well, no... TV VOICEOVER: You will. BASTICH: That's good to know...
PANEL 2 (Focus switches to the ad with an overlay of Bastich's head. A woman is sitting at a computer with a pixel art dog on the screen holding a box in its mouth) TV VOICEOVER: A great future of ultimate convenience awaits you - all with the touch of a button! DOG: Here are those top-secret documents you requested, Ma'am. WOMAN: Good job, Scruffy! BASTICH: AWESOME!
PANEL 3 (An image of a computer screen with four heads connected by electric lines. The heads include Hacker Lad, a generic nerd, and Albert Einstein) TV VOICEOVER: It's all at your fingertips with the Information Superhighway... You'll rub elbows with the greatest minds, access the latest and most accurate information and services yet available to mankind... ..and reunite your scattershot 1990's family from the four corners of the globe! SCREEN TEXT: Hi Mom: E-mail me my allowance or dad will revoke your video-zation rights! BASTICH: Imagine that!
PANEL 4 (Focus shifts back to Bastich who is gleefully waving his right index finger in the air) TV VOICEOVER: The Information Age is upon us! You're just a click of the mouse away from a new life on the Info-baun, and we at MacinSoft Telecommunications hope to have you along for the ride! BASTICH: That does it! I'm sold! Wire me up, BABY! Im jackin' into the SYSTEM! CYBERSPACE, here I come!
PANEL 5 (Later, Bastich is sitting at a new computer, complete with giant CRT monitor and a tower CPU case. He has his face buried in a manual titled "DIALIN IP MADE PLAUSIBLE" and he is surrounded by a tangle of cables, computer manuals, and floppy disks. Hacker-Lad stands behind him with his right index finger raised in lecture mode) BASTICH: ..."Point and Click" they said. "At your fingertips they said... "Easy as Apple(TM) Pie they said... HACKER-LAD: Quit your whining and R.T.F.M.* man! Get with the program or you'll be left in the silicon dust just like the Neanderthal..! BASTICH: URGGH-! Can somebody get me the VP's address? Would have... WORDS with him...
CREDITS (Sketch of Bastich wearing a VR headset and holding a game controller) CAPTION: (*) Read The F--ing Manual (c) 1995 Joshua Adam Hart
Commentary
This strip was obviously a riff on the AT&T You Will ad campaign that ran in the early 1990s. (Here are some videos). It was actually quite a moving ad campaign, and I think every one of its predictions has come true by now - just not all brought to us by AT&T and certainly not in the timeframe we all expected. And of course there's no time wasted on the downsides that would come along with this digital revolution. The "VP" who Bastich would "Have Words With," if you hadn't already guessed, was Al Gore. Gore popularized the phrase "Information Superhighway" to the masses and supposedly claimed that he invented the internet. He wanted to be seen as the face of the Internet, and Bastich was all too happy to take him up on it (in a non-violent, first-amendment, addressing grievances sort of way).
The main "joke" here is that the reality of going online was nowhere near what was being sold - a fact that I knew all too well.
When I started drawing The Bastich, I was working at the Chico State Engineering Department's computer lab helpdesk, which served the entire school's Internet needs (not just my fellow computer nerds). Part of my job was helping students get online from home, primarily for e-mail and web browsing with Mosaic, and I was keenly aware of how rough around the edges internet access was for most people at the time. It was all still very much the wild west. Looking back, I'm impressed with how many non-tech students were willing to stick it out and get this stuff working. Gen X was just made of sterner stuff, I suppose. (jk, maybe).
BTW, I'm not sure why I dated this strip with the year 1996, but I wouldn't put it past myself to do that on purpose as a hidden "ahead of its time" joke.