TITLE The Bastich By Hart: Summer "Vacation" Part 12
PANEL 1 (MTN. DEWD greets BASTICH.) MTN. DEWD: Hey, 'Stich. What's up? BASTICH: I'm confused, Mtn. Dewd..! MTN. DEWD: Uh-oh....
PANEL 2 (BASTICH despondently holds up his hands.) BASTICH: What if there's more to life than being "different" and "weird?" Is it really so important to "be myself" that I should accept that nobody else can relate to me?
PANEL 3 (BASTICH raises a STAR TREK communicator badge and a super-hero comic book.) BASTICH: Comic books, computers, Star Trek... do these things really matter..? Or are they all static, lifeless obsessions that keep me from focusing on the important things in life..?
PANEL 4 (BASTICH lifts up his arms, yelling to the sky.) BASTICH: What if I die alone, surrounded by nothing but the collection of worthless toys I've spent all these empty years building?
PANEL 5 (BASTICH zooms away flailing his arms as MTN. DEWD looks on.) BASTICH: But I don't know how to be "normal"... WHAT AM I GONNA DO!!??? MTN. DEWD: Poor guy...
PANEL 6 (BAPPER walks by as MTN. DEWD speaks.) MTN. DEWD: He's been like this ever since he was exiled from Fry's last week... BAPPER: Cut off from the watering hole! MTN. DEWD: Yup. It's pretty sad.
CREDITS Bastich (c) 1997 Joshua Adam Hart
Commentary
Here we have the last Bastich strip of the semester and the last one ever printed in The Orion. This would have been an interesting conclusion to the series if anyone was following it in print only, with Bastich seemingly doubting his entire identity as a proud weirdo.
This actually mirrored my own concerns at the time. I was a died-in-the-wool nerd growing up. After trying and failing to "fit in" in K-6, I found my "people" in middle school, found that sense of belonging, and wore my geekiness like a badge through high school and college. At some point, it turned into being weird for its own sake and having any shared interest with "normal" people felt like a betrayal. Luckily, I did some form of "growing up" and stopped being so adversarial. Now, I'm just the nerd I am and I make it look easy.
Of course, Bastich's epiphany would not last for anyone following the strip on the web. When I finally got back to the drawing board a couple months later, 'Stich' was back to his old self, never the worse for wear.