The Adventures of Fist and C-B.O.N.E.

"Let the Call of Duty Leave a Message, part 1" - First published in issue #2 of Cartoon Mafia Comics' Tour Zine.








"Let the Call of Duty Leave a Message, part 2" - First published in issue #3 of Cartoon Mafia Comics' Tour Zine.







I couldn't find any of my original scans of these pages, so what you see here are scans of work prints or actual Tour Zine issues, so the quality could be better. Tour Zine was a little fan 'zine that a friend published (and I helped finance, as well as contributed other illustrations and articles) sometime between the years of 2003 and 2004. It was a pretty cool 'zine about "lot culture", - what fans do before and after a concert they attend. I was asked to contribute art and invited to tell a FIST story of five pages or so, whatever I wanted. So I adapted a story to fit the theme of the 'zine.

Now that a few years have passed and I look at the art and read the story, I have mixed feelings about it. Mostly, I'm happy with it, simply because it got made. I'm not so happy with some of the art that was very rushed and sometimes drawn straight with a marker. Knowing the audience, as well as the size of the 'zine (copy paper folded in half), I didn't put too much time into some of the panels. And, the story I came up with, trying to adapt the FIST universe into the theme of the 'zine, is not my favorite. However, it's the most completed story with these characters to date, and there are some things I love about it, so I want to finish it. We'll see.

One note about the previous post: The art you see there was published in Tour Zine #1 as an advertisement for the FIST story to be featured in issue #2. However, that page and its story have nothing to do with the story in the pages above. This is because it was created years earlier as an ad, or cover, for a completely different story. I have several finished and inked pages from that series that I may feature later. As I mentioned before, since college I've started several FIST projects that were all abandoned. That's why TZ was so successful (for 2 issues) because they were only five pages at a time with about three to six months in between. There were four issues of TZ in all (with a fifth that never got printed), but I cut out after issue three due to several unhappy complications associated with the work environment. Oh well. I look forward to hearing any comments you might have about FIST or his robot friend C-B.O.N.E.

The Adventures of Fist and C-B.O.N.E.

The story centers around Fist and his best friend C-B.O.N.E. who are getting close to graduating from college. The image above hints at, pretty well, what the story is about. I've always wanted to do a comic book that looks like a super-hero book but reads like an indie book. I'm sure there are some out there now that are doing this, but I have yet to see one with the sensibilities that I'm looking for, which is kind of like taking the day to day problems that Spiderman always deals with in his book, but pushing it farther and having more complex dynamics between the characters as they deal with the day to day BS, like what you do when you're so drunk you forget you have a girlfriend. Heh heh. Has that happened to anyone else during those fast-paced college days? Whoops!

Like a lot of artists in the animation industry, I love comic books and all the art associated with the medium, and have always dreamed of drawing my own book someday. Over the years I've created a universe that falls under the current title of The Adventures of Fist and C-B.O.N.E. I've sat down various times over the years to begin some new story, each time getting farther and farther towards completion, but have yet to finish one of them. As many of you artists out there have found out, as I have, it's quite difficult to see a long-range project through to the end with no budget and doing it all in your spare time. Anyway, the last series of pages I worked on came the closest to completion, and I've decided to post them here, with the idea that I would finally finish at least one story, even if I only get one page done a month. I've been thinking about it ever since I bought my Cintiq, how quickly I could draw, ink, and letter them now. Here is an advertisement, a sort of a would-be cover, of a story I was working on a few years ago. Not sure if this actually was from the most recent or not. I'll find out for sure, and then I'll post the latest story!