BANDITOS

I met someone at a party recently, and that someone (Evan) recently spotted me chuckling over a copy of Wired (this April's article profiling gadget blogs Gizmodo and Engadget) in Foothill's cafeteria and reintroduced himself, sans rum-induced haze. Mr. Evan Nolastnameyet is a delightful fellow with the height and build of Mr. Patton Oswalt, which I mentioned to him at the party (but did not repeat this time around). He is a trained electrical engineer, which I suppose is what they call electricians these days. He is back at Foothill because although said occupation brings in the dollars, it does not fulfill him in a creative manner. So he's taking art classes, with the hopes of someday working on some sort of Futurama project.

I mentioned briefly that I had once worked on a webcomic with a friend in highschool. As a writer. My drawing abilities are so poor that my childhood dream of architecture was dashed when I realized that not only could I not draw buildings, I could barely scratch out a stick figure.

Then I mentioned that I missed working on said project. The lightbulb went off in Evan's head. He was looking for stuff to draw. I could give it to him. We started brainstorming ideas for a general concept. From my previous experiment with the medium, I found that trying to start with a concept is like trying to float a boat on dreams alone. Creative teams are forged, not found. I suggested that we start with a sort of non sequitur approach. You know. Make a bunch of strips until we find something, be they characters, a setting, or a genre. Plus, it's a good way for us to "feel each other out" in a totally not homosexual but at the same time entirely unhomophobic way.

In the course of the conversation, we started throwing out ideas. I mentioned my predilection for things steam-punk and noirish. He showed me a map of a high fantasy world, and high fantasy caricatures of his friends. From there, we giggled about certain tropes, demonic cats (cat hates owner, thirsts for blood, hijinks ensue), nerds/geeks+video game couch (hijinks ensue), and other staid, tired webcomic seed ideas. And then we stumbled upon a potentially untapped market: Mexican banditos. They make an excellent punchline, what with their inverted puncuation, outlandish moustaches, ponchos, sombreros, and revolvers. Plus, you could totally see someone wearing a webcomic shirt with "¡BANDITOS!" and some sort of cartoony, menacing in a sort of Yosemite Sam-ish way, bandito pointing a pair of Peacemakers at you.


Possible strip seeds:

• Little girl loses ice cream. Who's to blame? ¡BANDITOS!
• Election stolen. By whom? ¡BANDITOS!
• Code leaked. The source? ¡BANDITOS!
• etc.