All content Copyright © 2002, Ed T. Toton III, All Rights Reserved.

[Back to the Comics!] Welcome to BONES Comics! BONES PAST As explained on the BONES History Page, this comic series started as just a few scribblings while in class back in 1987. I was in 8th grade at the time, and during that January, we spent a few days at the high school to see what it was like and decide whether we'd want to move on to it the following year (it was a private school, and they were trying to familiarize us with the "upper school"). Out of sheer boredom, a friend of mine and I both drew lots of things while in the classes on 3x5 notecards, since that's all we had with us. And BONES Comics was born. The entire "original" series was drawn in pencil on notecards for the next 4 years. While the efforts were sporadic, it still amounted to roughly a notecard per day for those 4 years. Since then the series has lain dormant except for a few minor stabs at recreating it in one form or another, the most successful of which was my Ultima Online comics, as shown on the BONES History Page. BONES NOW Currently, BONES Comics is coming back to life, so to speak, in this new web medium. I don't expect to find a wide audience, make lots of money, or be able to quit my day job to do it full-time. It's a hobby, something I work on in my spare time when I have the time to do so. Granted, that doesn't necessarily mean I'd pass by opportunities that might present themselves, but I'm not actively seeking them. The content posted here will be a combination of new material as well as scans of my older works. If it can bring a few smiles to people's faces, then I've done my job. New material is created through scanned pre-drawn characters pasted into a layered template I created in Jasc's Paint Shop Pro. The characters are drawn the same way they have been since 1987, using a mechanical pencil (0.5mm). I draw them on printer-paper now, and scan them in batches. The image on the right shows how the scanned characters look before being adjusted for contrast. The text, word-bubbles, boxes, and lines are done within the software. This saves an immense amount of time, since if I can come up with ideas that just require some simple dialogue and basic characters already on file, I can add a new comic to the site in under 10 minutes. I don't even need to update any HTML code, since it's all handled by a custom perl script I wrote for this purpose. I simply add the date-code to a flat-file, and the script will automatically include the new comic. This also allows me to post-date them so they will automatically become available on the appropriate day. WHY SKELETONS AND DEATH? I've also explained this to some degree on my "about-me" section elsewhere on this site, but here's the gist... It all started out with my interests in Dungeons & Dragons, and Halloween and Haunted Houses. Skeletons and undead were always my favorite nasty evil creatures in roleplaying games, along with many of the more paranormal and supernatural and magical creatures, such as Dragons, Elementals, and Demons. The less human the better. But the thing that's particularly interesting about the undead from a gaming and storytelling point of view is just how close to home it is. We're all mortal. And as dark and frightening as these creatures may be, there's still a human connection. I realize I just contradicted myself in a way, but I've also always been fond of paradoxes. :) But more to the point of these comics- Death is a serious thing. It's often even tragic and unpleasant. And it's something that every last one of us has to face eventually. It's not a matter of "if", but rather "when" and "how". What better way to make it less frightening than to poke fun at it? If you can't make fun of the most serious and omnipresent things in life, what can you truly make fun of? Making light of such serious reality can in some ways make life more appreciable. ABOUT THE AUTHOR What can I say? I'm fond of nasty evil dead things, as well as comics and drawings. My interests include medieval reenactment, renaissance faires, swords and weapons, computers, etc. By day, I'm a programmer and system administrator. By night, I'm the evil necromancer behind these dreadful comics. :) Behold, for death awaits you all, with nasty sharp pointy teeth! [Back to the Comics!]

Disclaimer- Any similarity between the "classic" issues and any other comics that may have existed at the time may very well be accidental, as I drew ideas back then from a variety of sources, the most significant being friends who may very well have seen it somewhere rather than having come up with something unique. I have no recollection of where individual ideas may have come from. Same goes for the more recent ones too. Sometimes a punchline or a concept may have been floating in the back of my head for years, without remembering where it came from. It doesn't mean I'm a joke thief. :)

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