Bud’s Transformations 101

Feb03

on February 3, 2014

In the early days of the comic, I was doing a lot of research on how to do daily comic strips. One thing I came across was that there seems to be a tradition of gender swapping for characters in comics at some point or another.

I grew up on Warner Bros. cartoons and Bugs Bunny was constantly dressing up like a woman to drive Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam crazy. And a joke I like to tell (and a true story) was that until I was like 6 years old, I thought I was going to grow up to be a girl like my three older sisters.

So, having my cartoon alter-ego go through some sort of gender swap at some point seemed inevitable. Another reason why I did it was for the fact that I simply sucked at drawing women in the early days of the comic. You will cringe like I do when you click on the early comics. So to challenge myself to draw women better, I introduced Lorraine and Robyn, and had Bud transform into a woman.

The transformation story also brought a surreal element to the comic. Something I liked, but threw a lot of folks for a loop. I also introduced the fact that Poco could breathe fire as well. The comic is a work of fiction as well as a slice-of-life from the 1970s, so for me, these surreal parts made it more entertaining.

But as time went on, I thought I had run the course on the transformation comic bits. So, I ended it with Bud’s “Deal with the Devil” story, which, when combined with the “Road Trip” story, occupied most of the 2009 comics.

But, a lot of folks enjoyed the transformation story, so I’m going to bring it back for the re-launch of the comic. You can use the links on each of the images to re-visit most of the transformation comics. Or if you just want to get started on the new stuff, click on the “Mystic Frog Origins” link. That will start you off on the current story.

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