Bob and George is a sprite-based webcomic which parodies the fictional universe of Mega Man. It is written by David Anez, a physics instructor who lives in the American Midwest. The comic first appeared on April 1, 2000 and has been updated daily with very few missed comics. As of June 2007 there have only been approximately 29 days without a comic.
Initially conceived as a hand-drawn comic, Bob and George became a sprite comic first as filler, and then permanently after two failed attempts at the hand-drawn format.
Most Bob and George strips are still images. The initial strips were mostly done in GIF format (occasionally using JPEG for more graphic-intensive comics) before converting to PNG in May 2004. In addition, occasional comics are animated using either animated GIFs or Macromedia Flash. Some of the Flash comics have the characters speaking, voiced by Anez and others (often forum members). Animated comics are generally used for the annual week-long anniversary parties (usually culminating in a brief flash comic that recaps the events of the past year in a matter of seconds), for especially climactic scenes, and for the Cataclysm videos.
The comic's plot is mostly made up of story arcs of varying lengths. Amongst past story arcs there have been retellings of various Mega Man games which often play out quite differently than the originals, as well as battles against powerful foes. In addition, many of the story arcs involve either time travel or dimensional travel.
--------------------
The comic ends on July 29th, with pretty much every single main (and secondary) character supposedly killed and all plot holes filled by over-complicated time travel explanations. After the comic ends, the Author will take a break (probably to deal with the fact that his work for the past seven years has finally ended), then put the comic on a re-run style, updating the commentary as he goes while he works on his interpretation of the mysterious time gap between the Mega Man series and the Megaman X series, called The Cataclysm.
Personally, this is a sad time for me. I've followed this comic since about its second year, and generally enjoyed the comic for its plots, even if it didn't seem very funny at times, which isn't really the point. I grew up with this comic and its jokes, and I'm afraid its had a major influence on how I "live" my "internet life," if one can call such wastes of time living. =p I don't know if any of you read this comic. If you haven't, you should. If you have, share in the pain of old jokes, and the joy of seeing George finally wielding that friggin' blaster. Unless it really isn't George... ah, pfft, even with four comics to go at the time of this post, it's too early to call off the bets. I think that's one of the best things about Bob and George.
If you've been reading this comic as much as I have, who's your favorite character? Mine personally was Ran.
