“Hobo and Bowser” is a daily comic about a group of animals and their adventures. This comic is based on the stories my brother and I made up with our stuffed animals when we were kids. It all started a long long time ago, in a neighborhood far away sometime in the mid – late 1980s. Now 20+ years later, we have decided to take all of the stories, adventures, and crazy antics of our characters and put them into what you see here. Thank you for reading, and we hope you enjoy your stay!

*Characters*

*About the Authors*

Hi.

I’m Rich. I am a writer. Full-time railfan. Full-time fan of the Richard Sharpe adventures. And a part-time Trekkie and James Bond fan. I also love to read and write about history and famous ships.

The decision to become a writer just came to me one day when I was a kid riding home from errands with my family when I annoucned that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. But I did not wait long to get going.

I won a prize for a short story I wrote about a railway station I sent to a competition at a local bookstore in 1993.
Since then, I have had numerous guest columns and other articles published. And currently am fine-tuning my first novel.

Most of my writing is on the serious side, but being a well-rounded individual, I let the little kid in me come out in the writing of Hobo and Bowser.

My brand of cartoon wit is flat-out zany laced with heart and class.

I was influenced by “Looney Tunes”, Calvin and Hobbes, and Garfield.

In closing, I would like to welcome you to our world.

Enjoy!

-Rich
April 29th, 2009

Here are some links to some of my other writings:
“Don’t Let Our Sacred Memories Rust To Oblivion With The Arizona”
“Deephaven’s Titanic Ties”
“Rheims, Lightoller, And The Officer’s Suicide Enigma”
“Defending Ernest Gill”
“Defending Fleet And Lee” [Contains my original historical fiction short story "Iceberg Right Ahead!"]
“Return To Titanic, by Dr. Robert Ballard. Reviewed By Richard Krebes.”

Hi I’m Ed, I am the artist for our comic. I am an avid fan of movies, and I love all things “Ghostbusters”! For as long as I can remember I have loved to draw… When Rich and I were kids and we came up with this world of ours, it was only a matter of time before I started to doodle and then draw, the characters we were creating using our stuffed animals. I started to make full page comics based on the “acts” we were doing when I was… ten or so, and came out with six or seven issues of “Hobo and Bowser” which were passed around among our family.

I also wrote and drew a few other comics of my own creation during this same time period, “A-Man” – “A” being short for “Archer” – was basicly a “Superman” rip off, except A-Mans only weakness was knives, and sharp objects… Naturaly his arch nemesis, (Slash) wore a suit made of blades. Then there was “Zero Squad” which had a team of heroes based on characters I made up with old GI Joe figures, and a borrowed cloth Batman action figure cape. The fourth and final comic I made up, was “El’s Ghostbusting”, based on myself, (my first and middle initial spell ‘El’) and the adventures I had as a solo Ghostbuster.

Around the age of 15-16, drawing ended up falling by the wayside as I started to get into 3D Level Design for a popular computer game at the time, “Quake 2″. Being a gamer through and through, the prospect of making my own games/levels was too much to pass up. From 1998 – 2001, I worked exclusivly on level designs for a Quake 2 Mod called “DDay: Normandy” in my spare time. Within that time only two levels of mine were ever completed for release to the community, “Encampment”, and “Gold”. During the time period of May 2001- January 2002 my family and I had a lot going on… Our lives were upended, and we embarked upon “The Great Odyssey”. During those eight months I started to draw again (I had no computer during this period) and began working on character sketches of Hobo and Bowser , and drew blueprints for what would be my greatest level for DDay… “Clairemont”

In January of 2002 my family and I got onto the road of getting our lives back on track and in August of that year, I started to work for Circuit City, which was my first real job ever. I was 19. I would work in the warehouse of the store I was at for the next six years, being promoted twice within the company and I ran the best warehouse and merchandising team in the state. I started to work on my level design off and on during those six years, drawing falling by the wayside once more. I completed and released “Clairemont” to the public, and then moved my skill set to the Half-Life 2 engine in 2004. I didn’t really create anything of note untill I joined a mod team who was trying to make a World War 1 Half-Life 2 Mod called “In Flanders Fields” in 2006.

While I was working for the mod my love for drawing started to resurface, and Rich and I started talking about “Hobo and Bowser” in greater detail and made plans on how to bring it into reality in the fall of 2006. Drawing sat at the back of my mind as something I would eventually get back into, although when? I wasn’t sure. It would so have it, that “when” came in early 2007 when Rich and I sat down and wrote the first script for “Hobo and Bowser”. I pulled out all of my old character sketches I had with me from 2001-2002, and in the summer of 2008 I put a pencil to a sheet of 8.5 x 11 printer paper and drew the very first page of our new comic.
I quit the mod team, stopped working on level design and started to draw again, this time with a great passion.

In the fall of 2008, I was involved in a proccess that could of possibly lead to another promotion within Circuit City. At this point we had just launched the comic on Comic Genesis, and I started to worry that if I did happen to get promoted again, what would happen to this dream of bringing our comic to life? Would I have any time to work on it? I made the decision to step out of the proccess, and decided to stay at the position I was currently at in the company and focus on the comic with plans to (hopefully) eventually make a career out of it. It seemed feasible then, I had a good, decent paying job and I was doing something I liked. Looking back at it now? I made the correct decision. Circuit City went under in March of this year (2009) and I had to say goodbye to my store, and some of the best people I could of hoped to work with… (You know who you are.)

At the time of writing this I am a few months shy of my 26th birthday, currently unemployed, looking for a new job, and am working hard on our dream, bringing this world to life in pictures brought on by Rich’s words. Whatever god, fate, or life has in store for me in the future ahead, I look forward to it with great expectaion… It certainly hasn’t been dull so far!

Ed-

April 29, 2009
Screenshot of Gold (Clairmont)
Screenshot of Second Ypres