Throughout the years, Protean Comics has been host to an almost bewildering variety of strips, some of which bordered on fresh, witty, original and interesting. While I laboured under a near-paralyzing lack of artistic talent and software to bring you photo-sprite comicky goodness, colleagues and acquaintances pitched in and supplemented this with groovalicious hand-drawn art, or more commonly, somewhat slicker sprite comickery. Here follows a brief account thereof:

Turing's Folly Original    The flagship/frontstrip of Protean Comics since its inception, Turing's Folly (named as an oblique reference to the pioneering computer programmer Alan Turing and his "Turing Test") ran - frequent cop-outs and breaks notwithstanding - for a little over a year and reached well over the hundred strip mark, drawing attention and praise from, I kid you not, all around the world.    Valiantly managing to extract humour from crudely cut-and-pasted photographs and hamfistedly MS Paint-ed modifications, it began as little more than a flight of whimsy and was not seriously expected to last more than a few weeks, let alone a year. Sadly, the strip in its initial iteration met its demise thanks to the combined efforts of comicgenesis server crashes and an accidental feat of mass erasure on my part.    Turing's Folly Original gave me a jolly good time and its playful and misshapen spirit lives on in Turing's Folly II. Though the day will no doubt come when Phil & Co. will be laid to rest in favour of less artistically bankrupt ventures, I shall never forget the lessons it taught me. No matter how hard I try.

Really Really REALLY Cheesey    It's not often that a comic strip manages to attract concurrent fanstrips before it's even officially launched, but I had high friends in places. Fellow Led Babies United (a now-defunct cooperative entertain-and-enthrall-the-masses venture) founder/CEO Steve and myself began our proud tradition of veiled self-insertion with this lovely sprite comic. Yes, that is a megamanized version of Phil of TF fame in there. Isn't he just the most adorable thing?    Understandably, Steve eventually gave up on RRRC, though his choice of timing wasn't the best possible; It ended on a cliffhanger, forever obscuring the identity of the mysterious shadowy villain figure. Regardless, Steve went on to try his hand at a hand-drawn strip, but that too fell through due to time constraints. The man himself joined the US army in or around Fall of 2005 (only stationed in Georgia, fortunately), but we hope to see or hear more from him in later days.

The Hat Saga    An abortive attempt to provide Protean Comics with some actual drawn content as opposed to the usual Paint-empowered tomfoolery, The Hat Saga was to chronicle the epic adventures of Steve (See? There we go again!) and his magical hat what made him go into super saiyan mode. Or something. I'm not sure the plot was ever completely clear to either of us. All I remember is there was going to be a lot of jokes involving the word "Ass".    This sketch I gutted to give a broad example, incidentally, doesn't do Steve's art abilities justice. Not only is this merely a rough sketch, but he got better over the years. I just thought I should mention that.

(Back To The Present)