Bugbones appealed to me. He was my little-child notion of an edgy and sophisticated cartoon fellow. He was cryptic, he was bizarre. Above all, he was gross. Kids love gross. I took to drawing Bugbones with a passion. Notebooks filled with drawings of Bugbones. Slam books of Bugbones. And then, over the years, Bugbones was retired. Bigger and better motifs came to take his place, and Bugbones was relegated to my artist's crypt of old ideas and sketches. I never actually identified with Bugbones. It wasn't my nickname or anything. My picking it at the moment of web page conception was just a fluke. Logging into Angelfire required a user name. Bugbones, lurking now 30 years in his crypt, came creeping out of the cobwebs of my subconscious mind. Original user names are not easy to come by. I like original ones, no numbers. I had plenty of fodder... actual old nicknames of mine, characters I identified with, or just silly bits of conversation that existed in the stock repertoire of my own memory. Bugbones was odd, but it was (I thought) original. True, it might not fit with my eventual goal, of publishing my artwork. But I think by then I already knew that Bugbones would be my teether. I couldn't upload tons of art, I didn't even own a scanner. I didn't even own a computer, for heaven's sake! But I could do Paintbrush files. And I could create funny jokes and stories. Bugbones would suit my purpose. I could do a cartoon site or newsletter. And when the time came to change it, Angelfire's T and C assured, I could choose my own domain name. It could be anything. Yes, it could be anything.
Oh, the perils of Bugbones!
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