“Above and Beyond” was a proposed comic strip for the Daily Illini newspaper in the fall of 1988. I had to draw up three weeks’ worth of strips and submit them.
Obviously I was inspired by Gary Larson’s “The Far Side”. I planned to have some recurring characters and situations: the generic alien, the guy with glasses, the savages, the guy with no mouth, occasional homages to movies and television. In three weeks I had most of these pieces put together, but I had a couple of problems. I didn’t realize that I needed to make all of the strips either portrait or landscape (I mixed the two: bad). Also, I couldn’t do half tones, so my strips were very bare looking: black and white only.
At the end of the three weeks, I found out I was not going to be picked up, so the last strip was never finished. Ironically, I was replaced by another Far Side clone.
There is one additional strip that I have yet to find a copy of. It features the guy who cut his fingers making a sandwich. He’s reacing for the salt and the pepper shaker is moving away, saying “Exterminate!”. If you are a Doctor Who fan, you’ll get it.
Strip 1 Strip 2 Strip 3 Strip 4 Strip 5
Strip 6 Strip 7 Strip 8 Strip 9 Strip 10
Strip 11 Strip 12 Strip 13 Strip 14 Strip 15
Strip 16 Strip 17 Strip 18 Strip 19 Strip 20
The Bob Files 
