Rare-Bits strip... the last year.

Two days ago, I posted a couple of unpublished strips from 1988. In the supporting words, I mentioned another strip of mine which ran in Pacific Computer Weekly for 10 years between 1985 and 1995. I had been supplying gag cartoons and humorous illos to the paper for a year or so when the editor suddenly decided a comic strip might be more attractive to readers. When I agreed to give it a whirl, I had no preconceived idea of a story line, characters or the finer points of either information technology of the mid 1980s itself or the industry jargon I was meant to be lampooning. And... only a couple of weeks lead-time in which to produce something.

As a result, the first dozen or so strips were simply industry oriented single gags stretched out to fit a strip format. No standard characters or continuity and set in modern times. Then, crash-swotting of computer development history revealed that Stonehenge was considered to be one of man-kind's first endeavours to harness a structure to assist in computing things like agricultural seasons and other such aids to the welfare of people of that era. Bingo! Ancient technology laced with modern industry jargon gave Rare-Bits sustenance through stuttering early development of characters and strip design... to finally end a decade later due to demise of the paper, rather than a drying up of story lines.

The strip was always printed in black & white only.