I'm going to get ahead of this right now and say that this might not be a riveting read for folks. Bad advertising, I know, but I feel it's necessary to preface this by being realistic. I'm not uber-famous, my characters aren't known far and wide, and for Pete's sake, I don't even have a proper webcomic or series to speak of. But, I've been asked numerous questions enough that it might be useful to have a FAQ essay of sorts to clear the air a bit.

So here goes...a history of "Bomango", as best I can recall...

ORIGIN! (in real life) (image circa way the hell back when i was still spelling it GoGo BoManGo)
"Bomango" (as it's come to be known) came about maybe around 2004 or thereabouts...shoot, maybe 2003, which makes it a decade old already...sheesh. Anyway, the earliest drawings of "Gogo" were sketchbook illustrations of a big-eyed girl in a long jacket. Not anime-style big eyes, mind you...big, droopy, heavily-lined eyes, with the semi-canon hair tendrils and goofy expression. To that point, I'd always tried way too hard to look like a manga artist and finally decided I sucked at it. "Gogo" was originally designed as a character for a go-nowhere story set on an alien planet, but I realized I liked drawing the weird-looking character more than I cared about building that story. Like so many things, it probably would have trailed off, but a teacher of mine at school (the fantastic comic artist Barbara Schulz) remarked once how she "found the girl with the big eyes and the long coat interesting". Gogo got a reaction, and thus stuck around a bit longer.

The Name (in real life)
I'm not sure when I came around to calling this character "Gogo"...some folks have speculated that it was based off Gogo Yubari from "Kill Bill Vol. 1", and though I don't recall consciously making that decision, the timing was more or less correct. (The movie came out around the same time, after all). So, what the hell, let's say it was. (CANON!) Weird, violent, disturbingly childish woman...makes sense. Anyway, "Bomango" is easier to pin down. I wanted something that "flowed" with the Gogo name. Any of you ever play Final Fantasy XI? Remember Windurst? The Tarutaru city? Remember "Bomingo Round"? Well, if you do, you now know basically where it came from. Mangoes are one of my favorite fruits, so a little jiggering of the name and voila. Turns out "Bomango" is an actual name (and I think a location), but I liked the sound.
"Go-go Bo-man-go. Bum-ba-ba-doo-ba." It sounded nice. You know, the founder of "Kodak" just liked the sound of the name. Sometimes, you don't need much more reason than that.

The Story (in...you know the drill)
It's weird business making a character before anything else. Carts before horses and all. At risk of sounding like a lunatic, it's kind of like a relationship. You see a thing, a person, an idea, and with little or no preamble, you get into knowing them. And that's a BITCH. My storytelling senses insist that you must have an idea, a moral, a sense of direction before all else. But here I had a bug-eyed, lanky woman that suggested many things and committed to nothing. And try as I might, I couldn't center a damned thing on her.

Then I saw Harold and Maude for the first time.

Now, mind you, I've seen my fair share of anime. There have been, and will be, many comparisons to existing properties that have informed my sensibilities, and it would be foolish to deny them. (To remind myself of an obvious one, I have on my shoulder a tattoo from FLCL, and if I find a convincing enough way to get Tenchi's Ryoko inked onto me at some point, watch out). And as for tropes, the "manic pixie dream girl" motif is something that's hardwired into my psyche that I'm battling against every step of the way. Like a classic meal, I look at these things and ask myself, "This is a fine recipe, but how do I add beer?"

....I'm getting off topic. Anyway, Harold and Maude is decidedly NOT an anime (dur hey), but when watching it for a class way back when, it struck me that I needed a "straight man". Gogo could be as odd as she pleased 24/7, but all that frosting needed some cake, and so I came up with Andy. (Name-wise, "Andy" is pretty generic, and my childhood friend was named the same, so it seemed appropriate). Now, if you've seen "H&M", you'll know that neither character is really "straight", but it took those lengths of odd characters to make me see something I wanted to describe: A boy and a girl with their own vastly different oddities, drawn to each other even though they're broadly incompatible, with two different worldviews. At the time, it felt less of a cliche than it does now. But that was where I was. In the time since, I don't know that I've made Andy very interesting (for example, he's not exhibitionally suicidal), but I've stuck with him. I feel it's worth it to make something incrementally more interesting of a "normal" person and have their colors gradually show than it would be to make him artificially eccentric in ways that felt forced. Andy is decent, loyal, occasionally condescending and naive, but essentially pure. If that's boring, then, well...you have a good life. I think Andy will be more interesting with a longer take on his life (if anyone can stand my work minus Gogo )

But, like Gogo's first appearance, I needed a push from other people. I had started doing a comic exploring the characters with no intention of completing it, when a couple fellow students suggested it might be a good addition to a comic anthology we were doing at the time. "Tastes Like Good, Vol. 2" was a second anthology published by myself, , and...(gods, I'm going to hate myself for not remembering everyone not on dA...) Jared Martin, Kelly Brown, and...alright, just shoot me, there were a lot of talented artists in on that one, forgive me that I forget right now. But through appreciation or "Jesus, Bob, just use THAT comic", Gogo and Andy got some juice. If you'd SERIOUSLY want the anthology, send me a note, i think i got a bunch of copies sitting around somewhere in storage, but here's a taste from my gallery: This was a VERY different Andy and Gogo, where Gogo was a goofy writer with philosophical tendencies (and MUCH cleaner speech, wow), and Andy was a bespectacled convenience store clerk. For the love of all gods, we have crossed oceans since then. But it was another kick from friends I respected that kept the ball rolling. I started to jot down numerous story-arcs and sketches and, back when friends were privy to such things, I got feedback that suggested I might be onto something.

TokyoPop
My first break ever was when I was at WizardWorld Chicago in...2005 sounds right. Whatever. Time is illusory anyway. The "Tastes Like Good" crew was manning a booth in Artist's Alley and I was drunk. Hungover, but let's say drunk, because that's how I spent my early 20's. We were taking turns escaping the booth when word came that Tokyopop's booth was doing portfolio reviews. Now, I don't do anything without an army of people hoisting me over their heads and throwing me into opportunity, because I'm a stupid man, but when the aforementioned Barb Schulz came by our booth and saw that I wasn't making any plans to desert my post, she strongly suggested I get off my ass and show the editors my work, because Tokyopop was doing their "Rising Stars of Manga" fandango at the time (cash prizes and publishing, baby!) and I'd be a fool not to show my SELF-PUBLISHED WORK to them at no risk. So, with all the "gosh, my work sucks but if you'd take a look at it i wouldn't mind" gusto I had, I took it to them and, to my lasting shock, they told me "We can't offer you a gig right here, but if you submit these characters to the contest you definitely have a shot."

Cut to me, at home, furiously scribbling out a fantastically non-canonical (now) story titled "Bomango" featuring Gogo, Andy, a stuffed animal Pablo (first appearance, if you care!) that won first place and got me published in "Rising Stars of Manga Vol. 6". I was too chicken to check out the field of competitors, so for all I know I was up against refrigerator drawings, but I got a phone call while I was at work doing signs (look! here's me!) and proceeded to spaz out and call everyone I knew (all 9 of 'em) and tell them how I won first place in a book by a publisher no one I knew read! (sorry, Tokyopop, but i'm from small-town Midwest)

Now if you want THAT book, I don't think I can help you much myself, but here it is on Amazon: www.amazon.com/Rising-Stars-Ma…

This was the first chance I had at making "Bomango" into a series, with actual publisher backing and everything. They even gave me an editor to shepherd the project. "Bomango" had a shot at being a graphic novel. But I...didn't have a clue. I had ideas, but just ideas. I was a good storyteller, but here I had to come up with full stories. I had notions, but nowhere to go. Emails were exchanged, nothing seemed to "pop", as it were.  It fizzled out. At the time, I was very bummed. I'd missed a shot.

It's STILL not a graphic novel. But missing that opportunity was, it turns out, fan-frickin-tastic.

Weird Evolution
I got into deviantART. I was already a member (since 2003, i think). My buddy Nate had suggested it to me back in school, and I'd posted some work but never really pursued it. But again, there came another push. Remember this? You probably don't: There's Gogo, in her original long coat, weird hair, and bulging eyes, picked for a 2006 daily deviation. I was still figuring out Photoshop, marginally less unknown than I am now, and all of a sudden I had another shot of ambition. Here, I can't stress enough: dA might be a "hugbox", and I've surely treated it as such, but it was a moment like this where missed chance with Tokyopop really didn't seem like an end, but a beginning. I started pushing myself with Gogo as my muse. I still didn't have a story, but what the hell...and this is where it became not about making a story as much as it was building characters that would someday make a story, or, failing that, condense into one. Shots started coming more regularly: , characters started to develop as characters rather than actors in a bit play: I wanted to do more, change things, build new things, and deviantart is where it happened:

I wanted to build Gogo (and by proxy, Andy) into something more than I had. I kept assigning stories to them, but the characters grew while the storylines didn't matter quite as much. This is interesting, looking back (in a navel-gazing way, so we're clear...you might not find it so) Gogo was changing. I wanted something different, but I also wanted to keep something of the original character: someone intellectual, compassionate, approachable...

So here's Didi:

Mature Content

I realize this is all realization after the fact, and in actuality it was a pretty brazen attempt to have the best of both worlds. It was a struggle, no doubt, figuring out why I made what amounted to Gogo 2.0,  and I assumed MUCH more popularity than I should have, with stuff like this:

But it allowed me a chance (in the wide open spaces of dA), to develop two characters from the same core. You might call it cheating, but...there weren't any rules against it. And it got wonderfully weird. To my mind, Gogo was becoming monstrous in way that I'd never experienced with a character. So, obviously, I went with that:
Which brings us to another often-asked question:

Why the big Gogo?
Without question, Gogo's biggest fan is my sister, . She has been with me every step of the way, my most faithful (and critical) source of feedback and input for years and years. Heck, she still has the old school standing cardboard cutout of Gogo I used for my senior show way back in the day. And to this day, she asks "Why did you change her eyes?!"
Others have also asked why Gogo's changed so much, visually, if nothing else. The most obvious answer is, "Why wouldn't you?" Compare the latest submission with the one at the top Gogo has definitely changed (as has Didi, and Andy) and part of that is, I hope, that I've improved as an artist. I'm still a long way away from being great at anatomy in general, good with my lines, adept with color, it's all a learning experience. But in a lot of ways, this is natural progression. I HOPE that the character I draw now is demonstrably different from the one i drew 10 years ago(GOD!) and the one I draw 10 years from now.

But the "big" Gogo is trickier to explain. My go-to explanation has been that I gradually changed the character's appearance to match the forceful personality; somewhere along the line, it wasn't enough that Gogo was merely "different". There's a world of stories out there with magically eccentric, quirky girls who are "tough" but tantalizingly feminine or...well, hell, better essays have been written along those lines. I wanted to get away from the "dream-girl" aspect that I'd been circulating around and punch it home with what I felt came naturally enough to the character: being uncomfortably different, imposing, threatening, but flawed and approachable enough to appeal to both men and women alike. What that comes to mean is open to interpretation, but I've finally begun to feel that after all this time, Gogo has become something more unique than she was at the outset. And in that wake I've been blessed to see Didi and Andy (and Pablo, gee whiz!) change in similar degrees. This has been a very long and strange experiment in an atmosphere that is rather new to storytelling. Instead of rushing into publication, I've been able to experiment and develop characters interactively with a growing audience who has, in turn, come to appreciate (even love) them like I do. It's...unsettling at times, invigorating at others, and overall just an incredible trip. Thank you for that.

Okay, what the hell is the origin story, in NOT REAL life?
There will be a story that tells that, I promise.

Friggin' loser. Alright, what are Gogo and Didi? They're, like, were-dragons or demigods or something, right?
Not here.

THEN WHEN?! GAH!
You've been patient this far, right? Shaddap and wait for the Halloween comic, we'll get to that other stuff eventually.

...Screw you, VanHeist
YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE I'VE BEEN, LOU! YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE I'VE BEEN!

....okay, that got weird. Anyway, if you got this far, I hope this gave you some insight? I don't even know how many people will read this or find it at all interesting, but trust that I generaly hate going down memory lane...everything's odd and stupid down that way. But I'm glad so many folks have come my way in all that time. I'm grateful for all the support that's come my way in those years. Without you, I'd have nothing at all, and no characters would ever have had a chance to come to life like they have. So, from the bottom of my heart (or whatever organ you associate with affection) thank you for this. I can't stop now.

peace