About Dipwad Dundy

Dipwad Dundy is, yes a cartoon character...  A cartoon character who actually has human counter-parts.  He is made up of a combination of different personalities.  Building his character was an adventure and a combination of funny events that were all blamed on Dipwad Dundy, "right there..."  This is his story.

  Doug "Dipwad" Dundy originated on a BBS in the late 1980's. The first actual cartoon was not drawn until the late 1990's and the first series of cartoons were drawn in 1991.  The cartoons you will find on this website, at this time were drawn in 1991.  The very first actual cartoon was hand drawn and is the one where Doug is seated on a bench trying to figure out how they got the peanut inside the candy shell.  All of the original cartoons were in fact hand drawn but some of the later cartoons were drawn in the computer.  You will notice the distinct difference between the first cartoons and the one we call "pyramids."  Pyramids was drawn in a computer using line art and Micrographics Draw software.

The BBS

  I started the first Rainbow BBS on a Tandy Color Computer.  Sometimes I would log on using other "handles" (that's what we called our AKA's on BBS's then) and one day I needed a new "test" user name so I grabbed the name "Dipwad Dundy" literally out of thin air.  I left a public message to myself at my sysop's address using that name in order to test the message base.  I had not yet deleted the message when someone else found it, thought Dipwad Dundy was a real person and responded to the message.  I thought it was cute so I logged back on as Dipwad Dundy and answered their message.  

  I realized that if I used my normal method of working the message that someone would soon discover who I was and the joke would be exposed so I changed the way I worded the message to make it sound like someone who was simple of mind but innocent of heart.  After my first response to a message in a public message area more and more messages flowed into the message base.  People who would seldom ever call the BBS were now calling every day and sometimes several times per day to see what Doug would say next.  Realizing this was a good method to increase BBS traffic and message flow I continued to respond to the BBS users as Doug Dundy.  Before I knew it I had created a character from a combination of other personalities.  

  I opened up a special message base just for people to respond to Doug "Dipwad" Dundy.  A place where I could tell stories in a similar style as Mark Twain did when he was telling the story of Tom and Huck.

  Tom and Huck had a rather loose control of the English language as did some during the time these characters were written about.  Samuel Clemens knew how they talked then in Hannibal, MO because he spent several years there as a young man.  My character Doug has a similar loose control of the language and several things he would say frequently to help identify and shape his character.  You can see some of these phrases in the cartoons I have drawn.  Things like the frequent use of the word "folks" indicating a somewhat farm or hillbilly personality.  "I got a real bad feeling about this folks" or "I know about this stuff right there" with emphasis on the "right there" which I took from a man I knew when I was growing up.  

  The term "you-all" is also used frequently like in the song I wrote about him which tells the story of a real mix up.  The story itself is about how he was mowing lawns one day and happened to a haunted house where people had gathered waiting for the exorcist and paranormal experts to arrive to rid the house of the violent entities who were haunting the house.  Douglas thought he was there to mow the yard but the people lead him into the house and pointed him directly into the most haunted rooms of the house.  This lead into the lyrics of the song and how Doug became a "Paranormals at large!"  In the end Doug did manage to rid the house of the unwanted ghosts but not before everyone involved needed some clean underwear.  He said "Look out folks I'm gonna' save you-all!" and everyone ran for cover.  When the smoke had cleared there stood ol Doug and proving that one need not be a rocket scientist to rid a haunted house of a few ghosts.  ;-)

Great Great Great Great "in the days of the rocks" Grand Daddy Dundy!

  Ol Doug would tell stories in installments bringing certain Dipwad Dundy fans to the BBS regularly.  The most famous story perhaps is the first story of his "Great Great Great Great, in the days of the rocks "that's the stone age to you and me folks" grand daddy Dundy.  The very first Dundy what ever lived."  It's a rather long and funny story of how GGGG Granddaddy Dundy became a "witch-doctor" in the days of the rocks, yes, literally by accident.  It's a novel size story and tells how the young Dundy left his home, fought with an evil witchdoctor who had powerful magic, encountered numerous hazards and obstacles to achieve a certain objective.  During his adventure he saves a young women's life and she becomes his wife, in the next episode.  So to sum it up in a few words it is a humorous action adventure and love story.  Perhaps one day I shall post it on line for everyone to read.

NOTE: After the loss of a hard drive and some backup files I have lost these Great Granddaddy Dundy stories.  If anyone out there who was a member of my old Rainbow BBS still has a copy of them I sure would like to have them.  I've had people asking me to have them published.  Now that I can do that I no longer have the stories.

Cartoon Concepts

  Many of the concepts for these cartoons arose up from actual events that happened to me or to my friends.  There are actually 4 cartoons that deal with boats.  One where they are fishing, one where they are sinking, and one where Doug casts his line into the trees at the lake bank.  The 4th was about Doug removing the engine from the boat and falling headfirst onto the boat ramp.  I'm not sure who it was who left the plug out of the boat that day, it could have been me, or it could have been a guy who we nicknamed "Dipwad Dundy" since his antics were so similar to those we attributed to Dipwad Dundy.

Dipwad Dundy in Person

  Well B.J. ?  you finally made it onto the Internet.  Bless his heart no one I have ever met has been so honest and hard working, but when he was around things just seemed to go wrong more often than they should have.  Not only that, he looked more like the cartoon character than anyone else around here and at least for awhile the nick-name stuck.  If I was chatting with someone on the BBS when B.J. showed up I would say that "Dipwad Dundy" was here.  This added to the realism and actual existence of the character.  This went on for several years with all but a select few people actually knowing the truth, that Dipwad Dundy was in fact a factious character that I had spawned in a moment of silliness.  Finally near the end of the life of the BBS I came clean and told the BBS users the truth and to my surprise I received messages of grief as if some dear friend had died.  With the exception of those in the know about Dipwad almost everyone abandoned the message area.  The stories were still there in fact I was half way through the second episode / novel of the GGGG Dundy when I finally accepted the fact that by telling the truth about Dipwad being a fictional character I had literally killed the persona of the character.  Perhaps one day I will finish the second story and put it on here.  I guess the thing that would inspire me most of all would be if I received e-mail messages to do just that.

  I love to write and draw and it's not the first stories I have written, hopefully it won't be the last.  When I originally created this page I was still trying to sell my manuscript "The Adventures of Megan Martin."  Now that manuscript is in print along with several new novels of the same series.

  To bring things up to date here with Dipwad Dundy I sent the cartoons out to several cartoon publishers trying to sell them but received messages back telling me they were nice but they were not in the market for new cartoons at this time.  I guess that's a polite way of telling me they are not interested.  Some of them actually told me to contact them at a later date but I never did.  The director of Roswell Incidence Mr. Paul Davids has a copy of the cartoon "Feds" for what it's worth.  I hope he liked it enough to keep it around.

"T" Shirts

  I had been wanting to put Dipwad Dundy cartoons on "T" shirts for quite some time and even went and priced what it would cost to have the job done.  Almost all the people I talked to about doing the job wanted to do it in silk-screen, which was very expensive at their prices and reduced the number of colors I could use in any given cartoon.  I put the idea on the back burner for several years.  Then in 1998 we paid a visit to Roswell, NM over their week long UFO convention.  I realized that hot transfers were the solution to the problem, now only if I could get a good enough price to make it worth my while to have them put on "T" shirts using hot transfers.

  Hot transfers allowed me to put literally anything I wanted on a "T" shirt or mouse pad, even tote bags in full color.  Trying to hire someone else to do the job for me left me once again with a cost high enough that I couldn't make enough money to make it worth my while.  Finally a friend introduced me to a man who gave me a price I could live with and I had him make several shirts for us for HPDF and for Children's Theatre..  The man was very busy with other large orders and was usually 3 to 6 weeks late delivering the shirts to us.  Upon finding a press that would do the job for us at a price I could afford I bought my own "T" shirt press and a package of professional hot transfer's.  Now I can create Dipwad Dundy cartoons (or anything else I want) and put them on "T" shirts myself keeping the cost low enough that I can make and sell them and make it worth my trouble.  I expect to have a hot transfer site up on the domain here sometime in the near future.  I am currently making "T" shirts, tote bags and mouse pads both with Dipwad Dundy or custom made images as the customer desires.  I intend to have some of these included on a portfolio in the hot transfer area of this domain as soon as I can get around to doing it.  If you have any questions or would like a personal photo or something special you have made put on a "T" shirt, tote bag or mouse pad please e-mail me.  You may also go to the Hackett Zoo website and see one of the images I made for the zoo.

  If anyone who finds this site is interested in buying or selling Dipwad Dundy "T" shirts they should contact me for more information.  Soon as I can I will have more information on this site and pictures of shirts with the cartoons on them displayed.

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(Dipwad Dundy is a copyright of Bryon Smith, all rights reserved and may not be copied or printed on any commercial media without my written permission.)