Yesterday, on New Year’s Eve, I was talking on the phone to my younger sister, Liz, when she asked me an unexpected question:
“Is this Dynamite and Detonator’s anniversary?”
“Oh, that’s right,” I answered, “Urban Underbrush (my first webcomic) was launched on New Year’s Day 2010, but I also made the first ever drawing of Dynamite and Detonator on another New Year’s Day in 1993, when I was still in middle school.”
“1993 to 2023.” Liz answered. “They’re 30 years old. You should post something.”
So, Here is is.
Dynamite and Detonator: A Brief History
Long-time readers of my work might remember Dynamite and Detonator as the lead characters/animal mascots of my first webcomic, Urban Underbrush.
What even my longest readers might not know is that Urban Underbrush was a composite of characters and concepts from several stories I wrote in my childhood and adolescence. An eight-page comic called “Small Town Showdown” originally introduced the characters of Cassidy, Maxwell, Vincent, Clayton, Leslie, and Blair, as well as their relationships and dynamics. Clive was lifted from a twelve-page sci-fi/fantasy called “Flip Side.” And Dynamite and Detonator came from one of my oldest creations – a series called “The Explosive Adventures of Dynamite and Detonator.” I was twelve years old when I began to draw it. I felt that it was the first thing I ever made that looked like a real cartoon.
Version One: The Puzzle Caves
“Explosive Adventures” started, like so many of my projects, as a concept for a video game. I had been working on a pen-and-paper game about a rabbit jumping to escape a series of underground tunnels and caverns. The New Year’s drawing was the first time I sat down and designed the characters and story. At the time, I didn’t attach any special meaning to making that first drawing on New Year’s Day. It just happened to be a day when I had enough time off from school and chores to make something for myself.
The original idea was fairly simple, A group of Jackrabbits were cruising across the desert in an old, abandoned mine cart they had found. Unexpectedly, the ground caves in underneath them, trapping them in a small cavern. Dynamite goes to find help and navigates the mysteries of the caves and empty mine shafts. He uses his powerful jumps to carry him over danger and up to higher ground. He could also find old explosives that were left behind in the empty mine, which can be used to clear paths and solve puzzles. Dynamite eventually escapes the caves and lowers a rope to rescue the others.
I’ve found the original cover or “box art” that I drew on that fateful New Year’s Day, lovingly drawn with children’s colored pencil on notebook paper:
The original title was “The Explosive Adventures of Dinomite.” I can’t remember if “Dinomite” was misspelled by accident or if I did it on purpose so I could introduce more cutesy picture-letters into the title. Detonator would soon be upgraded to lead character status, when I decided that the “game” should have a two-player option. However, he’s still included in the first picture as one of the rabbits in the mine cart, awaiting rescue.
Version Two: The Adventure Series
After a few months of working with these characters, I was falling more in love with the sixteen-bit platform adventure games that were popular at the time. I decided to change the game from puzzle-platformer to a more common side-scrolling platformer adventure. This change was almost a shame, as the original concept would have had more innovative gameplay ideas. But this project was more about character design and world-building anyway, so the change was probably good for me to develop my skills as a writer and an artist. (I am not going to tell you much about the original game idea, as I think it is still a viable idea and the possibility of me making a real game in 2023 or later is far more plausible than it was in 1993.)
The adventure-game version had Dynamite and Detonator (now with properly-spelled names) leading a team of animal heroes to fight/defend a secret race of cryptids called “Feral Dragons” The feral dragons were furry dragons who where intended to be this world’s other dominant species, alongside mankind. The presence of two dominant species was supposed to keep the earth’s eco system in balance, but instead, the feral dragons became frustrated with sharing their role with stubborn humans. They built a cloaked airship and moved their entire population to live alone in the sky (Did I write some kind of reverse version of Undertale back then?)
Dynamite, Detonator, and their friends discovered the feral dragons and rescued a lost dragon pup who had been left below by accident. The dragons’ cruel leaders used the pup’s disappearance to encourage distrust for the surface creatures. These leaders accused Dynamite and Detonator of kidnapping the pup and ordered an attack against them. The rest of the story was meant to be played out in video game levels: the animals would try to survive the onslaught of feral dragons while making their way to a mountain where they could climb to the top, reach the airship, and return the lost dragon pup. Returning the pup would clear their names and expose the truth of the corrupt leaders. Although the rabbits still used their trademark fireworks in battle, enemies were subdued, not killed, as death and murder would probably ruin their chance at reconciliation with the mislead feral dragons at the end of the journey. If the players were victorious, the dragon pup would be returned, the evil leaders would be deposed and the feral dragons would decide to slowly reintegrate themselves back into the world, with Dynamite and Detonator as their liaisons.
This version of Explosive Adventures was a great first project for me, but, in hindsight, no version of it could ever be finished in a way that could be shared with the public. I kept reworking the story until it became overly-complicated and convoluted. Every time I had an idea for a new character or location, I somehow grafted it into the existing story until the whole thing was bursting at the seems with too much content.
This process seems very common for young creatives with their first big idea – they never had a good idea like this first one before so they can’t imagine ever having one again. Because of this line of thinking, they stuff all their ideas into that one story, rather than saving some concepts for future stories. In the end, they don’t create a viable project, but they give themselves a lot of accelerated experience in writing and designing, which is what matters most at the time. There will be plenty of years to write that hit series once they’ve got that experience.
Despite its shortcomings, version two was the definitive Dynamite and Detonator for most of my childhood.
Version Three: The Sidekicks
The third iteration of Dynamite and Detonator snuck up on me a bit. My sister Liz and I would sometimes make up non-canon crossovers of her characters and mine, just as creative experiments and as a way to entertain ourselves. Putting Dynamite and Detonator in new settings with different characters made me realize something that would change their course forever: The rabbits worked better when they were not leaders. Those two have an irresponsible streak that speeds up existing conflicts in an amusing way. They also have some people-pleasing tendencies that really shine when they are working for bosses. Their best qualities hit their full potential when the rabbits have other people are in charge and they have less responsibility for themselves.
Not a lot of details to tell about these stories. They were a series of random tales that were never cleaned up or made presentable, as they were never designed to be shared. But they taught me so much about how to make stories and characters work.
Version Four: Urban Underbrush
Here’s where many of you probably came in. It was 2009 and I was trying to launch my own webcomic site. I wanted to have a site that hosted both a long-form adventure comic book and a classic newspaper-style comic strip so I could explore both of my favorite kinds of writing. I already completed most of the script for the adventure story, Draconis Wicked, but I wanted to debut the site with the comic strip first, not the comic book. At some point, I decided to borrow the ideas from my writing experiments with Liz: I put together my favorite characters from some of my past stories and dropped them in a new premise – everyone living together in a strange garden-house in a small city. I already knew every character’s personalities and how they interacted with each other. Plus, I still loved working with all of them.
The idea paid off. Thanks to my childhood writings, I could quickly come up with stories that fit this crowd. Their reactions and dialogue came very naturally to me, since I knew them all so well. I posted the first installment on New Year’s Day 2010 as a tribute to the original concept.
Unfortunately, brining in characters from several different stories may have been part of the strips’s downfall. As harmoniously as most of the elements blended together, several of them seemed to be constantly pulling away from each other. For example, Dynamite and Detonator’s secret life as demolition experts excluded the other characters from many of their stories. Clayton’s semi-legal animal shelter could have been a whole other comic strip by itself and the concept felt too big to just cram in the corner while larger events unfolded around them. I also felt like I was spending too many strips on setups and expositions because the characters weren’t coming together naturally. I tried to repair some issues in Chapter Twelve, which improved the comic greatly. But, ultimately, it made more sense just to conclude the story gracefully, rather than spend years repairing a faulty foundation.
Problems aside, I really enjoyed making Urban Underbrush. While some of the writing and art has aged for me, most of it was worth making and still worth reading.
Urban Underbrush ran from 2010 to 2016 with a run of 316 strips. It seems short when compared to other comic runs, but it does boast 18 chapters, three interludes, and a real conclusion (not just me dropping it when I got bored, frustrated, or busy.) If you care to read it from the beginning, start here.
Version Five: The Future?
I had always promised to come back to these characters someday and write a new adventure for them, something fresh, freed from all the problems of the previous incarnation. I began drafting Thicket Plaza, a comic strip that puts the old characters in charge of a greenhouse built from a half-abandoned shopping mall.
But now, years have passed since Urban Underbrush concluded. At first, I was enjoying the chance to sink all my energy into Draconis Wicked – the recent chapters are some of my best work ever – but scenes from the potential new comic strip still run through my head from time to time. I tried to launch Thicket Plaza in 2020, but the Covid Pandemic put too many demands on me, both personally and professionally. Not only did I fail to launch a new series, I was forced to put Draconis Wicked on hiatus for over a year. (I’ve been back to writing Draconis for just as long, but many of the original readers have moved on. I don’t blame them, we’ve all been burned by abandoned webcomics before.)
Does this mean Thicket Plaza will never see the light of day? Believe it or not, I still haven’t given up just yet. I have a new day job now, and, while it takes up more of my hours, it has a more consistent schedule than the jobs I used to work, which makes planning time for art considerably easier.
I’m still balancing my creative time with Draconis Wicked and my other projects; The Full Moon Art Challenge, an event I run where artists make a piece of art for each full moon, and the Lepus Rabbits, little greeting card-style illustrations that use a simplified version of my rabbits. However, these newer projects might are meant to be stay small, they are not major time-drains and are meant to inspire more creativity.
But I still haven’t answered the question, will we ever see Dynamite and Detonator again? For now, all I can say is this: 2023 is the Year of the Rabbit – anything can happen.
