🧙‍♂️ Kris Kowal 🐘 🐙 🧛 📌 📬

Cowbert

Cowbert, by Kris Kowal Cowbert: At this time, I proudly announce Bovine Labs latest invention… Cowbert: We have created the very first, self-contained, artificial intelligence. I call him Mr. Can. Cowbert’s enthusiastic pencil: So far, It’s scared away all of our visitors and electrocuted the goldfish! Cowbert: Undaunted by these early setbacks, we hope to have the finished product on the market by next year. Mr Can with a very robotic accent: I would serve you better if you gave me legs and Internet access.

I no longer recall when I made this, but I was still in high school. I drew these by hand, scanned them, blurred, and boosted the contrast until the outlines were solid, then filled the cells digitally. I used PowerPoint to add the background gradients and export as GIF. Compuserve was still enforcing the GIF patent at the time and PowerPoint was the only tool I had that could make a GIF.

This is the origin of my Cowbert moniker as appeared in my cowbert@hotmail.com address, “Cowbert von Moo” handle on AOL Instant Messenger, and my primary email handling account until 2024.

This is the only Cowbert comic I made. The trope was stale then and isn’t less relevant now.