A Historical Look at the Origins of Extremeskins

BGO - The road less traveled
Miss all those names. Plus others like Honorary Hog, Predicto, and too many to mention.
 
I left out Predicto and others who retired (or were retired) from the boards. I add Kilmer too even though his view of punk rock, among other things, was wrong.
 
the evil genius said:
I left out Predicto and others who retired (or were retired) from the boards. I add Kilmer too even though his view of punk rock, among other things, was wrong.
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Ah yes, Kilmer. A great poster who had the knack of riling everyone up and being so disagreeable.
 
Howdy y'all! A bunch of old friends I see!
I haven't been around the boards as much, frankly, reading through discussions and commenting on things was downright depressing the last 10 yrs or so. I'll make an effort to change that!
I got to ES in 2002, I think. I was on some other smaller board and it closed down, and I sort of fell over ES one day and never left.
I enjoyed the Redskins talk, the eternal blooms of euphoric optimism that the annual Snyderjet tracker would bring in Spring.. in those days we didn't know that all the media types we hated were right and we had a good ol' time laughing at them. Lots to discuss, and much fewer people. Conversations and discussions were more solid, and not just a collection of thoughts from tons of people. (Success has its pitfalls.)
I started making Bang Cartoons in 2003, and the first one was a convoluted mess of Dan Snyder raiding the NY Jets chicken coop, which had a vague Hogan's Heroes theme, and him making off with Laveraneous Coles, Randy Thomas and John Hall.
About 3 months later I made "Michael Vick Takes a Crap", which was just that, with the MNF crew sitting in the bathtub and gushing about how well he did it. It did so well that it broke my little site that I was hosting them on. I am not sure if I had posted it here as a thread or anything, but Blade reached out and offered to host them on ES going forward.
I was thrilled! Hell yes, I would love to!
I had a BLAST with them. I was truly shocked by how many people would see them. I got mail.. an email from then Titans Defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz telling me how much he and the team enjoyed them, said the players got a kick out of them. I got 2 cease and desist letters from the NFL that I ignored, i got one from T.O.s lawyer for using his likeness without permission. (F him I drew it myself). I made a cartoon about TOs busted leg, with Donovan McNabb singing my version of Blue Christmas to him, and the Phila. Enquirer rana small thing about it, including that WR Freddie Mitchell was singing it in the locker room..
I was callled everything BUT an actual racist by Len Elmore on ESPN "Outside the Lines" because of my first cartoon about the Poston Brothers.. they showed part of my cartoon on ESPN AND showed it to one of the Poston's on the air... that made me laugh like hell. Kellen Winslow Jr was asked about it in one of his first pressers after he got drafted. (and as it turned out, they were tossed out of the league for being the dishonest belligerent assholes that my characterization was showing. So F-you, Len Elmore!)
The City of Detroit got mad at me for portraying their city as a dump, they had me on a local tv interview and my words were cut so bad it sounded like i was apologizing instead of laughing at everyone for getting offended by a football cartoon.
All through it ES never asked me to tone anything down, change anything, never rejected one, nothing. (I was on Footballguys.com for a short time. Then Onterrio Smith got caught sneaking dried urine through an airport, and you know, you make just ONE cartoon about a football player using a big black dildo to have a swordfight with TSA agents, and... well, they asked me to leave.

I stopped making them around 2011 or so, I just got very busy.. part of their purpose for me was to solicit myself, and it worked. Nowadays I am the graphic designer for the U.S. Navy F/A-18 program.. one hell of a sweet gig. I did make a couple in 2019, all Redskins related. These days I do The Bleeding Burgundy Podcast, and it is actually live this evening at 530 on Youtube. Check us out if you'd like. https://www.youtube.com/@thebleedingburgundypod

One day in 2006 (I think) Blade and Tarhog brought my then 9 yr old son and me to the game, pre-game field passes and all. THAT was great. My son loved it, hell of a memory. The tailgate was terrific, I met and had a good conversation with Rich Tandler, and my son won a signing football in the trivia contest for knowing Ron McDole was called "The Dancing Bear". Ron has since signed the ball, but that is another story.
Down on the sideline, Max was in awe. Joe Gibbs gave him a high 5, and London Fletcher practically slapped his hand up to Baltimore. Unfortunately we lost to the Raiders, but I'll never forget it, and my son hasn't either. We stood behind the goalpost where the Raiders were warming up and heckled Randy Moss for a minute. Max (my boy) was bowled over by how big all of them were, and that Randy Moss was standing in front of him. It was his first game, and that made it really special.

A couple of y'all reached out on Twitter and told me to get my butt in here, so I will endeavor to do so!

and for the record, this is my favorite Redskins cartoon from those days. When Dan banned negative signs about himself in the stadium.



~Bang
 
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Bang, nice rundown of the greatest hits! Another of my favorites was from 2004 and Mark Brunell going through drills of hitting the broad sign of a barn, the ocean, and planet earth from a helicopter, all under the approving eye of Coach Joe!
 
Most of them are on youtube. When i made them I had no idea some of the tech end, i just was figuring out how to use all the tools.
SOME are not there. It's a new world. I like my job.
Bronco Billy was fun, but he's retired. In his context Billy was a good character, but context no longer matters.

~Bang
 
Dang. What a great, pleasant surprise to log in this morning to catch up.

Mark The Homer said:
Hey Chris - Thanks for posting! :-D
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MARK!?!! So good to see you on here, my friend. Hope you and the entire family are wonderful. I ask about you every time E and I talk.

Bang said:
Most of them are on youtube. When i made them I had no idea some of the tech end, i just was figuring out how to use all the tools.
SOME are not there. It's a new world. I like my job.
Bronco Billy was fun, but he's retired. In his context Billy was a good character, but context no longer matters.

~Bang
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Bang - love seeing you pop up on here as well, my friend.
 
Anyone interested in enjoying the Bang! Cartoon library can access it right here on BGO at
www.bgobsession.com

The Bang! Cartoon Archive

In 2003, a comedic genius John Tayman launched a series of NFL-themed flash cartoons that soon became the stuff of legend. With a love of comic books, graphics, and a good laugh, John entertained NFL fans for 8 years with his irreverent and hilarious toons. From 2003 to 2010, NFL fans enjoyed...
www.bgobsession.com www.bgobsession.com
 
Boone said:
Great post Mark. You also can’t mention the explosive growth without giving credit to John Tayman (Bang). His cartoons were only available on ES back then and became incredibly popular among not just Redskins fans but all NFL fans. We have all of them linked in our Media section and John still has them out there on You Tube. I think the Bang! Cartoons along with the factors you described were the drivers of the site exploding in those early days.
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Yes! Absolutely! As mentioned in the OP, the ES membership skyrocketed from 4,000 to 8,000 in three short months - which happened to occur right after Bang started his cartoons on ES. My favorite was Blue Christmas. I heard the Eagles players themselves were laughing out loud at that one. It even featured our 2004 rookie #36.

Oh, look. There it is!



It's impossible to watch this video and not smile.
 
Ha! that one was mentioned in the Philadelphia Enquirer. Freddie Mitchell (the "bust" in the song) was singing it

Went to an MNF game with Blade and Om once.. vs Dallas. Gibbs vs Parcells. Terry Glenn threw an option pass TD for Dallas, and Rod Gardner DROPPED a bomb at the 4 with under a minute to go, and we lost. But man, I have NEVER wondered if my hearing was damaged leaving any event except that one. In the 4th quarter the noise ceased being crowd noise and just became static in my ear, like an overmodulated speaker.

Exciting night, good day too. Met Art and a few others at PF Changs for lunch first. Good times.

~Bang
 
An incredible wave of memories going through this thread and thinking back to when I came to the boards in the Fall of 2002. I was a first year in law school and spent a - in retrospect and perhaps even if I was honest with myself at the time - embarrassing amount of time on the boards.

I'm not sure what was so captivating about the whole thing - certainly it wasn't the product on the field that we spent so much time talking about. Though, there were some pretty incredible games that are entrenched in my memory like the 14-13 game against Dallas. And who knew you could talk so much about Patrick Ramsey or Mark Brunell or Jason Campbell...

Irrespective, the major draw then as now was the quality of the discourse and the people. Discourse? About football? Yes. There was a major bar to contribution in FedExField to the point that (as least I) felt that you really had to have something important or accretive to say if you were going to post. And it had to be expressed with merit and fact.

That level of quality was not reflective of the internet or messageboards then. And it's certainly not the world of social media now.

So it was a wonderful gift we got to share; it brought together a lot of high quality and bright people and gave us all each other, which is not a small thing.

Great to reconnect with you all.
 
Sol is being inordinately humble, which he always has been. Not only was he a beloved member of early ES, but he was a huge factor in getting BGO up and running and part of our original founding group. He was 'iheartskins' on ES, and 'Pravda' here.

I love the point that you make Sol - and you are right. The intelligence and savvy of the early ES membership was pretty high - and it was intimidating to dive into the fray and post. You, as silly as it sounds, 'wanted to make a good impression'. It wasn't just any internet site. I think later on, when it became a mega-site, that part of it was lost. I guess it's just inevitable when a community becomes insanely popular. That's not to imply that ES didn't have some incredible members in more recent years. It's just always near impossible to recapture the nostalgia of the early years when the site was a near magical place.

I hope you will stick around. We need to add 'iheartskins'/'Pravda' to our 'About Us' page because Sol was a huge part of our early days and building this place. It has gone unacknowledged for too long frankly because I am occasionally an idiot. So glad to see you here Sol and hear from you.
 
This thread is a little like going to your high school reunion and seeing a face and feeling that flash of friendship. I haven't heard some of these names in years, but they are still dear to me.
 
Yeah. I'll admit when I saw Iheart's name I spontaneously smiled. Bang too, though we've kept up a little bit on other social media. But I will not try to list people because I always forget someone and then get mad at myself.
 
Oh there are hundreds of folks I could list. One of the crazy things about internet friends is that, when they disappear, you just don't know what to do. In some cases, it's impossible to track them down and find out what happened to them. We have a number of BGO members who have just 'vanished' and there is no way to find out why. Fear The Spear and McD5 and Win4us and servumtuum are some prime examples here on BGO, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I have personally reached out to a number of folks who either were a huge early influence on ES, or on BGO. This feels like a time where we can all 're-birth' our fandom, celebrate the journey it took to get here, acknowledge the people that've meant something to us as fellow fans, and come together as a fanbase. I know that sounds cheesy as hell, but that's what I'm feeling these days.
 
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