Bloop by Steve Conley | Bloop’s Tree

Who is Bloop?

Bloop had his beginnings in my series Astounding Space Thrills. I wanted to end the first issue with a joke about the hero, Argosy Smith, needing to get a space monkey. That was it.

The cast of AST with an early version of Bloop - from 2002

As part of a deal with an alien, Argosy would give him one space monkey as a down payment and a second one upon completion of the deal. Argosy was double-crossed by the alien and he was stuck with the second space monkey. I decided that instead of simply saying “ook ook” or some such, the monkey would say the names of all the famous space monkeys in comics and animation such as “blip bleep beep squeeks.” It was surprising that one sound wasn’t taken: “bloop.” and that’s how Bloop got his name.

Badge for the 2001 Baltimore Comic-Con

In issue #2 of AST, Bloop looked much more like a a real monkey with antennae.

Although he figured prominently in a few Astounding Space Thrills adventures, he was mostly comic relief and something fun to put in the background.

That was until until 2000 when Bloop took center stage with the launch of Bloop.tv. I had some success syndicating (“tooncasting”) AST comic strips to web sites and I figured that animation would fare even better since it’s a more passive medium than comics. I chose to feature Bloop because, well, animating humans is damned hard. I had no animation experience and the webisodes are crude but unlike other Flash animators at the time who tried and failed to make Flash do what it couldn’t, I embraced the limitations of the software. I illustrated the characters using Flash’s crude drawing tools WITHOUT holding lines around the figures and meshed it with 3d backgrounds. The second webisode had one of the first pre-roll ads ever embedded in it.

I struck a deal with a few large dot-com media sites to syndicate these Flash-animated webisodes starring Bloop to their sites. I had finished two webisodes before the dot-com bubble burst and the main syndication partners closed up shop or significantly scaled back.

Since then, Bloop appeared in a few other places including as the mascot for the Baltimore Comic-Con for a few years and in a free convention comic I distributed in 2004. He also appeared in a short, full-color story in the 2004 Free Comic Book Day Amelia Rules comic book.

I’ve been working on other comics projects in recent years including STAR TREK: YEAR FOUR for IDW and Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of the Escapist for Dark Horse Comics.

All the while, I’ve been developing ideas for other comics projects. In 2007, I launched SOCKS AND BARNEY a semi-political comics trip starring Bill Clinton’s cat Socks and George W. Bush’s dog Barney.

After more than a year of drawing cartoon animals, I felt I was ready to come back to Bloop.

And I’m having a blast.

– Steve

Steve | March 8, 2009 2:39 pm

5 Comments

By John Freeman, April 25, 2009 @ 4:41 pm

Steve – just came across this completely by accident – great to see Bloop is back!
By Steve, April 28, 2009 @ 8:48 am

Thanks John!
By PEETROCK, May 10, 2009 @ 3:20 pm

Glad to see you back at the Drawing board and cant wait to find the new Bloop comic in a local comics store soon,i missed the
free comics book day again this year and hope will not miss out on the bloop issue have enjoyed your previous works on AST ! keep up the good work your art is great.
By Jim, November 12, 2009 @ 2:49 pm

You say in this article that “Bloop” was an unused monkey name. However, I discovered this page while looking up “The Bloop”, who was Penny’s space monkey with long ears from Lost in Space (circa mid-1960s). I’ve never seen your comix, but based upon the above 2 pictures/examples, I can see that you do have talent. I’m NOT trying to shoot you down or anything, and do wish you well! Just wanted to point out that indeed, The Bloop was ‘the most famoustest of all’ space monkeys (excuse the Tolkienism). Well, The Bloop was well-known to every kid who watched Lost in Space in the 60s and 70s anyway.
By Steve, December 23, 2009 @ 10:52 pm

Jim, heya. I’ve heard from a few Lost In Space fans about Debbie The Bloop. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. I need to track down those episodes at some point.