Bash Helmet - Cocked and Loaded

The original cover picture from
Bash Helmet - Cocked and Loaded

During the first half of the 1990s, Bona Ventures gained financial stability by concentrating on the production of specialist, niche magazines but not a day went by without the offices receiving letters from fans of Bash Helmet, begging for his resurrection. 

The company was now headed by Chip Furburger, the son of former editor, Reggie. 

Chip’s mother had secured him a job as an intern at Bona Ventures years earlier and he had steadily worked his way to the top. 

Chip had never known his father (since Reggie had used a sperm donor and a turkey baster) and growing up as a basted child meant that he yearned for a strong male role model all his life. 

As an adult, he decided that Bash was as good a role model for kids as any real man and so, in 1996, Chip had Bona’s editors dust off the hero and give him another outing. 

Bash Helmet - Cocked and Loaded! was a four-issue mini series that updated Bash considerably, pandering to the public’s current love of heroes with big guns. 

Spitroast demonstrates one of
the reasons he acquired his name.

The adventure pitted Bash against a new, more suitably violent villain - Spitroast, who could get a man dangerously hot using only his mouth. 

The mini-series sold incredibly well and reignited interest in Bash Helmet. 

So much so that, in 1998, a number of fan groups banded together and arranged a convention in San Francisco called simply, ‘THE BASH’. 

People gathered from across the world to dress up as their favourite characters and buy and sell Bash memorabilia.

Bash Helmet into the 21st Century

After THE BASH 2003, Florrie Mendelson 

cruises a San Francisco park,

 “for old time’s sake”

THE BASH is soon to hold its 13th successive convention and the number of people attending will be into the thousands. 

Previous special guest speakers have included Godfrey Pryce (who had to be secretly smuggled out of and back into Thailand), Rusty Clappe and, in 2003, the 84 year old Florrie Mendelson! 

This year it is hoped that Dale Montgomery will address the excited crowds. 

With such a renewed swell of interest in Bash Helmet, rumours are rife that Hollywood is gearing up to greenlight a big budget movie. 

Whether this happens or not, only time will tell. 

Ironically, the characters who replaced Bash in Tales to Excite all those years ago have already made the leap to the big-budget motion picture with 2004’s Squirt & Spurt in Vegas. 

“Look, Spurt, it’s Celine Dion! Oh, wait...no...it’s just a cuttlefish!”
A classic moment from ‘Squirt & Spurt in Vegas’.

But one thing is certain - there is no shortage of producers, screenwriters, directors and actors who were touched by Bash Helmet at some point in their lives. 

And whoever gets the job of portraying the hero on the silver screen should feel honoured to be handling such a plum role!

Becoming Bash Helmet Part V. Our pumped up mortal hero begins his fight against crime.

As soon as he touched the magical helmet it was as if it had come alive. Never before had so much blood coursed through the veins of Justin Nicely. Never before had he felt so pumped up.

Gaiety deity Zhoosh saw the hero growing before his very eyes and dubbed his swollen form Bash Helmet. 

Zhoosh immediately called upon Bash to unfetter the power of his helmet. But Bash was more interested in the fight against felony.

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Becoming Bash Helmet Part IV. Poof! The transformation begins.

After kneeling at the feet of gaiety deity Zhoosh and receiving his blessing, Justin Nicely was all a-quiver as he approached and then unwrapped the magical helmet for the very first time. 

His transformation into Bash Helmet was soon within his eager grasp. One moment he had his hands on its shuddering shimmering silver shape. Then, Poof!

This strip reproduced from Bash Helmet's first appearance in Tales to Excite number 27.

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Becoming Bash Helmet Part III. Justin Nicely meets the god Zhoosh - the gaiety deity

This reprinted panel from Tales to Excite 27 - famously Bash Helmet's first issue - reveals what happened after Justin Nicely, having declined a local invitation to indulge in some beach ball play, opted instead to explore some back passages of Greece, including the mysterious 'haunted' cave of Mount Olymprist.

Here it was that he encountered Zhoosh, the gaiety deity who introduced Justin to his wondrous helmet.

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Becoming Bash Helmet Part II. Justin Nicely is tempted by Mount Olymprist

The emergence of Bash Helmet - as Justin Nicely dubbed himself when he first stepped out with his purple get-up - saw a new hero come down hard on villains.

In no time at all, Bash creator Florrie Mendelson was summoned to provide the commissioned staff with Bash Helmet's adventures orally as news of the hero travelled swiftly across the barracks to the officers' mess.  

This is where camp commander Colonel Neville Hawthorne took a hand and introduced Bash Helmet to the publishers of the American comic 'Tales to Excite'. 

His first issue climaxed when Justin first came across his magical helmet in Greece. These reprinted panels from the original Tales to Excite 27:

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Becoming Bash Helmet Part I. Justin Nicely resists ball play in Greece to explore some old back passages.

William 'Florrie' Mendelson was a wet-behind-the-ears army lieutenant based at the seaside town - now a city - of Brighton in the English county of Sussex, who used to spend the short June nights of 1941 exciting his privates by reciting the adventures of the world’s first gay superhero. Nothing did more during those testing days to raise their morale.

Florrie's stories began with the investigative hairdresser, Justin Nicely, whose muscles thickened and hardened when his helmet doubled in size as it was rubbed and he magically became ... Bash Helmet.

Thus begins the story of the origins of Bash.

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