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.