Bronk & Bongo

Our two heroes out for a walk.

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I was a child in the fifties and we had a giant black and white set as big as a range that rested on iron legs. Broke the dial at least once wrenching it back and forth searching for something to watch, especially on Sunday mornings. We had Farmer Brown cartoons, silents with un-synched music tracks (might have been the same cartoon every morning, now that I think of it) and Gumby and Davey and Goliath and Ruff and Reddy. Tom Terrific on Captain Kangaroo. Later came Bullwinkle and Hanna Barbera, my heroes. I loved Quick Draw and Baba Louie, Snagglepuss, and Huckelberry Hound. Raced home from school to catch my favorites, which I watched all afternoon (I was largely unsupervised as a child — and I think I turned out fine! Twitch, twitch!) Waited with anticipation for the stock jokes — and did all their voices. My friends said [Read more…]

Well it finally happened! We must be more successful than I could have ever imagined because we haven’t even been animated yet and we’ve already been ripped off! Yes it’s true. I was in Chinatown the other day looking for some Tiger Balm for Alan’s bad knees (don’t ask) and as I walked past a little nick nack shop I saw this little product here depicting 2 cartoons characters called BRINK and BIMBO! I mean they bear more than a striking resemblance to our beloved duo BRONK and BONGO wouldn’t you say? Well, okay, BONGO doesn’t have breasts, not since the operation anyway, thanks Dr.90210! But other than that you have to admit the resemblance is uncanny.
Clearly this is a sign that we are onto something big! The second your characters show up immortalized forever, horribly off model on a toilet cover that is made up of mostly toxic [Read more…]

My inspiration for Bronk, or at least his name, came from my childhood canine pal BRONK. He was a German Shepherd and Collie mix and was my best pal when I was a youngster. He was always the Bionic Dog to my Bionic Man. Why did we name him BRONK? Well, in the late 1970’s there was a TV cop show that starred JACK PALANCE and lasted for about 5 seconds, apparently my dad was a fan because it was his decision to name him after JACK’s Detective character, BRONK!
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Bronk and Bongo have done it all. Had every job under the sun! But which one has been the worst you ask? Is it the time they started their own artificial insemination program? Who knew Sperm whales have nothing to do with sperm? Or was it the time they made that nun mad when they drank all of the holy water and mistook the Popes hat for a hydrant? Or maybe it was the time when they took those rabid chipmunks and …ooh…almost forgot I can’t talk about that, darn restraining order.
Well, none of those jobs compared to how lousy a time they had as Presidential speech writers. I mean there was nothing they didn’t write that couldn’t not make this guy not sound smartish. This happened to be the only job Bronk and Bongo weren’t fired from by the way. They voluntarily quit!

Worst of all, they didn’t get [Read more…]

No, this post has nothing to do with TONY DANZA or BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN. While I had some trouble figuring out exactly what Bronk and Bongo would look like I ended up nailing their ever present boss in the second sketch! His visual was basically inspired by GALE GORDON.
Gale Gordon, was a brilliant comedy actor who was most well known for his appearances on “I love Lucy” and “the Lucille Ball show” typically as her boss or some other kind of pompous wind bag authority type and he had a great booming voice.
Alan and I just instinctually started to deliver lines in his timber as we worked and we found it hysterical. I found some pictures on-line and this one just seemed like he was yelling at Bronk and Bongo so I used this one shot in particular for inspiration. I did one crummy half finished and very fat sketch then [Read more…]

When we started work on Bronk and Bongo about a year ago, they weren’t even dogs! They were unidentifiable “critters”. But then we were afraid that our audience would be distracted trying to figure out “what” they were instead of focusing on them as characters. So we settled on making them dogs. I mean who doesn’t love dogs?
Since then they have continued to change and evolve as I kept drawing the characters and figuring out their personalities. Above you can see how much BONGO has changed since the start. He’s not as tall or as “flat” as he used to be. That bucktooth has disappeared and his footy pants now allow for his feet to pop out. He’s also a lot shorter and a better height to deal with the far smaller BRONK.

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Alan: Manny, how about our next post we do turnarounds of US!
Manny: Why Alan, that’s a great idea! You’re a comedy genius!

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The boys are at it again. On their way back from New York to California they have decided to open a store. Don’t they know that 80% of all new business’s fail in the first year? If I know them, it will be the first few hours! Still, since I’ve been pretty much buried under a tidal wave of 2 requests for posters of the boys in their Superhero disguises I thought this might be a good outlet.

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Cute as can be. But when did that ever matter to a dog? (They go by smell). By the way, if you’re curious how ugly a dog can be and how enthusiastically they get celebrated, check out the attached link. Bloggingly yours, Manny and Alan.

http://www.azcentral.com/families/articles/0712fam_uglydog.html