Basil Flint, P.I.

Basil Flint, P.I. was John Troutman's second comic strip, started after he ended his freshman strip Sporkman. Running from December 2 2001 to February 17 2005, it detailed the adventures and cases of Basil Flint and his two companions/assistants/roommates, Amanda and Andie. Drunken and very nearly completely incompetent, it usually fell to the girls to actually solve the case in question. Later in the strip we learned that the reason Basil was always drinking was because his wife/investigation partner was killed and he crawled into the bottle for solace. This was followed by a storyline where Basil is stone cold sober and we see a shadow of the detective he USED to be before he became an alcoholic.

The artwork of Basil Flint has evolved over time. It started out with John's classic Big Eye Style that he had developed in his previous strip, Sporkman. He then went for a more realistic style with eyes approximately the correct size. This raised a hue and cry amongst his fans. Steadily the eyes grew larger to a cartoony but much smaller than the original eyes that could be described as slightly manga-ish.

Basil Flint started out on Keenspace and eventually moved to Keenspot. A sequel strip is scheduled to start on April 4 2005, and a spinoff (Felicity Flint, Agent from H.A.R.M., following Basil's oldest sister) is still ongoing.

John's other works include :

• The Adventures of Sporkman
• Vigilante, Ho! (In collaboration with Meaghan Quinn)

External links

• Basil Flint, P.I.