Comic Archive
The cast of Cosmo, circa 1997 (Copyright © 1997-2010 Josh Rose)
With origins going all the way back to 1988, Cosmo was a comic strip first created by Josh Rose in high school. It really came into it's own, though, during the halcyon days of the strip's weekly run in the Texas State University newspaper from 1995 until 1997. Following graduation, Cosmo ran in the Austin American-Statesman weekly entertainment magazine X.L. Ent, where it undeservedly shared pages with such well-known comics as Shannon Wheeler's Too Much Coffee Man. The picked up again after a short hiatus when Mr. Rose was in graduate school, running for nearly three years as a weekly strip in the Denton Record-Chronicles weekly entertainment magazine. During this time, it also was selected for publication in the national book Strip Search: Revealing Today's Best College Cartoonists, winning second place in the "Other" category. The book, long out of print, can nonetheless be found used on Amazon.com for a mere $1.16. (Also, as Mr. Rose just learned, it is not wise to search for the book with the blanket phrase "strip search.")
Cosmo chronicles the adventures (aw,heck, let's just put that in quotes..."adventures") of Cosmo, his sassy girlfriend Sarah, and his friends. Many of the supporting cast were based on real friends of the cartoonist, and only they know (1) who they are and (2) what was correct, incorrect, and just plain made up about them in the strip. The strip also presented jokes about time travel, Edgar Allan Poe, Socialism and invisibility (in the same strip!), and too numerous storylines about love and romance to count.
The strips will be archived on this multi-purpose site, divided by years, beginning with 1998. Simply use the drop-down menu above to access each year (hover over the "Comic Archive" button). The strips are presented in an order roughly based on publication date, although errors are sure to have occurred. At a future date, Mr. Rose will provide commentary for each strip, offering part "behind the scenes" and part contemporary criticism of his own work.
For questions about the strip or cartoonist, contact joshrose<at>cosmocomics.net (replace the "<at>" with an @ sign).