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Irregular Webcomic! is a webcomic created by David Morgan-Mar, an Australian physicist. The comic is illustrated photographically, primarily with minifigures, toy people that are part of the Lego System line of building sets, although a few of the story arcs use role playing game miniatures, or a blend of both sorts of figures, and scenery/backgrounds also primarily made of Lego elements. The comic debuted on December 31, 2002.
Irregular Webcomic! updates every day—missing only two days since 19 April 2003 – and thus is ironically one of the more regular webcomics out there, with additional strips available fortnightly to subscribers of Pyramid magazine. It has several different 'themes', which have their own characters, with isolated story arcs and occasional crossovers. Some of the comics have annotations, sometimes with an explanation of the humour involved, a behind-the-scenes look at how a comic was made, or an explanation of an obscure reference. In the latter case, Morgan-Mar sometimes links to Wikipedia articles.
Themes
- Cliffhangers: Dr Montana "Monty" Jones, his father Dr North Dakota Jones, and grandfather Minnesota Jones, together with the ever-useful Sallah, find lost treasures and battle Nazis, primarily Colonel Haken and his loyal assistant Erwin, who are led by Hitler's brain in a jar. The original characters were a parody of Indiana Jones, but later ones like Dr Ginny Smith are Morgan-Mar's own creations.
- Death: The basic theory is that there is one grim reaper (called a Death) for every kind of death. For example, if somebody dies by being sat on by a giant frog, in comes 'Death of Being Sat On By a Giant Frog'. The Head Death controls all other Deaths, and promotes and demotes as he sees fit. Various Deaths have appeared to 'collect' in most of the other themes in the Comic at one time or another. At the present time, he has yet to appear in the Supers theme. According to polls on the Irregular Webcomic! homepage, Death is the most popular theme, and Death of insanely overpowered fireballs is the most popular character. All Deaths TALK IN CAPITAL LETTERS (when addressing mortals), an homage to the Death in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. (In one strip, Morgan-Mar denies ever having read any of his work, "Would I lie to you?" although one of the Deaths has dialogue taken from Terry Pratchett's biography.)
- Espionage: A scene-by-scene re-telling of the James Bond film, Dr. No. James Stud, Secret Agent 0x0A, under the direction of Ñ and equipped by armourer Ü, flirts with Miss Geltschilling.
- Fantasy (role-play theme): Here, the figurines embody the players in a role playing game with Morgan-Mar himself playing the Gamemaster. They were set a quest, but took ages to get started, due to arson (caused by them) and other distractions while getting equipment. One of the characters, Lambert, is a hobbit, used as fodder for hobbit puns approximately every 100 strips. The other characters are Alvissa (an elf maiden bard, and the only character with a sense of responsibility or ethics), Mordekai (a lovable rogue, not a thief), Kyros (a pyromaniac wizard who keeps Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs busy), Draak (a lizard man and Lambert's bodyguard) and the newly-introduced Dwalin (a dwarf). These characters are represented by painted miniatures, rather than Lego figures. (See the note below for Space.)
- Harry Potter: This lets Morgan-Mar put words into the mouths of the famous characters, and lets you see another side to Harry Potter.
- Imperial Rome: About two Roman senators. The creation of this theme was more or less the result of a poll, where readers voted for what new theme they would like. Imperial Rome beat seven other options, with Steampunk at second place.
- Martians: Martians. On Mars, though they also visit Earth. They mainly like to make fun of earthlings. They encountered the Mars Rovers, a Man in Black who doesn't believe in them, and a student called Ishmael whose computer they have taken over.
- Me: Morgan-Mar makes cameo appearances as himself. The 'Me' theme does not include his appearances as the GM in the role-playing themes.
- Miscellaneous: Strips that don't fit in elsewhere. Lovecraft references and the "Allosaurus" are frequently seen here. In the run up to the November 2004 US election there was a series of strips of "Allosaurus for president". Born in Montana!" (No connection with Montana Jones, main character of the "Cliffhangers" theme.) Some more recent Miscellaneous strips have been parodies of other webcomics, namely Dinosaur Comics, A Softer World, Bob the Angry Flower, and Freefall.
- MythBusters: A new theme, based on the popular tv show from the Discovery Channel.
- Nigerian Finance Minister: Ever wonder who writes those annoying scam e-mails? Well it turns out it really was the Nigerian Finance Minister. How is he supposed to get any work done when nobody answers his e-mails? He hired both Death and Shakespeare to write emails. (Note that this character is male, while Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s actual Minister of Finance since 2003, is female.)
- Pirates (role-play theme): Pirates who talk like stereotypical pirates. In April 2005, the Pirates had their comeback, after a ten-month hiatus.
- Shakespeare: What would William Shakespeare do if he were born 400 years later? Work as a technical writer apparently. With sidelines in Harry Potter fanfics and Nigerian internet moneymaking. Naturally. He was writing a novelisation of the Lord of the Rings films, until his colleague (and not girlfriend) Ophelia managed to get his files and back-up files deleted, helped by Mercutio, the sysadmin. They work for Mr Marlowe, who doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing, or what his employees do at work, but is impressed that they know.
- Space (role-play theme): Science fiction themed strips. The characters, normally painted figurines, spend some of their time on their ship, Legacy (which was recently revealed to be a cargo ship), and some in a CG environment (where they appear as Lego minifigs). The ship's computer steals idle computer power from the past. This gives them massive processor power, but brings a whole new meaning to the Blue screen of death when life support is dependent on it. Paris, the ship's pilot, may have died - the strip recently marked the anniversary of this death, but while Death collected her, her shipmates tried to clone her, using skin fragments and the mind pattern stored in the Legacy's computer. However, the mind pattern was wiped out by a thoughtlessly-installed software upgrade, and now the dead character is a ghost. (But she's still the pilot of the ship.) Other crew members are Serron (a merchant, not a thief), Iki Piki (a diplomat and demolisher), Spanners (electronics and engineering) and the newly-introduced Quercus (big assistant engineer). Paris is the token human, probably.
- Star Wars: Basically allows the author to put words in the mouths of Star Wars characters. This lets him point out some of the problems and idiosyncrasies in the Star Wars universe. The physical impossibilities of the existence of Coruscant using canonical dimensions and thermodynamic laws was one story arc, prompting several emails from Star Wars fans who tried to disprove his points.
- Steve and Terry: An Australian called Steve (who acts somewhat like TV presenter Steve Irwin) and his wife Terry make documentaries, wrestle crocodiles, and fight ungodly beasts from the beyond. Jane Goodall has made appearances to try to keep Steve in check. Cthulhu has made several appearances as Steve's (im)mortal enemy. Steve recently crossovered with the Mythbusters to jump the shark.
- Supers (role-play theme): These specially drawn comics only crop up occasionally, but that doesn't stop them being some of the most detailed, crazy takes on Superhero comics. These are drawn by Dean Stahl of Steelhorse studios.
There are often oddly themed crossovers in the comic, such as Steve being fired by Professor Dumbledore from the position of "Professor of Care of Magical Creatures" at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Generally these crossovers combine only two themes. To date (13 May 2006) there have been four three-way crossovers (strip numbers 641, 762, 1166 and 1178) and one four-way crossover (strip number 465)
The characters in the Fantasy and Space themes are taken from an actual role-playing group, so the same players are behind them. The storylines sometimes reflect that.
Linking
The comic is noted among fans for having one of the most elaborate indexing/archiving schemes around. Fans can navigate through each theme independently in either single or 5 strip at a time increments. Crossover strips will be linked into each theme they reference, of course. They can also navigate forwards and backwards chronologically. This can sometimes make the navigation area (which also links to a theme explanation, a number of option settings, and often, a poll) quite large.
Vision-impaired readers
There is an option on the website to turn on a "vision-impaired" mode. When this is in use, the script of the comic being viewed appears between the strip and the navigation area, allowing screen-reader software to read the dialogue aloud, so that people who are unable to see the art to at least enjoy the words.
The scripts are held in the same database that is used by the search option, so every one of the strips has the script feature available, although it wasn't available when the earliest strips appeared.
External links
"Irregular Webcomic!"