Irregular Webcomic!

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No, I'm totally not trying to get Irregular Webcomic! mentioned on every single page of TV Tropes. —David Morgan Mar

A webcomic done with LEGO figures and roleplaying miniatures, by David Morgan-Mar, an Australian physicist, who also perpetrates Darths and Droids. Yes, he's One of Us. No need to run.

Full of deliberately bad puns and surprisingly erudite references; one can learn a great deal just by reading the annotations. Despite the name it was updated daily. As of strip #3198 on October 29th 2011 the comic is now finished, although weekly annotations will continue. It is also re-running its entire archive, adding a re-run annotation to each strip.

Covers a number of ongoing motifs and topics, including:

• Fantasy: A group of roleplayers guide their party through a quest that tips the hat to Tolkien... before laughing at him.
• Space: A Space Opera gone bad. Very, very bad. Like Fantasy, also intended to be chronicling the events of an RPG, rather than directly telling a story. With one of the same players, no less. They transpose rather neatly.
• Myth Busters: Adam and Jamie test somewhat more unusual myths than normal (this one crosses over with the Death one, below, a LOT).
• Steve and Terry: The adventures of a crocodile hunter (no, not THAT one), his long-suffering wife Terry, Dame Jane Goodall, and Cthulhu.
• Nigerian Finance Minister: The source of all those spam e-mails and his quest to raise money. Funnier than it sounds.
• William Shakespeare: Shakespeare is a Fanfic-writing office worker.
• Cliffhangers: an Indiana Jones spoof. In a few early strips, this is also an RPG campaign.
• Espionage: a spoof of James Bond, this time directly following the plot of the movies and with very few crossovers with other themes. Currently on From Russia With Love.
• Imperial Rome: Exactly What It Says On the Tin.
• Scientific Revolution: An excuse for DMM to write heartfelt annotations about Newton, Halley, Pascal, Pasteur, Linnaeus and their contemporaries.
• Martians: The attempts of a group of Martians to take over the world, and their encounters with an Ordinary College Student and overly zealous government agent.
• Pirates: Exactly What It Says On the Tin
• Supers: A hand-drawn theme featuring the adventures of some superhero RPG characters. Hasn't been done in a while as DMM doesn't draw those strips himself and the artist who did could only draw them in his spare time.
• Me: the ongoing adventures of the comic's author. Who was dead for a long time. Specifically, murdered by himself from the future. He then went on the run from death, but now is on a mission to kill his past self....
• Star Wars and Harry Potter parodies. The former isn't done much anymore, likely to leave some jokes for Darths and Droids, while the latter is often part of Shakespeare's fanfics.

The themes Crossover very, very often in combinations you would not expect.

Death is common in all the themes and has its own theme as well. There is not just one Death, but Deaths for different causes, who get moved around depending on job performance. One, Death Of Being Wrestled To Death By Steve, got wrestled to death by Steve. Twice. The favorite death is Insanely Overpowered Fireballs, who has been demoted and re-promoted several times.

Can be found here

There is an accompanying podcast (Irregular Podcast!), which does original material. Number #13 is particularly funny for tropers.

---

Irregular Webcomic! provides examples of:

• And the Adventure Continues: When the crossover problems were resolved all of the different themes finished their quests and then had this ending.
• Art Evolution: Or Photo Quality Evolution, anyway.
• A Wizard Did It: Paris clone. Although at that point we almost have the explanation.
• Author Guest Spot
• Back to Front: "My personal time stream has been running backwards for some reason, and this strip doesn't have a punchline."
• Bait and Switch Gunshot
• Beat Panel: A favorite device of the author, heavily lampshaded
• The Big Damn Kiss: Right here. And it's about damn time.
• Big No: The GM here when the Fantasy characters decide to split up to get their prelimary tasks done quickly.
• Big Word Shout: Kiiiiiirrrrrrkkk!!!
• Brick Joke: In the annotation of strip 1324: " In fact, Loren is a Martian. This will be revealed in strip #1500." Sure enough, strip 1500.
• Book Ends: The final panel (other than guest strips and "The End") is a reshoot of the very first panel.
• Brain In A Jar: Adolf Hitler himself.
• Color-Coded Patrician: The head Death.
• Crisis Crossover: at the end of 2008, the universe imploded due to temporal paradoxes ocurring simultaneously in most of the themes. The characters all ended up at the Infinite Featureless Plane of Death, but eventually managed to get their respective continuities rebooted.
  • Although they might not have gotten it completely right... Nazis run the world.
• Dead Artists Are Better: Discussed in this strip.
• Death Is Cheap: None of the Deaths have actually collected more than one soul in the entire storyline. Nor, for that matter, have they collected a pay-check, leading to Death Takes a Holiday...
  • Death of Being Ground by a Mars Rover Rock Abrasion Tool might be getting his chance soon, though!
• Death Takes a Holiday: The Deaths going on strike.
• Deconstructor Fleet
• Deep-Immersion Gaming
• Demoted to Extra: Quercus from the Space theme is currently this.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Wrestle out Cthulhu, technically. Steve also wrestled to death Death of Being Wrestled to Death by Steve when he showed up to collect the soul, which caused its own problems. That introduced the Paradox Department, which is run by a giant frog. He has also wrestled a Balrog to death. Without even getting any burns.
• Done a George Lucas: Redirect Namer (with kind permission from Dr. Morgan-Mar), referencing his adding missing sound effects to a podcast.
• Don't Explain the Joke: This is the comic that averts this rule so hard and fast that you'd never know it existed. If there is any chance that a non-genius in the audience will not get the joke, it will be explained, in great detail. Not only are the explanations incredibly interesting in their own right but they often make the actual joke funnier. This comic's annotation brings explaining the joke Up to Eleven.
• Dying Race: The author pointed out that a page on this trope is desperately needed here, in The Rant to strip #2765. Four days later, he apparently got tired of waiting and started the page.
• Easter Egg: In this strip.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The Great Dragon Sage Ardaxar makes one in this strip, during the simultaneous explosions the characters cause to restart the universe.
• Eighties Hair: In flashbacks to Jamie and Adam in college.
• Eldritch Abomination: Cthulhu (in the form of a Lego octopus mounted on a tyrannosaurus miniature) is a recurring character, and often gets wrestled by Steve.
• Everything's Better with Dinosaurs
• Eloquent in My Native Tongue: Drakk. Justified because the structure of his mouth and throat makes it very difficult to speak English.
• Everything's Built with LEGO: With the exception of Space and Fantasy themes, which use RPG figures, and Supers, which is drawn.
• Exactly What It Says On the Tin: Exactly half-subverted. It's a webcomic, but anything but irregular.
  • Although there's nothing regular about when each theme is dealt with -- it updates every day, but the updates of the themes are erratic.
  • DMM didn't originally intend to post every day, but had too many ideas not to. The strip has missed just two days since April 2003.
  • Fully averted as of October 2011. It's now neither irregular nor a webcomic.
    • This makes it a Non-Indicative Name.
• Excited Show Title: Because it wouldn't be the same without the exclamation point!
• Expospeak Gag: "Robert the Infuriated Inflorescence"
• Fate Worse Than Death: Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs is demoted to this at one point. He's not clear on exactly what he's supposed to do with the people who suffer from him -- he can't collect them like a proper Death does, after all...
• 419 Scam: The Nigerian Finance Minister. He may actually be telling the truth, but no-one believes him.
• Frogs and Toads: The source of so many improbable deaths.
• Fun With Acronyms: Secret Action Squadron Team of Cryptid Hunters.
• Genius Bruiser: Draak
• George Jetson Job Security: As stated above, Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs has been demoted and then reinstated so many times that it is hard to keep track of his job. Other deaths are also shuffled around, but poor, old Fireballs falls victim to this the most This may not happen anymore, though.
• Girl-On-Girl Is Hot: Here.
• The Grim Reaper: An entire enterprise of them, manned by a cynical "Head Death".
• Her Codename Was Mary Sue
• His Name Is: Parodied here.
• Historical Badass Upgrade: Sir Isaac Newton is portrayed as a Time Lord, and gathers various scientists from history to fix the time stream.
• Hook Hand: Colonel Haken
• Hurricane of Puns: Constantly.
  • Exhibit A: 2.7 puns per panel with one pun-less panel.
  • Then there's such things in the "Steve" theme as "Stoats in a boat", "Weasels on a diesel", and others.
• Hypocritical Humour: Starts with this.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Ishmael
• I'll Take Two Beers, Too!: Here.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Actually featured.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: A lot.
• It Was a Dark And Stormy Night: Here.
• It Will Never Catch On: The "Imperial Rome" theme.
• I Was Quite a Fashion Victim
• Kill'Em All: But thanks to the Reset Button, everything's good.
• Lampshade Hanging: Lampshades lampshading, twice. Sometimes in later strips the Lampshade Hanging takes the form of a link to this wiki.
• Land Down Under: See also Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: Head Death is the only Death to wear a non-black cape. It's blue.
• Look Both Ways
• Loveable Rogue: Mordekai insists on being called this.
• Meanwhile in The Future: Lampshaded in this strip.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: At one point, one of Death of Insanely Overly Powered Fireballs' demotions had an extremely strange name. Death of Being Stared at by a Giant Frog.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Steve
• No Swastikas: Not in the comic itself, which features swastikas in some of the early "Cliffhangers" strips, but Lego doesn't make a Hitler figurine (although you can make one using certain parts, the author chose not to). The author made him a brain in a jar. Before WWII.
• The Nothing After Death: Parodied a bit with the Infinite Featureless Plane of Death. Which isn't featureless as Head Death has a desk and the Paradox Department has an office door and his receptionist has a desk.
• Oddly Small Organization: Thus far, we've only seen a maximum of maybe a dozen-odd Deaths.
• One of Us: DMM is a fellow tropaholic, and contributor of TV Tropes.
• Overly Long Gag
  • The start of 2009. The Scientific Revolution theme currently (Aug. 2010) has a story line dealing with paradoxes created as a result of the explosion that destroyed the universe.
  • Will Shakespeare's discussion of overuse of Beat Panel.
• Overly Long Name: Valentina Irina Ranevskaya Galina Ivana Natalya Iriyushka Anastasia Sonyechka Marinochka Ineslenka Tatyana Hvorostovsky, a.k.a. Dr Ginny Smith.
• Photo Comic
• A Pirate 400 Years Too Late: The pirates become this when they are arbitrarily transported to 1940.
• Pirate Girl: Wendy Wenchgood .
• Plant Aliens: Quercus
• Plot Tailored to The Party: Played with in the "Supers" theme.
• Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: "It's science, Punk!" Made even better by the annotation.
• Public Domain Character: Several, including Hitler, Shakespeare and Cthulhu.
• Punny Name: Loren Ipsum.
• The Rant
• Reverse Mole: Erwin.
• Rubber Band History: A changed WWII and Hitler's Brain in a jar.
• Running Gag: Mostly involving Death, giant frogs and insanely-overpowered fireballs. Not to mention regular (every 100 strips or so) hobbit puns, "Oh yeah, I killed a Balrog [some number of "Again"s]", and "Nazi science sneers at X!" Two of these are lampshaded here.
• Schedule Slip: Averted; despite the name, it's had a regular schedule more or less since launch.
• Servile Snarker: Erwin.
• Sesquipedalian Smith: Parodied with the Jones family.
• Signed Up for The Dental
• Single Biome Planet: Lampshaded.
• Single-Issue Wonk / Berserk Button: DMM really, really hates Monopoly.
• Shakespeare in Fiction: A modern version, who writes Harry Potter fanfics. He likes self-inserts, which means there's also Shakespeare in Fiction in Fiction. Provided it's canon in both storylines, Will was kicked out of the TARDIS by the scientists in the Scientific Revolution storyline as they were gathering scientists after it was pointed out Will wasn't a scientist. He was kicked out around 1990 because they didn't have time to take him back to the 1500s.
• Splash Panel: Here and there. .
• Stable Time Loop Unstable Time Loop]]: Occurs in almost every theme, often subverted. Of note is the time Serron and Iki Piki's future selves attempt to bust them out of jail. It fails. Their past selves ultimately get their organs stolen, so they end up stealing the organs from their future selves. Then...
  • Timey-Wimey Ball: Things eventually get so bad that the universe gets destroyed.)
• Stealth Pun: Though only very rarely.
• Strip Buffer
• Stuff Blowing Up: The line from Excel Saga "Explosions fix everything!" could have applied here, since several characters think it might be able to restart the universe, and some are preparing to make things explode. The existence of the character "Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs" says a lot.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Pretty much the entire "Cliffhangers" theme.
• Stylistic Suck: Shakespeare's in-comic writing of his own Harry Potter fanfiction.
• Take That: #2870, among other. DMM even apologizes for it in the annotation.
• Techno Babble: This strip brings it Up to Eleven before lampshading it.
• Temporal Paradox: Built up to during the latter half of 2008, when pretty much all the themes started Time Travel story arcs, and eventually a few of those (as well as the Large Hadron Collider) started leading to paradoxes. 5 or so paradoxes occurred, and on New Year's Eve culminated in an "ominously silent explosion". New Year's Day's comic is just a big blank expanse, marked as a crossover between every theme except the "isolated" ones. Later, it was the subject of another crossover arc.

Head Death: Alright, who destroyed the universe?

• Those Wacky Nazis
• Tonight Someone Dies: Morgan-Mar announced the permanent death of a major character before the end of 2007. After setting up most of the regulars in highly perilous situations, 31 December came about -- and the "Me" character, Morgan-Mar in person, was killed.
• Too Soon: The "Steve and Terry" theme got a bit of flack when the real Steve Irwin died, though the fact that Steve woke up in the hospital from a serious injury when Steve Irwin died was entirely accidental, thanks to the miracle of comic buffers. He even apologized for the mix-up in the blurb.
• TV Tropes: The Rant frequently includes links to this very wiki, best summed up in this one-liner: "It's really good when I can just link to TV Tropes, because then I know you'll have hours of reading without me having to do anything else."
• Tropes Will Ruin Your Life: this strip warns "Do not click if you have something urgent you need to do today!"
• Two Dozen Lines No Waiting
• Unnecessarily Large Interior: The Hall of Dworin.
• Unsound Effect:
  • TRANSCEND!
  • Grab! Climb! Maintain precarious grip!
  • ICE!
• Viewers Are Geniuses: And some of the more complex ones come with footnotes, which may or not be related to the strip in some tiny way.
• Wall of Text: Parodied here.
• Webcomics Long Runner: By his own count, the 18th longest-running webcomic in existence.
  • Has long since gone well past the 3000 mark.
• Webcomic Time: Lampshaded, complete with link to the TV Tropes page in The Rant.
• We Come in Peace, Shoot To Kill: The invading Martians in the theme of the same name.
• Weird Trade Union: Deaths on strike. Which was eventually broken.
• Writer On Board: The Shakespeare theme started out as a one shot railing against the culture-deadening evils of Microsoft PowerPoint, though it moved away from this quickly.
• You Have Failed Me
• You Keep Using That Word: Used intentionally with "quantum leap".