Nedroid
Nedroid is the pen name of online artist Anthony Clark who draws silly pictures and comics "when there's nothing good on TV." You may recognize his work doing the colors for an --ahem-- little-known comic called The Adventures of Dr. McNinja.
On his own site, Nedroid draws all kinds of interesting stuff - he has a special fondness for dinosaurs, ladies, and lovingly rendered landscapes following his self-image character, the Eternal Homeless Robot.
But the most popular and recurring subject, and likely the reason you're here, is comics based around the adventures of Beartato, Reginald and their friends, officially titled Beartato Comics. Here are some of the characters:
- Beartato is half-bear, half-potato, all heart. He's naïve, and impossibly charming.
- Reginald is his best friend who is all bird, all muscle, all brain, and totally available, ladies! Ahem. Reginald is also all ego, and rather desperate. He fancies himself a ladies' man yet hasn't had much success so far.
- Harrison is... who the hell is Harrison? Moving along...
- There's also an assortment of minor characters, that don't usually get any attention these days. Don't worry about them for now.
Also of interest are his collaboration comics with Emmy, under the shared name Laserpony Studios. There aren't any recurring stories or characters, but they're always a new, surreal and hilarious experience.
Not to be confused with Metroid. Not even as a Shout-Out.
- Aborted Arc: Actual story arcs are rare but Nedroid is infamous for switching back to gag-a-day mode and never finishing the ones he starts.
- A Day in the Limelight: It rhymes with “Schmarrison Stories”
- Alt Text: Most comics have it (the first one, a one-off, is July 2008; it became a more regular feature the next month). When switching web hosts in May '09, however, converting all the alt text (and comic titles) from before that date was deemed unreasonable to convert. You can still get all that on the livejournal mirror.
- April Fools' Day: In 2010, Dinosaur Comics replaced the entire cast with Nedroid characters (Reginald in place of T. Rex, Beartato in place of Utahraptor, etc). Not just in the latest page, but in the entire archives. You can still see it here. The newspost at the bottom shows you where to find some other cool ones.
- Art Evolution: Over time, the art style got more simplistic, yet more polished. In contrast, the older comics had a bunch of artistic experimentation, ranging from sketchy to finely touched.
- Author Avatar: The Eternal Homeless Robot.
- Awesome but Impractical: INVISIBLE SWORDS!!!
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"Probably the best and worst thing about invisible swords is that they are invisible |
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- Ax Crazy: This comic.
- Bait and Switch: All the time. For example, in the origin stories comic, we see a robotic shark-man being assembled in a lab...only for baby Harrison to toddle in a few panels later.
- Brick Joke: The Alt Text in the last page of the Robotginald story arc references Reginald's supposedly full name.
- But He Sounds Handsome: A common gag with Reginald.
- Carnivore Confusion: Addressed by the Alt Text of a Thanksgiving strip, which states that no, the bird and half-potato do not eat turkey and roast potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner.
- Celestial Body: Space pants.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Parodied in Webcomics Am I Right.
- Combining Mecha: Combined with Department of Redundancy Department: BATTLE-READY BATTLE DRACULA, BATTLE READY!
- Contrived Coincidence: Double Subverted in the Harrison Adventures story arc. Harrison runs into what look like Beartato and Reginald underground and is surprised that they happened to be there at the same time. "Beartato" replies he is actually an Identical Stranger called Buttfranklin. Harrison asks "Reginald" his name...and he turns out to be the actual Reginald, who had fallen down a hole shortly before.
- Cool Loser: Reginald
- Dem Bones: Ethan
- Doomed Hometown: Beartato was born on one, according to the SECRET ORIGINS comic.
- Early Installment Weirdness: The art style was all over the place, and Beartato and Reginald weren't even the main characters!
- Enhance Button: Parodied in Crime Lab. Luckily, the killer's face just happens to be a 4x4 block of pixels and compression artifacts.
- Escalating Punchline: The Alt Text often functions as another layer of this.
- Everything's Even Worse With Bearsharks: I CAN NEVER STOP SCREAMING
- Fling a Light Into the Future: Beartato's parents sent him off in a rocket before their planet was destroyed, playing the Superman origin story straight. Parodied with Reginald, who ended up in a similar rocket, but his father just wanted to get rid of him.
- Frozen Face: Reginald very rarely closes his beak.
- The Generic Guy: Occasional minor character Gary fills this role.
- "Gift of the Magi" Plot: Linky.
- GIFT: Implied in the Alt Text of this strip--Beartato's new name will be chosen by internet poll, and turns out to be "Fartballs".
- Harmful to Minors: Reginald says something bad, traumatizing Beartato... and himself.
- Heroic Willpower: Reginald has it.
- Heterosexual Life Partners: Beartato and Reginald. There's even a Running Gag that they're Mindlink Mates.
- Hurricane of Puns: Linky.
- Hypocritical Humor: In "Advice About Comics."
- And I Must Scream: The Alt Text of this comic:
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"It grows from here. Reginald begins reducing more and more actions to simple lines of dialogue: "nod", "dance", "laugh", "love". Eventually his muscles atrophy; his body wastes away. Only the left hemisphere of his brain remains alive, the spoken word itself reduced to mere thought. And once Beartato earns his master's degree and invents a brain-to-speech synthesizer, that final thought is at last heard: "Weep a single tear for the life I have wasted". |
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Beartato: You might as well give up, Reginald. You see...I knew your plan all along. |
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- Inelegant Blubbering: Beartato, after reliving his "rough" childhood.
- Insane Troll Logic: This strip. Reginald's advice on working out, given that it's better to do fewer reps with more weight, is to take it to its logical conclusion and do zero reps of a million pounds.
- Insistent Terminology: Referring to vampires as "draculas".
- It Got Worse: Exaggerated in this strip.
- It's All About Me: Reginald.
- Literal Metaphor: That's my name, don't wear it out!
- Mathematician's Answer: Answers to questions on the Nedroid tumblr are rather obtuse.
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spiderholic: is reginald purple or blue |
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- Metaphorgotten
- Metaphor Is My Middle Name: He's "Reginald Danger Safety", apparently.
- Mind Screw: A storyline revolving around Reginald's "brain problems".
- Missed the Call: Harrison constantly pines away to be swept up in some big heroic adventure like Beartato and Reginald often are. He's offered several chances practically on a silver platter, but turns his nose up at all of them until recently. Then he comes across Beartato[1] and Reginald, who literally fell into the same thing he was chosen to do.
- My Name Is Not Durwood: Reginald takes this to the extreme when, at the end of an evening of romance, he accidentally calls his date Becky "Lord Voldemort."
- Negative Continuity: "Everything I draw is canon, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff."
- Out of Focus
- Quickdraw, Merlin, and Meatball.
- Harrison, though acknowledgement of this has become a sort of Running Gag.
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Nedroid: When I was originally drawing this, I was trying to think of as many characters as I could that had appeared in Beartato strips. I honestly forgot about Harrison until I was about halfway through the coloring process. |
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- When Beartato and Reginald pre-bought tombstones for the three of them, Harrison's says "Always there when we needed him".
- Running Gag: Among the others listed across this page is "I guess I got X problems" where X will be anything.
- Sadistic Choice: Made fun of in this strip.
- Shout-Out: To My Immortal here.
- Show Within a Show: Reginald's comic strip "Bartholomew", which is essentially a Garfield ripoff drawn by somebody who's never seen a cat in real life.
- Space X: In space, Beartato runs into an alien who looks like Reginald with antennae at least at first and calls him "Space Reginald", to which the alien replies "How did you know my name?"
- Story Arc: Robotginald.
- Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Beartato's Night Before Christmas pastiche:
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The stockings were hung by the chimney with care |
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- Tempting Fate: Beartato counted his problems and came up short.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Linky.
- Tonight Someone Dies: This teaser reveals that in the next strip either Beartato, Reginald, a guy with a mustache, or Harrison will die!
- Unfortunate Names: Beartato's underground doppelganger Buttfranklin Buttwhistle. It's mentioned that he finds the above-worlders' names to be equally silly to him.
- The Un-Reveal: This fan art. For those interested, Nedroid himself later answered this question on his "about" page.
- The Voiceless: The Eternal Homeless Robot.
- Voodoo Shark: Beartato and Reginald don't wear safety equipment because they wished for a genie to make them invincible while skateboarding.
- What's a Henway?: Subverted in this comic:
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Reginald: "Hey Beartato! Boy, it sure smells like updog in here!" |
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- ↑ Well, actually just a Beartato Doppelganger, Buttfranklin