Goats

"Jon: So, uh, what are you guys up to these days? Diablo: Oh, we're just trying to save the universe. Fish: From doom!"

A web comic by Jon Rosenberg. It started in April, 1997 and stopped updating at the end of April 2010 when the author hit financial troubles, and (despite Rosernberg's promises to the contrary) seems to be effectively abandoned now. It started out as Mundane Fantastic, but with the Infinite Typewriters arc branched out into a multiversal Planet Eris. It features a diverse cast of characters having wacky, dimension-hopping, Speculative Fiction adventures. The main characters include:


 * Jon the Author Avatar, probable Weirdness Magnet.
 * Phillip a programmer who may be The Chosen One.
 * Toothgnip formerly one of Thor's chariot-pulling goats.
 * Diablo a Satan worshiping chicken who can reattach his body parts.
 * Oliver Diablo's foul-mouthed, Ax Crazy son.
 * Fish a rather sweet-natured, naïve goldfish who lives in beer.
 * Fineas Fish's badass, cybernetic alter ego, who eventually got his own body.
 * Bob and Neil a pair of aliens with a Flying Saucer.
 * Farmella a Defector From Decadence who has the Knack for dimension-hopping along the Pub Axis.
 * One Death a god of the Mayan underworld who runs a software company.
 * and many others...

The Kudzu Plot is approaching Alien Geometries territory, but here's the basics:

Jon and Phillip tricked God into turning himself into a pork chop, and ate him. Normally, this would have spelled doom for The Multiverse. Fortunately, Woody Allen hired a Mayan programming firm, headed by One Death, to write a program on his laptop to keep the Multiverse going. Unfortunately, the program has a bug that will cause it to crash when the Mayan Calendar rolls over on December 21, 2012, leading to the end of the multiverse as we know it. The race is on to locate The Programmer (who might be Phillip) prophesied to repair the program. Of course, the ones who control The Programmer will control the multiverse, so wacky interdimensional hijinks are ensuing.

Another major plot element is the three-way feud between Fineas, Toothgnip, and Oliver.

The webcomic can be found here.


 * Big Eater -- The Doughboys can devour creatures many times their own size.
 * B Side Comic -- megaGAMERZ 3133t, a Dada Comic written by Diablo.
 * Butch Lesbian: Cornhusk is a butch lesbian scientist who happens to be a giant talking corn on the cob
 * Carnivore Confusion -- Totally avoided. People eat food made of animals. TalkingAnimals eat food made out of people. The Plant Aliens seem to be omnivores, too. Everybody's happy.
 * Chewbacca Defense -- When Jon was accused of baking Mrs. Truman's first-grade class into cookies, he got off because the cookies were delicious.
 * The Couch -- Many early strips feature the characters sitting on The Couch watching TV.
 * Deus Ex Machina -- The Doughboys, a Deus Ex Machina that comes in a handy pocket size. Note that this an in-universe Deus Ex Machina, as the monkeys wrote them into existence to help Phillip.
 * The End Of The Multiverse As We Know It -- if the program on Woody Allen's laptop isn't fixed before the Mayan Calendar rolls over in 2012.
 * Everything's Better With Infinite Monkeys
 * Flying Saucer -- Neil and Bob's Cool Ship.
 * Fourth Wall Mail Slot
 * God -- Jon and Phillip tricked him into turning into a pork chop, and then ate him.
 * Good Thing You Can Heal -- Diablo, whose main problem with getting dismembered is tracking down his various body parts afterwards.
 * The Grays -- Neil and Bob
 * Guest Strip
 * Hollywood Homely -- Jon, who looks no worse than the other characters, to the point of his unattractiveness being an Informed Flaw.
 * Incredibly Lame Pun -- Fineas.
 * Inn Between the Worlds -- The Pub Stub.
 * It Runs on Nonsensoleum -- The engine of Bob and Neil's UFO allegedly runs off the happiness produced by teleporting kittens to good homes. No one knows where the Pop-Tarts come from.
 * Brick Joke -- years later, when most of the inhabitants of the Earth are in suspended animation due to lack of Writers, the Math Führer has developed a Theory of Everything which proves "zat kittens is mathematically interchangeable vith ze brechfasst pastry!"
 * Let's Meet the Meat -- The Doughboys don't talk but appear to be sentient, and don't seem to mind being eaten. Also, Thor's goats, as in the original Norse myths.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters
 * Losing Your Head -- An recurring problem for Diablo. The Merch includes a Diablo action figure with a detachable head.
 * Made From Real Girl Scouts -- Actually, that's too cliched -- Diablo used Mrs. Truman's first-grade class instead. This is not the only case of Human Resources being used for cooking. Given that the humans eat meat and some of the main characters are TalkingAnimals (food animals, at that), this seems fair.
 * The Merch
 * Millennium Bug -- In the Mayan calendar.
 * Mobile Suit Human -- More literally than usual -- Oliver rides around on the headless, cyborged corpse of a motorcycle gang leader. A subversion, as it's not really designed to blend in.
 * Monkeys on a Typewriter -- The basis for the "Infinite Monkeys" arc.
 * The Multiverse -- the home dimension of most of the main characters is known as Manhattan 3. Others are Xibalba, Topeka Prime, Middle Pangaea, and the Infinite Monkey dimension.
 * Mundane Fantastic -- The comic started here and branched out with the Infinite Typewriters arc.
 * Nailed to the Wagon -- Phillip in the multiverse.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero -- and by "it" we mean the entire multiverse.
 * Physical God -- God until he got eaten. Also, Thor.
 * Planet Eris -- a whole multiverse full of them.
 * Plant Aliens -- Hooray for diversity!
 * The Rant
 * Real Life Writes the Plot -- sometimes amusingly.
 * Running Gag -- Diablo losing his head, Jon's bad luck with women
 * Satan -- got red skin and 100% less plaid shirts. Or does he?
 * Shout-Out
 * Stupid Jetpack Hitler -- There is an in-universe series of movies featuring Good Hitler as a Tuxedo and Martini secret agent.
 * Take That -- Microsoft
 * Talking Animal -- Toothgnip, Diablo, Oliver, Fish, Fineas
 * Unusually Uninteresting Sight -- "I am Thor, god of thunder!" "He's blocking the TV."
 * Weirdness Censor -- People in Manhattan-3 seem not to notice quite how weird Jon and Phillip's friends are. Come take a gander at this funny short chap.
 * Write Who You Know -- Phillip, Lori, and a number of one-shots. And, of course, Jon himself.