Captain Broadband
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Internet Service Provider: It’s quite a significant increase actually. You were on roughly 300MB a month download. You’re now on… 102.68GB??? That can’t be right. |
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Captain Broadband: Hero of the Internet. Pioneer of the Digital Wastes. Depraved lunatic that needs to be put on a child offender’s list. What a guy.
Accidentally based on The Tick, Captain Broadband features the satirical misadventures of the insane titular character Captain Broadband and his quest to promote ‘the wonders of Broadband and Piracy'. Super strong and apparently unaware of his own destructive tendencies, our hero will follow through his own unique, somewhat retarded brand of incomprehensible justice. He is joined by a small child, who follows him unwillingly on his adventures.
Captain Broadband’s adventures usually either involve his attempts to improve ‘the flow of Broadband’ and promote acts of piracy, or being placed in situations that require his heroic fortitude, usually leading to the deaths of hundreds.
The web comic was released irregularly from winter 2005 to spring 2009 - it is marked as having a "final" issue..
Can be read here.
Tropes used in Captain Broadband include:
- Anti-Hero: Not really much of a hero in general.
- Art Evolution: By the author’s own admission, he started the comic when he had no idea how to draw. It improved over time, but with many fluctuations and tests of art style along the way.
- His workHate comics appear to be intentionally scribbly.
- Beleaguered Assistant: The Little Jimmy (or possibly Little Arthur)
- Bound and Gagged: Goodbye, parents!
- Breakout Character: Averted. The shop clerks attempt to team up with Sola and thus ensure their promotion. She fails to acknowledge them even before disposing of them.
- Captain Ersatz: The Tick, right down to antennae and large chin.
- This was apparently unintentional on behalf of the author, who realized he had essentially recreated The Tick only sometime after issue 2. Then he just rolled with it.
- Car Fu: Throwing manned cars to defeat your opponents is not acceptable when your opponent is an imaginary cat.
- Clark Kenting: Captain Broadband has a secret identity costume. He has yet to use it, though.
- Cloudcuckoolander: If only this were an acceptable excuse.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Played for laughs in Captain Broadband’s continuous acts of child abuse.
- Dark Action Girl: Sola
- Death Is Cheap: Captain Broadband dies at the end of issue 2. He comes back at the beginning of issue 3; only the Little Jimmy cares where he’s gone.
- Designated Hero: He is the main character of the comic. He is the hero of the comic. He is Not a Hero!
- Did Not Do the Research: Broadband does not work that way.
- Digital Piracy Is Evil: Captain Broadband would disagree
- Dumb Muscle: Captain Broadband
- Evil Overlord: Seen in darkness only once. Never revealed, but constantly hinted to. Possibly never existed in the first place.
- Failure Hero: Whilst Captain Broadband’s definition of success differs drastically from all forms of logic, his heroic victories are usually not positive, including crashing airplanes without rescuing those inside, destroying retail blocks, and convincing children to perform acts of piracy.
- This never seems to stop him from deciding he did the right thing, though.
- Fluffy the Terrible: Though it causes no damage itself, in chasing Imaginary Pussy, Captain Broadband destroys a large portion of the neighborhood.
- Furry Fandom: And then they masturbate all over it!
- Genre Savvy: Captain Broadband, though not necessarily the right genre.
- Also Sola, though she seems to be making very vague guesses.
- Heroic Sociopath: Captain Broadband, though his definition of heroic is somewhat lacking…
- Idiot Hero: Captain Broadband
- In the Name of the Moon: I am the wielder of the fiber-optic antennae, obtainer of the Gauntlets of Grip, possessor of the will and knowledge of the ancient Broadoniansu, who have entrusted their secrets unto me. The Ultimate in Information and Communications Technology! CAPTAIN BROADBAND!
- It's Been Done: My parents always told me: Son, you’re special. You were born for great things. They were wrong!
- Karma Houdini: Though the police seem aware of his disastrous antics, Captain Broadband hasn’t yet even been acknowledged to exist.
- Little Jimmy: Captain Broadband’s nameless partner exists solely for this purpose. Captain Broadband provides him with explanations of events solely for the sake of providing explanations for events. Apparently it doesn’t even matter what he’s explaining as long as he’s explaining something. No matter how gibberish it can be.
- Mind Control Eyes: You will forget your parents ever existed.
- Mistaken for Terrorist: Averted in Issue 5. Though heavily likely to be the cause of the plane’s crash, no one accuses him of this.
- Wasn’t it the guy pretending to be the guy from Bioshock at the beginning of the issue?
- We might be going back to mind control eyes here…
- Moral Dissonance: Captain Broadband levels of moral dissonance is so high that it can only be a delusional defect in his mind that he can think of himself as a superhero. At one point he grabs a moving vehicle and throws it at his opponent with driver still attached. As it lands, a humble passerby can doing nothing but as the crash explodes into him. Captain Broadband’s target? A kitten.
- Nigh Invulnerability: Like his copyrighted counterpart, Captain Broadband appears to be unhurtbeatable
- Obfuscating Stupidity: After listening to Captain Broadband for a while, you just don’t know anymore…
- Overused Copycat Character: Though poorly drawn and with a chin larger on a different axis, Captain Broadband shows a specific likeness to some other heavily muscular, blue-garbed hero.
- Parental Abandonment: Ignoring Captain Broadband’s later actions, parents who leave a teenage (and possibly younger) son at home for an undisclosed length of time deserve a reasonable amount of comeuppance.
- Reckless Sidekick: The Little Jimmy continuously pushes his limits with Captain Broadband’s patience!
- Schedule Slip: Never kept a schedule.
- Spikes of Villainy: Greedy’s Polluto suit
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: A clown randomly informs the reader that the idea for Captain Broadband (a hero based on a concept that only came into play at the end of the 1990s) came well before a certain another blue-garbed, Nigh Invulnerable hero created in the 1980s.
- Too Dumb to Live: You do not punch a bomb to disarm it!
- Unsound Effect: Abuse!
- Walls of Text: Captain Broadband will exposit now.
- Warped Aesop: Piracy is perfectly fine and guilt will fade in time.
- What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome??: Captain Broadband works to defend downloading torrents of the Internet AND THAT IS ALL.
- What the Hell, Hero?: What are you doing looking up Furry Porn on my computer!?
- Word Salad: When Captain Broadband explains anything.
- You Fail Physics Forever: Captain Broadband’s description of binary and light is unnecessarily complicated.
- Not to mention you can’t liquidize the damn stuff!