Dork Age/Web Comics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The "Haley speaks in cryptograms" story arc of The Order of the Stick was largely regarded as a Dork Age while it was transpiring, given that it took the only female main character and eliminated her ability to deliver the verbal humor for which the strip is known for over 100 strips. The climax of the plot may have made up for it in the minds of some fans, however, as it ushered in the Haley-Elan relationship and gave crucial character development to both characters. Still, the actual aphasia hasn't been mentioned since it disappeared.
  • Sonic the Comic Online seemed to go through one for ages after the syndicate arc. The series' main villain, Dr. Robotnik, had disappeared, his second-in-command Grimer had gone quiet, and Sonic was constantly dealing with the actions of an insect mafia called "The Family" and a media slur campaign. This went on for a good ten issues (at a time when the comic was releasing three to four issues a year), and suffered from a lot of Schedule Slip and Filler. This all built up to issue 249 when Grimer was said to be behind everything, only for three successive specials to come out to try and finish off all the pre-250 stuff planned so that 250 would make sense (see the aforementioned Schedule Slip). 250 then revealed the return of Robotnik as a supercomputer controlling a lot of Mobius. This went exactly nowhere as, despite this sudden and massive change in status quo, with the whole planet at war against Robotnik's machines, it took another four issues for Robotnik to actually reappear, during which time pretty much every character's story refused to acknowledge the main status quo, with one character dealing with magical beings from another dimension, another dealing with an adventure in a magical dimension, a third story about two characters who were stuck on another planet, and the forth story slot taken up by a four part House of the Dead story that many people grew sick of due to bad Purple Prose-filled dialogue.

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