Irregular Webcomic!: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''[[Suspiciously Specific Denial|No, I'm totally not trying to get]] ''[[Suspiciously Specific Denial|Irregular Webcomic!]]'' [[Troperiffic|mentioned on every single page of TV Tropes.]]'' |'''David Morgan Mar''' }}

A webcomic done with [[LEGO]] figures and [[Tabletop Games|roleplaying]] miniatures, by [[Tropers/Dmmaus|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 iswas nowdeclared finished, although weekly "annotations" will(i.e. blogs) appeared nearly every continueSunday. ItAfter isa few years alsoof re-running its entire archive, addingwith a new re-run annotation toon each strip, IWC was [[Uncanceled]] on 2015-04-26 with the support of a [[Patreon]] campaign.

== '''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 Horribly Wrong|gone bad. Very, very bad]]. Like Fantasy, also intended to be chronicling the events of an RPG, rather than directly telling a story. [http://irregularwebcomic.net/850.html With one of the same players, no less]. [http://irregularwebcomic.net/1009.html They transpose rather neatly].

* ''[[Myth BustersMythBusters]]'': Adam and Jamie test somewhat more unusual myths than normal (this one crosses over with the Death one, below, [[Stuff Blowing Up|a LOT]]).

* Steve and Terry: The adventures of a crocodile hunter ([[No Celebrities Were Harmed|no, not THAT one]]), his long-suffering wife Terry, Dame Jane Goodall, and [[Cthulhu Mythos|Cthulhu]].

* Nigerian Finance Minister: The source of [[Four One Nine419 Scam|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 (Franchise)|Indiana Jones]]'' spoof. In a few early strips, [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/89.html this is also an RPG campaign].

* Espionage: a spoof of [[James Bond (Filmfilm)|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 (Film)|From Russia Withwith Love]]''.

* Imperial Rome: [[Exactly What It Says Onon 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 High School Student|Ordinary College Student]] and [[Implausible Deniability|overly zealous]] [[The Men in Black|government agent]].

* Pirates: [[Exactly What It Says Onon 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 {{spoiler|dead}} for a long time. Specifically, {{spoiler|murdered by himself}} from the future. He then went {{spoiler|on the run from death}}, but now is {{spoiler|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 [[Butt Monkey|Insanely Overpowered Fireballs]], who has been [[George Jetson Job Security|demoted and re-promoted several times]].

Can be found [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/ here]

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

----

* [[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.

* [[Beat Panel]]: A favorite device of the author, heavily lampshaded

* [[The Big Damn Kiss]]: Right [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/3075.html here]. And it's about damn time.

* [[BraininaBrain In a Jar]]: [[Adolf Hitler]] himself.

* [[Color -Coded Patrician]]: The head Death.

* [[Crisis Crossover]]: [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/comic.php?current=2161&dir=next5 at the end of 2008], {{spoiler|the universe imploded due to [[Temporal Paradox|temporal paradoxes]] ocurring [[Meanwhile in Thethe Future|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 [[Continuity Reboot|rebooted]]}}.

** Although they might not have gotten it completely right... {{spoiler|Nazis run the world.}}

* [[Dead Artists Are Better]]: Discussed in this [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1890.html 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 {{spoiler|Death of Being Wrestled to Death by Steve when he showed up to collect the soul, which caused its own problems.}} That introduced the {{spoiler|Paradox Department, which is run by a giant frog.}} He has ''also'' wrestled a [[The Lord of the Rings|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 [[Viewers Are Geniuses|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''. [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2414.html This comic's] annotation brings explaining the joke [[Up to Eleven]].

* [[EasterDying EggRace]]: InThe author pointed out that a page on this trope is desperately needed here, in [[The Rant]] to [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/14662765.html this] strip #2765]. Four days later, he apparently got tired of waiting and started the page.

* [[EarlyEaster Bird CameoEgg]]: The Great Dragon Sage Ardaxar makes one inIn [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/22521466.html this] strip], during {{spoiler|the simultaneous explosions the characters cause to restart the universe}}.

* [[Eighties Hair]]: In flashbacks to [[Myth BustersMythBusters|Jamie and Adam]] in college.

* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: [[HPH.P. Lovecraft|Cthulhu]] (in the form of a Lego octopus mounted on a tyrannosaurus miniature) is a recurring character, and often gets wrestled by Steve.

* [[Everythings Better With Dinosaurs|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.

* [[Built With Lego|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 Onon the Tin]]: Exactly half-subverted. It's a webcomic, but anything but irregular.

*** This makes it a [[Non -Indicative Name]].

* [[Excited Show Title!]]: Because it wouldn't be the same without the exclamation point!

* [[Expospeak Gag]]: "[[Bob the Angry Flower|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...

* [[Four One Nine419 Scam]]: The Nigerian Finance Minister. He may actually be telling the truth, [[Cassandra Truth|but no-one believes him]].

* [[Frogs and Toads]]: The source of so many improbable deaths.

* [[Fun Withwith Acronyms]]: '''S'''ecret '''A'''ction '''Squa'''dron '''T'''eam of '''C'''ryptid '''H'''unters.

* [[Girl -On -Girl Is Hot]]: [http://irregularwebcomic.net/2561.html Here].

* [[The Grim Reaper]]: An entire enterprise of them, manned by a cynical "Head Death".

* [[Her Codename Was Mary Sue]]

* [[His Name Is--]]: Parodied [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/443.html here.]

* [[Historical Badass Upgrade]]: Sir Isaac Newton is portrayed as a [[Doctor Who (TV)|Time Lord]], and gathers various scientists from history to fix the time stream.

* [[Hook Hand]]: Colonel Haken

* [[Hurricane of Puns]]: Constantly.

** [http://irregularwebcomic.net/2826.html 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

* [[IllI'll Take Two Beers, Too!]]: [http://irregularwebcomic.net/961.html Here.]

* [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy]]: Actually ''featured''.

* [[Incredibly Lame Pun]]: A lot.

* [[It Was a Dark Andand Stormy Night]]: [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/743.html Here].

* [[It Will Never Catch On]]: The "Imperial Rome" theme.

* [[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 Thethe Future]]: Lampshaded in [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2177.html 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 {{spoiler|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. {{spoiler|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]]

* [[Plot Tailored to Thethe Party]]: Played with in the "Supers" theme.

* [[Pre -Ass -Kicking One -Liner]]: [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2694.html "It's science, Punk!"] Made even better by the annotation.

* [[Public Domain Character]]: Several, including Hitler, Shakespeare and Cthulhu.

* [[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 [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2754.html here].

* [[Schedule Slip]]: Averted; despite the name, it's had a regular schedule more or less since launch.

* [[Sesquipedalian Smith]]: Parodied with the Jones family.

* [[Signed Up for Thethe Dental]]

* [[Single Biome Planet]]: Lampshaded.

* [[Single -Issue Wonk]] / [[Berserk Button]]: DMM really, ''really'' [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2623.html hates] ''[[Monopoly]]''.

* [[Shakespeare in Fiction]]: A modern version, who writes ''[[Harry Potter (Literaturenovel)|Harry Potter]]'' [[Fanfic|fanfics]]. He likes self-inserts, which means there's also Shakespeare in Fiction in Fiction. Provided it's canon in both storylines, {{spoiler|Will was kicked out of the [[Doctor Who (TV)|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]]: [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1455.html Here] and [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1497.html there]. .

* [[Stable Time Loop]] Unstable Time Loop]]: Occurs in almost every theme, often [[Subverted Trope|subverted]]. Of note is the time {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|the universe gets destroyed.}})

* [[Stealth Pun]]: Though only very rarely.

* [[Strip Buffer]]

* [[Stuff Blowing Up]]: The line from ''[[Excel Saga (Animeanime)|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]]: [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2870.html #2870], among other. DMM even apologizes for it in the annotation.

* [[Techno Babble]]: [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1503.html 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 Arc|story arcs]], and eventually a few of those (as well as the Large Hadron Collider) started leading to paradoxes. {{spoiler|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.

{{quote| '''Head Death:''' {{spoiler|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, {{spoiler|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[[The veryOther wikiTropes Wiki]], best summed up in [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1929.html this one-liner]: "It's really good when I can just [[A Wizard Did It|link to TV Tropes]], because then I know you'll have hours of reading without me having to do anything else."

* [[TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life]]: [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2177.html this strip] warns "Do not click if you have something urgent you need to do today!"

* [[Two Lines, No Waiting|Two]] ''[[Serial Escalation|Dozen]]'' [[Two Lines, No Waiting|Lines No Waiting]]

* [[Unnecessarily Large Interior]]: The [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1455.html Hall of Dworin].

* [[Unsound Effect]]:

** [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2964.html TRANSCEND!]

** [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1949.html Grab! Climb! Maintain precarious grip!]

** [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/3032.html ICE!]

* [[Viewers Are Geniuses]]: And some of the [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1280.html more] [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1960.html complex] [http://irregularwebcomic.net/341.html ones] come with [[Don't Explain the Joke|footnotes]], which may or not be related to the strip in some tiny way.

* [[Webcomics Long Runners|Webcomics Long Runner]]: By [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2000.html his own count], the 18th longest-running webcomic in existence<ref>Using strip count as a metric. He notes his strip-a-day schedule means his count increases more than twice as fast as the popular Monday-Wednesday-Friday pattern.</ref>.

** Has [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/3160.html long since] gone well past the [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/3000.html 3000] mark.

* [[Webcomic Time]]: Lampshaded, complete with link to the [[TV Tropes]] page in [[The Rant]].

* [[We Come in Peace, Shoot Toto Kill]]: The invading Martians in the theme of the same name.

* [[Weird Trade Union]]: Deaths on strike. {{spoiler|Which was eventually broken.}}

* [[Writer Onon 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...]]

[[Category:IrregularWeb WebcomicComics]]

[[Category:WebcomicWeb Comics of the 2000s]]