The Book of Biff
The Book of Biff is a one-panel Web Comic written and illustrated by Chris Hallbeck. It details the mis-adventures of Biff, a human-like being with a bizarre mouth and intense eyebrows. Updated every weekday, the comic is unique in that Biff never speaks, and no explanation is ever given to the origin of Biff, his strange powers and gadgets, or the fact that he's apparently immortal.
The first strip was posted on January 2, 2006. The last strip, #1902, was posted in December 2014.
Tropes used in The Book of Biff include:
- Art Evolution: Just compare some of the older strips to some of the newer.
- Awesome but Impractical: This strip is probably one of the more understated examples.
- Bald of Awesome: Biff
- Bloodless Carnage: Biff can be dismembered or otherwise hurt in many different ways without a single drop of blood.
- Body Horror: Lots.
- Bottle Episode: The entire series is, in a way, considering that one of the explicit limitations of Biff's universe is that no other humans characters will ever be seen or heard. Most strips take place within Biff's home.
- Brain Bleach: Blanked
- Bungling Inventor: Biff, frequently.
- Crossover: One April 1st gag involved Maximumbler, Chris Hallbeck's other webcomic, and Biff switching main characters for a day. They became Biffmumble and The Book of Max, each using certain elements of the other (IE Biff's surreal humor in 3-panel form. Maximumble with a cynical scene complete with caption)
- Convection, Schmonvection: Averted so hard recently as to be an inversion; reader comments joke that Biff appears to have been previously made of cheese or vanilla ice cream. (See: Unexplained Recovery below)
- Companion Cube: While Biff never interacts with other people objects are a different matter. For example his toaster is on more anti-depressants than he is.
- Department of Redundancy Department: "Biff's two favorite kinds of birds are the crow... and the crow again."
- Fanon states that the Crow Again is a bird of prey of unknown origin that feeds on chickens and farmers' wives.
- The point is that he can't find any other birds.
- Disembodied Eyebrows: Biff's eyebrows are more like antennae than anything.
- Invisible Cast: Anyone who Biff interacts with is either off screen, or has left prior to the events in the panel.
- Mythology Gag: There's no story to speak of in the Book of Biff, but comics sometimes reference each other to form something like Canon. For instance, every comic taking place in Biff's office will show that Biff still owns the Impossibly Complex Chair.
- Biff also owns a yellow rocket with red fins, that he flew into space multiple times.
- Negative Continuity: Mythology Gags aside, very little in the Biff universe has long-term ramifications. Which is to say, nothing.
- Planet Eris: Bizarre and outlandish things are presented in a matter-of-fact manner.
- The Rant: There is always a paragraph of musings below each comic that mostly serves to tell of a similar experience that happened in the author's own life.
- Rule of Funny: The best explanation for Biff's origin, strange powers and gadgets, and immortality.
- Sadist Show: And this is why. The only thing more common in the comic than surrealism is Biff getting cartoonishly maimed.
- Of course, the fact that Biff always reacts to his injuries with apparent indifference allows readers to feel better about laughing at his pain.
- Shout-Out: To Girls with Slingshots here.
- Spinoff Babies: An entire week of young Biff and the crazy shenanigans he did as a kid.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Spaghetti.
- To the point that his family gets him spaghetti themed objects because they have no idea what he likes.
- Unexplained Recovery: Many comics show Biff being mutilated in hilarious ways, including having his skull caught on fire, having his head and torso eroded away, wearing Jellyfish Sandals, or getting mangled by crawling inside a box fan. By the next day he is always completely healed, just in time to be mauled in some new way.
- Unusual Eyebrows: Each of Biff's eyebrows seem to be made of a single long, thick, and rigid strand of hair.
- The Voiceless