Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence » Let Me Guess, You Are A Pirate By Day And A Cowboy Ninja By Night

Let Me Guess, You Are A Pirate By Day And A Cowboy Ninja By Night

So I was looking for something to write about for today when I noticed a certain trend in web comics that I haven’t paid attention to till now. The trend I’m speaking of is the gratuitous us of pirates, cowboys, ninjas, and any subsequent combinations of the three. Now I’m not complaining about the usage of these characters, I’m just interested on why they are the “go-to” characters in web comics these days.

Perhaps it’s because they are iconic personas in film, T.V., and radio. Or maybe it’s the amazing outfits, I don’t know. But these three character types are typically not used as serious hero figures in web comics, but instead as a vehicle for wacky humor. I’m not sure when pirates and whatnot became hilarious, I think it was around the release of the Princess Bride, circa 1987.

Whatever the case, I do enjoy a good pirate/cowboy/ninja joke. I am interested to see what the next stock characters of web comics will be though. I guess only time will tell.

Gamers. Wait, no…that’s been done. So has zombies, Jean Luc Picard and robots.

Well, I’m all out of ideas. Unless Superman parodies are the next big thing.

I forgot about Jean Luc Picard…he’s so sexy.

monks, rodeo clowns and toreadors.

Iâ€™m not sure when pirates and whatnot became hilarious

31 December 1879, of course. Think Gilbert & Sullivan.

no, i think you’re missing the point. Pirate-Ninja-Cowboy is a timeless combination. Its not a trend that needs replacing.

Plus there’s the eternal struggle of Pirates vs. Ninja. You know…there’s two kinds of people in the world:
coke or pepsi?
beatles or stones?
ginger or maryann
PIRATE OR NINJA?!!!!!

Man, I must be out of the loop. When did the cowboys kill all the robots and replace them?

Like Westworld in reverse, that is.

cat dog mouse

i had a dream where a bag of groceries came with free life. I had so many babies after many trips to the grocery store, that I trained them all to become hairless ninja. Oddly, they all had french accents and proceeded to become ninja starship captains. I’d been trying to work that into my comic somehow, but the segue for such a thing has never hit me.

It became the crutch joke in webcomics about the time the self-aware “this is a comic strip!” joke became tiresome.

Monkey-ninja-pirate-robots are way past their prime. Grandfathered comics, like Diesel Sweeties, can stay, because RStevens doesn’t depend on “robot” to be intrinsically funny – characters just *happen to be* robots.

But all the latest “Archetype-I and Archetype-II” comics must go away.

It is a good thing you have been elected Emperor of WebComics, Bup.

Your sweeping generalization has been turned into an Imperial Edict, and saved every single one of us.

All hail.

>>It is a good thing you have been elected Emperor of WebComics, Bup.

I know. Remember the last guy? He was terrible!

OH DEAR GOD! I just realised. This is an article about comic strips.

The fourth wall MUST BE BREACHED.

Hello everyone out there.

I’ve certainly made use of the pirate/ninja combo in my comic, and ironially i’ve also done a cowboy/ninja drawing too..it’s just yet to be used. It was actually at the request of a fan, so I guess you can blame them for all these combos. Though shouldn’t robot’s be thrown into the mix too?

Well, if you ask me (which you didn’t) cowboys haven’t quite yet reached the status of pirates and ninjas. The way I’d place it is; robots already out (before I really started reading webcomics, I see them a lot in older ones that aren’t really updated anymore), pirates declining, ninjas at or slightly past their peak, cowboys rising, and my guess would be clowns were due soon. Kind of an ironic, self conscious reference to old time joker’s look contrasted with modern humour. I know if I was gonna write a webcomic (which I won’t) It’d be about clowns.
CLOWNS!
And that joke where you breach the fourth wall definitely and blissfully behind us, never to return.

Oh, and dinosaurs.
DINOSAURS!

[…] We’ve written of Ninja Bunny on this page previously, and having reached 200 strips yesterday, creator Phillip Spence celebrates this week with guest strips starting today (courtesy of Furry Black Devil); look for contributions from Head Injury Theater and Grumps later this week. Grumps, we should note, today has a strip from Paul Southworth, who himself is almost running self-made guest strips this week at Ugly Hill (showing his original concept for the strip, circa 2002). If this keeps up, every single webcomic in existence could be part of a grand guest strip circle at the same time. […]

[…] time back, I wondered if Ninja Bunny might not have been the ultimate confluence of webcomics memes. You got yer cute animal, yer single-panel gag and no continuity to worry about, yer ninja … […]

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Let Me Guess, You Are A Pirate By Day And A Cowboy Ninja By Night

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