Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence

Crossoverpalooza And St. Elsewhere

Jeph Jacques continues his quest to feature cameos from every webcomic in existence. Helen and Dave appear in the background of panel 1 in yesterday’s Questionable Content. This is an incredibly dangerous trend … stick with me here.

QC is fast becoming the Kevin Bacon of webcomics; if Dwayne McDuffie’s theory of TV crossovers applies to webcomics as well, this means webcomcis as we know them don’t really exist. Counting cameos and explicit crossovers, you can play Six Degrees of Marten and Faye with Punks and Nerds, Something Positive, Midnight Macabre, New Gold Dreams, Queen of Wands, Bobbin, Scandal Sheet, Scary Go Round, Bobbins, Goats, Worlds of Peril (subscription needed, links through Fineas), megaGAMERZ 3133T, The Creatures In My Head, Nukees (which gives us Schlock Mercenary), Mystic for Hire, Buzzboy, Narbonic, Lil’ Mel, Picture Story Theatre, Fans (subscription needed, links through Dr Narbon), College Roomies From Hell, Roomies/It’s Walky/Joyce and Walky, Shortpacked, Melonpool (iteration 1), Cool Cat Studio (reference in Fans to Evil Mike), Lethal Doses, Winter, Mac Hall, Megatokyo, Applegeeks, Angry Zen Master, Little Gamers, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, Waiting for Bob, User Friendly, When I Grow Up, Wigu, Magical Adventures in Space, The TV Network Channel, Overcompensating, PvP, Penny Arcade, Diesel Sweeties, and Sluggy Freelance all sharing a reality.

If the guest strips from when Pete Abram’s daughter was born are considered canon, you can work in Bruno the Bandit, Kevin and Kell and GPF (which leads to Newshounds, Help Desk and Kernel Panic). Actually, allowing guest strips is probably a bad idea, as it permits the Jacques/Logan rivalry further space to spread its poison. Finally, if you consider content not explicitly designed for the web, you can even link in Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield! And that’s just off the top of my head. Now considering that Melonpool rebooted, and Jeff Rowland has a tendency to delete universes, this means that Jacques may have managed to invalidate the existence of most of webcomics.

For the love of God, Jeph … stop hurting webcomics.

[…] I have contributed to the destruction of all webcomics universes everywhere! And in case you missed the connection, the specific comic of mine being referenced here is this one. Posted 2:44 pm […]

Old school crossover…

http://www.krazylarry.com/d/19991014.html

So much shame.

Wow. I didn’t realize this phenomenon was so dangerous! Fortunately, I’ve been busy making the webcomic world safter without even realizing it… other webcomics always appear as books, not characters!

http://www.samandfuzzy.com/archive.php?id=131

Yes sir, no post-Crisis-styled inter-universe homogeny going on in this comic! Long Live the Multiverse!

I could be wrong, but I think the cameo was inspired by the first panel of this strip:

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/users/narbonic/012606that_suggested.jpg

I’m a damn moron. It’s this strip:

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/users/narbonic/012506a_stiffness.jpg

OH SHIT THEY’RE ONTO ME

Actually, merely implicite cameos (as is the usual case) probably shouldn’t count, since there’s always the “alternate universe version” argument. For example, take the SGR cameo in QC – don’t the comics happen on opposite sides of the Atlantic? That should be enuff to prove non-canonicality.

It doesn’t, of course, exclude the existence a paradoxical *canonical* crossover / cameo loop. I’ve been meaning to look into that for quite a while now.

You missed this Faye appearance in Star Slip Crisis. She’s the ghost in the second frame.

http://www.starslipcrisis.com/d/20051223.shtml

Oh for God’s sake… the habit of having characters perform cameos in other strips is a long-time tradition going back to the turn of the century. In fact, it goes FURTHER back to comic books and comic strips in the newspapers.

It is a fun way to give a fellow strip a nod and say “hey there!” and while some cartoonists may get all uppity and upset about it, there’s NOTHING WRONG WITH IT.

In fact, it even helps spread the readership of comics to the other strips where cameos occur.

This is not a “danger” for webcomics. It’s a long-standing tradition and means to help encourage readers to spread out and read other strips.

Robert A. Howard, Tangents

Fans and CRFH have at least in theory destroyed their own reality by having a crossover that happens simultaneously yet at different times of the year, THEN having a second crossover that happen at the same time of the year.

Maritza
CRFH.net

Hey, Look! Robert Howard missed the point.

Again!

Who knew?

IIRC, Dr. Narbon is fictional within the Fansverse, so I wouldn’t count that. Maybe Nukees to COTC to CRFH to Fans!? You can bring in Brutno the Bandit and GPF (Trudy’s cousin) without using SF is Missing.

Oh, and the Schlock Mercenary link features Gav_artist, not Gav_character. You can instead get SM through the Torg / Bun Bun cameo.

i think you forgot to mention that if you can link to bobbins, you can link through that to superosity via the bobby comes from another dimension story.

and i don’t think i need to tell you what happens when you link to superosity.

you link to everything on keenspace/comic genesis

god damn

It’s even worse than that– Jeff Rowland’s fact-based OVERCOMPENSATING crossed over with his fictional WIGU, so OUR reality is part of WEBCOMICS reality, and this will lead to THE END OF THE UNIV–

BLAGHLAGBAGLH MY JERKCITY CROSSOVER WILL BE THE END OF US ALL HGLBAGGAHLUGBGLH

DONGS

Incidentally, if y’all want to track the crossovers further along, you ought to check out this handy little page here:

http://crossovers.dragoneers.com/

And as far as the total number of cameos goes, I’m pretty sure PA is wayy ahead of QC. Jeph just gets all the famous ones.

[…] Second, if you haven’t seen the discussion about how Jeph Jacques threatens every webcomic and person you love, go read it quick. And thanks to Tropylium for informing us that there is a fairly comprehensive list of crossovers that can be easily referenced. When I wrote the crossover piece, I was actually thinking that we need something like that, but graphical (spurred, no doubt by Nic’s suggestion along the lines of the music map). And much like Nic, it should not be done by me, as I am a lazy, lazy man. […]

You’re welcome.

[…] To begin with, comics referencing other comics isn’t anything new. Fleen has spoken about this at length, and The Webcomic Crossover and Cameo Archive keeps a record of all the crossovers out there. (Warning: You can get lost in there for several hours.) […]

[…] Now, to business. We’ve spoken previously about the prevalence of crossovers and cameos in webcomics; mostly it’s individual characters migrating to other strips for a hearty laugh-chuckle. Sometimes it’s cameos of real people. […]

[…] Gary Of course, all that creamy, Wheatony goodness (and I can tell you truly that I never in my life thought I’d type those words) portends ominously for webcomics. Recall our discussion on webcomics and St Elsewhere from last year? Well, consider this (found via the TV Tropes webpage, which has branched into webcomics as well; please note our description there — I’m so proud). […]

[…] this week, they at least share a reality (and longtime readers of this page will recall the dangers inherent in such situations). Let’s hear what the writer has to say on the subject: Since […]

[…] Examples of Ms Everywhere are free-flowing at JennyEverywhereDay.com, but don’t feel restricted to just one day of the year; Jenny can be used any time you like (with the proper disclaimers) to tie all of comics into one overarching shared reality, just in time to destroy everything. […]

[…] we’ve previously established that Questionable Content is the locus of all webcomics crossovers and thus exists in […]

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