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Sluggy Freelance

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Sluggy Freelance
Sluggy Freelance Logo
Author(s)Pete Abrams
Websitewww.sluggy.com
Current status/scheduleUpdates weekdays
Launch dateAugust 25, 1997; 27 years ago (1997-08-25)
Genre(s)Comedy horror, satire, science fantasy, dramedy

Sluggy Freelance is a long-running daily webcomic written and drawn by Pete Abrams. Starting in 1997, it is one of the oldest and most successful webcomics, and as of 2012 had hundreds of thousands of readers. Abrams was one of the first comic artists successful enough to make a living from a webcomic.

While the strip began as a gag-based series in which the three main protagonists (Torg, Riff and Zoë) would stumble from one brief, bizarre, parody-centric adventure to the next, the characters and plotlines gradually became longer and more serious.

However, even the more dramatic and soap operatic story arcs often conform to the common gag comic strip format. While there is often sexual innuendo and cartoon violence, the comic contains little strong profanity and no explicit nudity.[citation needed]

Creation

Sluggy Freelance started on August 25, 1997.[1][2] In an interview, creator Pete Abrams said that he had always hoped the strip could become his full time job, and treated it like a job from the start. According to Abrams, he promoted the comic to friends, at conventions, and in posts on newsgroups, and popularity came from "organic credibility".[2] In an interview, Abrams said that the initial plan was to write out the original characters as new ones were introduced, to keep the strip fresh, but after around a couple of years found he like the characters so much that he stuck with them.[1]

In a 2007 interview Abrams would not reveal the origins for the name "Sluggy Freelance", instead joking that he couldn't hear the question and that his great-grandfather was named "Sluggy Freelance".[1]

Abrams draws the strip on card stock and uses Photoshop for lettering and coloring.[2]

Premise

According to a 1999 review, Sluggy Freelance followed the adventures of Riff, a self-described freelance bum and inventor, and Torg, a web site designer trying to make a living. They are aided, or sometimes hindered, by a Mini Lop rabbit named Bun-Bun. Early characters also include their neighbor Zoë, the strip’s straight woman, and Dr. Lorna, a parody of talk show psychologist Dr. Laura.[3]

A 2002 review described the comic as "telling a complex ongoing story in a punchline-a-day style. But his absurdist humor is entirely too geeky and left-field for mainstream newspapers. His characters, a pack of cheerfully put-upon twentysomethings, include a weapons-happy mad scientist, a psychotic rabbit-like creature with a switchblade, and a ruefully friendly Giger-esque alien; they frequently fight killer robots and drop into alternate dimensions as Abrams parodies popular film [including the Matrix], television, and video games."[4]

While the strip started as a gag-a-day comic, it soon expanded into complex storylines. Abrams said that he felt able to have longer story arcs because readers could catch up with stories through the online archive, As time progressed he wanted to write longer and more involved stories, and in order to tell the story quickly enough, he added more panels to each daily strip.[1]

Characters

Main article: Characters of Sluggy Freelance

In a 2007 article, NPR described the main characters as Torg, an "everyman"; Riff an "inventor with a fondness for explosives"; Zoë as "the closest to normal of the whole bunch"; Gwynn "who likes to dabble in witchcraft"; Bun-bun, a talking, "very mean Mini Lop rabbit who carries a switchblade"; and Kiki, a talking "sweet natured ferret".[1]

Torg is the primary protagonist; he is a cheerful and impulsive nerd who frequently finds himself going on wild adventures (though rarely of his own volition). Often, these adventures are enabled by Riff. Zoë, the most normal character of the bunch, serves as the futile voice of reason for the cast. They are accompanied by their sometimes-witch friend Gwynn, a psychopathic switchblade- & Glock-wielding rabbit Bun-bun, the hyperactive ferret Kiki, and a shape-shifting alien named Aylee.[citation needed]

Traditions

Sluggy Freelance has featured several yearly recurring themes, although many of them have eventually been broken or discontinued due to developments in the overall plot.

In an early 1998 plotline, one of Riff's inventions sent Torg to the "Dimension of Pain." Every Halloween afterwards for several years, a different demon was sent to Earth to try to bring him back, failing in amusing and unexpected ways.

Bun-bun has tried to kill Santa Claus every Christmas, with continuously escalating violence; the fact that Bun-bun became the Easter Bunny early on in the strip merely added spice to the relationship. There was a break in the tradition when Bun-bun was thrown out of time and was not present in 2005, and aside from an attack more inconveniencing than dangerous in 2006 he has not resumed the feud.

Also on almost every Christmas/Hanukkah, Torg and Riff have attempted to continue their own, private tradition of giving each other "a beer every year." Usually they never quite get it right, for a variety of reasons, including being trapped in a mummy's tomb, selling their shoulders for science, and other random occurrences.

Every year on 25 August, the comic features a small animation to commemorate the comic's anniversary, most of which involve Kiki singing karaoke. The Fifth Anniversary, August 25, 2002, fell on a Sunday, which traditionally was reserved for full color extended comics. This comic combined the two themes, presenting a full-color animated comic, which advanced one frame at a time.

In every New Year's Eve storyline, Bun-bun gets drunk on 151 Rum, which results in his being uncharacteristically kind and courteous (such as apologizing to Torg or praising the main cast).

Other guest strips and crossovers

Abrams invites other well-known webcomic artists to do the strip for a week once or twice a year, while he goes on vacation.[citation needed] A frequent result is a parody of the strip itself, other webcomics, other creative works and/or artists, including Scooby-Doo and Ayn Rand.[citation needed] Clay Yount of Rob and Elliot was guest artist several times prior to taking over Saturday duties.[citation needed] Abrams also has various other artists providing art for Saturdays and Sundays, most recently Stuart Taylor and Lauren Taylor of Chain Bear.[5][better source needed]

Baen SF author John Ringo was profoundly affected by Sluggy while writing his Legacy of the Aldenata series; as a result, the crew of a massive mobile artillery platform that first appears in the third book of this series (When the Devil Dances) are depicted as die-hard Sluggy fanatics to comedic effect (up to, and including, naming their vehicle after Bun-Bun and painting a giant picture of Bun-Bun on it). They are joined in the fourth book (Hell's Faire), by a character based on a friend of Pete Abrams who was the inspiration for Riff. A section of original Sluggy comics set in the alternate future world of the novels appears in the end of Hell's Faire, and a sampler of Sluggy storylines is included on the CD-ROM bound into this book. Pete possibly returned the favor shortly thereafter by entitling one subchapter "Hell's Unfair." Another possible Sluggy reference is in the short story "Lets Go to Prague" where one character uses the codeword Kizke. This is the common mispronunciation of the demon K'z'k. (The proper pronunciation has no vowels.)

Also, the first two novels of Ringo's distant-future Council Wars series have appearances by an irascible, treacherous, switchblade-toting, telemarketer-hating AI in a rabbit-shaped body—created by a long-dead fan of an unnamed 20th-century webcomic.

In S.M. Stirling's Conquistador, one of the characters unleashes a self-destruct sequence with the code phrase "Override B-1 oasis". Override B-1 is a program that causes the Sluggy character Oasis to unleash her own level of destruction.

Numerous other webcomics have referenced Sluggy Freelance, and various guest artists on Sluggy Freelance have included their own webcomics' characters in their guest strips, including User Friendly who swapped A.J. for Torg for a week.[6][7]

Additionally, shortly after the birth of Leah Nicole Abrams in the middle of "The Love Potion" storyline, Sluggy Freelance entered a three-week-long side story. The story involved Ki and Fooker of General Protection Fault, Lindesfarne and Ralph of Kevin and Kell, and Bruno and Fiona of Bruno the Bandit attempting to play the roles of Sluggy Freelance characters and find the original cast. Other characters, such as Gav from Nukees, and Trudy from General Protection Fault, made appearances. The non-comic characters from Mystery Science Theater 3000 also appear, in their famous silhouetted form.

Gwynn from Sluggy Freelance has appeared in the webcomic General Protection Fault, and Trudy Trueheart, a character from that webcomic, is Gwynn's cousin.[8]

There are several implicit cross-overs with R. K. Milholland's Something Positive, such as a comic where Aubrey was forced to sell her bunny, an aggressive Mini Lop with a love of sharp things, to "Kiki's Petstore".[9] In the webcomic Freefall, two rabbits are shown and the character Helix names them Kevin (presumably after Kevin Dewclaw in Kevin and Kell) and Bun-Bun.[10]

In the game Munchkin by Steve Jackson Games, a monster card for players to fight against has a picture of a switchblade wielding Bun-Bun. There is a 5 in 6 chance that the monster is a perfectly normal bunny rabbit and a 1 in 6 chance that it is "that" rabbit. Possibly also a reference to the killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In the expansion called Munchkin Bites there is a monster card called "The Evil" which refers to a horror story in the comic.

Sluggy Freelance is part of the Create a Comic Project.[11]

Success and critical reaction

Abrams was one of the first cartoonists to make a full-time living from webcomics.[12][13] The Washington Post reported in 2005 that there were only "a dozen or more" cartoonists able to earn a full time living from webcomics, though there were also "thousands" of cartoonists earning some money this way.[12] As of 2005, Sluggy Freelance had more than 100,000 daily readers,[12] and in 2012 it was reported to have "hundreds of thousands" of readers.[2] Writing for The Beat, Maggie Vicknair called it one of the oldest and most successful webcomics.[14]

The Sunday Times described Sluggy Freelance in a 2006 article as "TV buff heaven ... think The Office-style sardonic observations about everyday life set in Buffyverse's universe, with Battlestar Galactica thrown in ... very funny indeed."[15]

Tasha Robinson reviewed the fifth print collection for The A.V. Club in 2002. They called Sluggy Freelance "one of the oldest and best of the ongoing Internet comic strips", and said it makes sense for new comic artists to publish on the internet instead of in newspapers "where they can indulge themselves in humor that doesn't require corporate approval." Robinson noted that the book included spoofs of The Matrix and slasher films in which the characters are attacked by Satan-spawned kittens and a nanotech-based Y2K bug. Robinson said that Sluggy Freelance had "irrepressible silliness", but that the book did have a serious side, building on a previous plot threads and story developments. They said that "Abrams' twisted version of wit... ranges from bad puns to Breathed-esque social commentary", and said that Sluggy Freelance and other webcomics "collectively offer hope for the future of the comic-strip medium."[4]

An early review of the comic was published in 1999 in MIT's campus newspaper, The Tech. Reviewer Dan McGuire reviewed the first book printing of the comic and said "Sluggy Freelance sits comfortably in the top tier of comic strips out there today, and Is it Not Nifty deserves to be on every MIT student’s shelf." They noted that being published on the web allowed Abrams "a certain degree of freedom that his newspaper colleagues don’t have" such as occasional tame jokes about alcohol and sex, and that "Sluggy Freelance seems to be targeted to the typical Internet user... [it] assumes at least a cursory knowledge of Star Trek, the X-Files, and Aliens. And, like all Internet humor, it makes a few jokes about Bill Gates and Microsoft Windows."[3]

Sluggy Freelance was included in a 2007 exhibition by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art called "Infinite Canvas: The Art of Webcomics".[16]

Writing for AppScout in 2007, writer Whitney Reynolds said that "Sluggy Freelance was better in the 90's, when you didn't have to slog through ten years of continuity and alternate universe and rabbits to figure out what the heck is going on."[17]

Collections

In addition to being available on the website, Sluggy Freelance has been collected in paperback since just over a year after it first premiered. Pete Abrams and his associate Tom Rickets (originally known as "T-Shirt Tom") have sold these books and other Sluggy merchandise at science fiction conventions as well as on the web.

  • Sluggy Freelance: Is It Not Nifty? (Plan 9 Publishing, December 1, 1998)[18][3]
  • Sluggy Freelance: Worship the Comic (Plan 9 Publishing, June 30, 1999)[19]
  • Sluggy Freelance: When Holidays Attack! (Plan 9 Publishing, December 17, 1999)[20]
  • Sluggy Freelance: Game Called on Account of Naked Chick (Plan 9 Publishing, September 25, 2000)[21]
  • Sluggy Freelance: Yippy Skippy, the Evil! (Plan 9 Publishing, February 1, 2001)[22]
  • The Bug, The Witch, And The Robot (Plan 9 Publishing, January 1, 2001)[23]
  • Sluggy Freelance – A Very Big Bang! (Plan 9 Publishing, 2002)[24] (Available at IndyPlanet)[25]
  • Sluggy Freelance: Fire and Rain (Plan 9 Publishing, 2003)[26] (Available at IndyPlanet)[27]
  • Sluggy Freelance: Dangerous Days
  • Sluggy Freelance: Ghosts in the Gastank (Available at IndyPlanet)[28]
  • "Sluggy Freelance: The Holiday Wars" (Available at IndyPlanet)[29]
  • "Sluggy Freelance: Vampires & Demons" (Available at IndyPlanet)[30]
  • "Sluggy Freelance: Redemption" (Available at IndyPlanet)[31]
  • Sluggy Freelance : Born of Nifty : Megatome 01: Books 1–3 Is it Not Nifty / Worship the Comic / When Holidays Attack (2006)[32]
  • Sluggy Freelance: Little Evils: MegaTome 02 (Books 4, 5 & 6) (Red Brick Press, September 18, 2007)[33] Includes 25 bonus pages of never-before printed storylines.[34]

Spinoff games

Get Nifty

In 2005, Blood & Cardstock Games published Get Nifty, a card game based on Sluggy Freelance designed by Rob Balder with illustrations by Abrams. It is a 2–6 player game taking about 40 minutes per game.[35]

Button Men expansion

In 2001, Cheapass Games published an expansion to their game Button Men of six buttons with Sluggy Freelance characters.[36]

Role-playing game

According to a post on the Sluggy Freelance forums, a Sluggy Freelance RPG was in development in 2006; it was being written by R. Brent Palmer in consultation with Pete Abrams and was first playtested at Dragon Con later that year.[37][better source needed]

Author

Pete Abrams at Dragon*Con in 2007.

Pete Abrams (born August 4, 1970)[citation needed] is the writer and illustrator of Sluggy Freelance. Abrams went to The Kubert School but was unable to get a job in the comics industry after school. Instead he got a job as a web designer for a marketing firm, and started Sluggy Freelance as a creative outlet. He did not believe the attention span on the Internet was long enough for the kind of elaborate graphic novels he was used to drawing, so instead he went for a quickly drawn daily strip.[38] Sluggy eventually became so successful that it is now his full-time job, and he is reputed to be the first person to make a living at drawing webcomics.

As of 2005, Abrams lived in Denville, New Jersey.[12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Hansen, Liane (August 26, 2007). "'Sluggy Freelance' Celebrates 10 Years on the Web". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-11-23.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. ^ a b c d Fenn, Mike (2012-09-27). "Artist Pete Abrams on the "organic credibility" of Sluggy Freelance". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2020-11-23.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. ^ a b c McGuire, Dan (March 19, 1999). "BOOK REVIEW: Sluggy Freelance -- There's more than porn on the 'net". tech.mit.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-23.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. ^ a b Robinson, Tasha (April 19, 2002). "Pete Abrams: Yippy Skippy, The Evil!". AV Club. Retrieved 2020-11-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. ^ "Chain Bear". Archived from the original on 2010-02-12.
  6. ^ Abrams, Pete (1999-12-19). "Sluggy Freelance Archives - Book 4: Game Called on Account of Naked Chick". archives.sluggy.com. Retrieved 2020-11-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. ^ Illiad (1999-12-13). "UserFriendly". ars.userfriendly.org. Retrieved 2020-11-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. ^ http://www.gpf-comics.com/wiki/Gwynn
  9. ^ Milholland, RK (2004-03-09). "Burying and Planting pt 2". Something Positive. Retrieved 2020-11-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  10. ^ Stanley (1999-05-31). "Freefall 00184 May 31, 1999". freefall.purrsia.com. Retrieved 2020-11-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  11. ^ "Picturevoice: Health Communication Through Art." Presentation. Society for Public Health Education 60th Annual Meeting. Philadelphia, PA. November 6, 2009.
  12. ^ a b c d Walker, Leslie (2005-06-15). "Comics Looking to Spread A Little Laughter on the Web". Washington Post. p. D1. Retrieved 2012-02-05.
  13. ^ Hoffman, Allan (June 18, 2003). "Paying Pals Keep Free Web Sites Going". Newhouse News Service.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  14. ^ Vicknair, Maggie (2016-12-28). "Webcomics in Review: Sakana". The Beat. Retrieved 2020-11-23.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  15. ^ O'Brien, Danny (February 26, 2006). "The tooniverse explodes". The Sunday Times, p. 27[S].
  16. ^ MacDonald, Heidi (2007-09-05). "Syndicated Comics". The Beat. Retrieved 2020-11-23.
  17. ^ Reynolds, Whitney (June 26, 2007). "Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad". AppScout. Archived from the original on 2007-07-02. Retrieved 2020-11-23.
  18. ^ Amazon.com book details Retrieved 31-October–2009
  19. ^ Amazon.com book details Retrieved 31-October–2009
  20. ^ Amazon.com book details Retrieved 31-October–2009
  21. ^ Amazon.com book details Retrieved 31-October–2009
  22. ^ Amazon.com book details Retrieved 31-October–2009
  23. ^ Amazon.com book details Retrieved 31-October–2009
  24. ^ Amazon.com book details Retrieved 31-October–2009
  25. ^ IndyPlanet Book 7 Page Retrieved 17-March–2013
  26. ^ Amazon.com book details Retrieved 31-October–2009
  27. ^ IndyPlanet Book 8 Page Archived 2013-03-16 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 17-March–2013
  28. ^ IndyPlanet Book 10 Page Archived 2012-01-18 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 17-March–2013
  29. ^ IndyPlanet Book 11 Page Archived 2013-03-16 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 17-March–2013
  30. ^ IndyPlanet Book 12 Page Archived 2013-03-16 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 17-March–2013
  31. ^ IndyPlanet Book 13 Page Retrieved 17-March–2013
  32. ^ Amazon.com book details Retrieved 31-October–2009
  33. ^ Amazon.com book details Retrieved 31-October–2009
  34. ^ Sluggy store catalog Retrieved 31-October–2009
  35. ^ "Get Nifty". BoardGameGeek. Retrieved 2020-11-23.
  36. ^ "Sluggy Freelance". Button Men. 2017-04-24. Retrieved 2020-11-23.
  37. ^ Sluggy Freelance RPG—and Dragon*Con forum post by R. Brent Palmer, Wed July 19, 2006 3:45 am. Retrieved 31-October–2009
  38. ^ AstroNerdBoy. "AstroNerdBoy Presents: Pete Abrams, Creator of "Sluggy Freelance" Part 1". www.astronerdboy.com. Retrieved 2020-11-23.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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