Sluggy Freelance
Encyclopedia
Sluggy Freelance is a popular, long-running daily webcomic
written and drawn by Pete Abrams. The comic has over 100,000 daily readers and premiered on August 25, 1997. Abrams is one of the few, and first, webcomic creators successful enough to make a living as an artist.
While the strip began as a gag-based series in which the three main protagonist
s (Torg, Riff and Zoë) would stumble from one brief, bizarre, parody
-centric adventure to the next, the characters and plotlines have gradually become longer and more serious. However, even the more drama
tic and soap opera
tic 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.
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 the 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).
In early 2007, with the start of the Chapter Entitled "Aylee" Abrams announced on his sites' news-feed that he had intentions to complete the Sluggy Freelance story after 10 years, and that the comic was entering its "Endgame," with dramatic changes that would impact the characters deeply. He hinted, however that it would likely take the strip some time to tie up all the loose ends in question.
of the strip itself, other webcomics, other creative works and/or artists, including Scooby-Doo
and Ayn Rand
. Clay Yount of Rob and Elliot was guest artist several times prior to taking over Saturday duties. Abrams also has various other artists providing art for Saturdays and Sundays, most recently Stuart Taylor and Lauren Taylor of Chain Bear.
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 the late 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 http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=991218&mode=weeklyhttp://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19991213.
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.
There are several implicit cross-overs with R.K. Milholland's Something Positive
, where Bun-bun is indirectly referred to. Milholland goes as far as imply that Bun-bun was Aubrey Chorde's bunny when she was a teen, and stole her flick-knife when she was forced to sell him to Kikis' Petstore by her mother. In an episode of Freefall, wolf engineer Florence has caught a couple of rabbits for dinner; the robot Helix thinks they are intended as pets and names them Kevin (presumably after Kevin Dewclaw in Kevin and Kell
) and Bun-Bun. The comic is part of the Create a Comic Project
.
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.
has described Sluggy Freelance 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."
In its early years, Sluggy Freelance's various online and print incarnations received several other notable reviews charting out its pioneering spirit in the early world of web comics. In her 2002 review of Abram's fifth printed collection The Onion A.V. Club National Associate Editor Tasha Robinson described Abrams' work as the leading edge of creative comics going online to escape the "depressing downward spiral into paralytic banality" of tightly managed, formulaic syndicated newspaper strips. Mourning the loss of comic greats like the Far Side
and Calvin and Hobbes
, she argues that "it makes sense that the spiritual children of Watterson and company have migrated to the Internet, where they can indulge themselves in humor that doesn't require corporate approval." Admiring Abram's mastery of the form but not the content of strip-a-day comics, she praises Sluggy Freelances balance of humor and lengthy, intricate story development. She lauds Sluggy at the top of the class of newer up-and-coming web comics for unique "left-field" humor far too "geeky," "twisted" and astute in social commentary for the average newspaper.
Even as early as 1999 The Tech
, MIT's oldest and largest newspaper provided a stellar review by Contributing Editor Dan McGuire of Abram's first printed collection, Is It Not Nifty? Poking fun at the Internet's stereotypical association with pornography, McGuire introduces Sluggy Freelance as a cutting edge alternative endeavor on this virtual frontier and the relative artistic freedom it allows its creator, and ability to speak well to the culture of its audiences. While regretting the initial book lacks color weekends (something improved in future editions), McGuire praises the memorable characters, the inclusion of a bonus story for fans, and declares "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."
s as well as on the web.
designed a card game
based on Sluggy Freelance named Get Nifty. The player does not need to read or know anything about the webcomic in order to play the game, but the knowledge is useful for setting up deeper strategies.
A game lasts at least an hour, depending on how many people are playing. The ultimate goal of the game is to win attacks of Danger and Boredom to Get Safe and Weird and further defending those states while accumulating the necessary points to "Get Nifty". Players use characters and objects, each with their own points of danger, niftiness, weirdness, and safety, to attack each other or themselves in order to achieve the basic states before being allowed to accumulate Niftiness. Other players may interfere or be requested to interfere by adding to attacking or defending points or by even changing the plot (overall stage and base statistics and constant effects).
Most cards have special effects to them, ranging from canceling others to sorting through either the draw or discard decks. Players should be aware of what affects what before considering playing certain attacks as these can significantly change the course of the game. For example, Oasis returns to her player's hand unless she succeeds in battle and Aylee can override the Playstayshun 2 (which gives infinite weirdness, giving immunity to boredom attacks). A card that would be canceled by one that is already in play is canceled the moment it comes into play, and should also be taken into account.
was written by R. Brent Palmer in consultation with strip originator Pete Abrams. It was first playtested at Dragon Con
later that year.
Pete Abrams (born August 4, 1970) 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 novel
s he was used to drawing, so instead he went for a quickly drawn daily strip http://www.astronerdboy.com/comic-strips/kiosks/advice/Pete_Abrams-p1.html. 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 webcomic
s. He currently lives in Denville, New Jersey
, U.S.
, and is married with two daughters, Leah Nicole Abrams and Sarah Emily Abrams.
Webcomic
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....
written and drawn by Pete Abrams. The comic has over 100,000 daily readers and premiered on August 25, 1997. Abrams is one of the few, and first, webcomic creators successful enough to make a living as an artist.
While the strip began as a gag-based series in which the three main protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
s (Torg, Riff and Zoë) would stumble from one brief, bizarre, parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
-centric adventure to the next, the characters and plotlines have gradually become longer and more serious. However, even the more drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
tic and soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
tic story arcs often conform to the common gag comic strip format. While there is often sexual innuendo
Innuendo
An innuendo is a baseless invention of thoughts or ideas. It can also be a remark or question, typically disparaging , that works obliquely by allusion...
and cartoon violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
, the comic contains little strong profanity and no explicit nudity.
Characters
The characters in Sluggy Freelance are varied and diverse. The primary protagonist Torg 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 Torg's genius inventor friend, 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.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
Halloween
Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...
afterwards for several years, a different demon
Demon
call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...
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
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
, with continuously escalating violence; the fact that Bun-bun became the Easter Bunny
Easter Bunny
The Easter Bunny or Easter Rabbit is a character depicted as a rabbit bringing Easter eggs, who sometimes is depicted with clothes...
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
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
/Hanukkah
Hanukkah
Hanukkah , also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE...
, Torg and Riff have attempted to continue their own, private tradition of giving each other "a beer
Beer
Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...
every year." Usually they never quite get it right, for a variety of reasons, including being trapped in a mummy
Mummy
A mummy is a body, human or animal, whose skin and organs have been preserved by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme coldness , very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs, so that the recovered body will not decay further if kept in cool and dry...
's tomb, selling their shoulders for science, and other random occurrences.
Every year on the 25 August, the comic features a small animation to commemorate the comic's anniversary, most of which involve Kiki singing karaoke
Karaoke
is a form of interactive entertainment or video game in which amateur singers sing along with recorded music using a microphone and public address system. The music is typically a well-known pop song minus the lead vocal. Lyrics are usually displayed on a video screen, along with a moving symbol,...
. 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).
Evolution of Comic's Art and Tone
Sluggy Freelance began with a series of parody plot-lines which, while adding character developments and even some recurring characters were fairly stand-alone. As the comic progressed, however Abrams began adding ongoing mysteries, intrigues and a series of "epic" stories that took Sluggy in a different direction. An example is the introduction of the mysterious character Oasis, whose mysterious past and threat to the cast becomes a backbone of some of the most important later plots. Abrams art also took on an increasingly dynamic and complex tone in many of these later stories, including weeks of full color or experimental graphics and as many as 15 panels in a single day, making the strip feel more like a comic book or graphic novel in some of its most dramatic moments. Despite this, Abrams worked hard to maintain the comic's characteristic humor and quirkiness even in the midst of moments of great emotion and levity. A notable exemple of this deepening of the drama in the webcomic is the chapter "Fire and Rain" which broke several traditions in the site, has a far more dark and detailed art style and is almost completely free of comical elements.In early 2007, with the start of the Chapter Entitled "Aylee" Abrams announced on his sites' news-feed that he had intentions to complete the Sluggy Freelance story after 10 years, and that the comic was entering its "Endgame," with dramatic changes that would impact the characters deeply. He hinted, however that it would likely take the strip some time to tie up all the loose ends in question.
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. A frequent result is a parodyParody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of the strip itself, other webcomics, other creative works and/or artists, including Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo is an American media franchise based around several animated television series and related works produced from 1969 to the present day. The original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, was created for Hanna-Barbera Productions by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears in 1969...
and Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
. Clay Yount of Rob and Elliot was guest artist several times prior to taking over Saturday duties. Abrams also has various other artists providing art for Saturdays and Sundays, most recently Stuart Taylor and Lauren Taylor of Chain Bear.
Baen SF
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
author John Ringo
John Ringo
John Ringo is an American science fiction and military fiction author. He has had several New York Times best sellers. His books range from straightforward science fiction to a mix of military and political thrillers...
was profoundly affected by Sluggy while writing his Legacy of the Aldenata
Legacy of the Aldenata
The Legacy of the Aldenata, also known as the Posleen War Series is the fictional universe of one of John Ringo's military science fiction series.- Premise :...
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 the late 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
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
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
The Council Wars
The Council Wars is an in-progress book series by John Ringo, published by Baen. It is a combination of hard science fiction, military science fiction, and high fantasy.-Background:...
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
Conquistador (book)
Conquistador is a 2003 alternate history novel by S. M. Stirling. Its point of divergence occurs when Pochahantas and John Rolfe have more children, creating a line of Rolfes who are related to all of the major families of Virginia...
, 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
User Friendly
User Friendly is a discontinued daily webcomic about the staff of a small, fictional Internet service provider, Columbia Internet. The strip's humor tends to be centered around technology jokes and geek humour....
who swapped A.J. for Torg for a week http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=991218&mode=weeklyhttp://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19991213.
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
General Protection Fault (comic)
General Protection Fault is a webcomic created by Jeffrey T. Darlington. It centers on the employees of a small software company called GPF Software and their misadventures...
, Lindesfarne and Ralph of Kevin and Kell
Kevin and Kell
Kevin and Kell is a furry comedy webcomic strip by syndicated cartoonist Bill Holbrook. The strip began on September 3, 1995. It is one of the oldest continuously running webcomics....
, and Bruno and Fiona of Bruno the Bandit
Bruno the Bandit
Bruno the Bandit was a webcomic drawn by Ian McDonald about an incompetent bandit in a fantasy setting. The strip began on July 20, 1998, and a new strip was posted every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until October 23, 2009. It is published online by Keenspot, and in print by Plan 9 Publishing...
attempting to play the roles of Sluggy Freelance characters and find the original cast. Other characters, such as Gav from Nukees
Nukees
Nukees is a webcomic by Darren "Gav" Bleuel which focuses on the lives of a group of graduate students in the department of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. The strip began on January 21, 1997, and although the author completed his nuclear engineering Ph.D...
, and Trudy from General Protection Fault
General protection fault
A general protection fault in the Intel x86 and AMD x86-64 architectures, and other unrelated architectures, is a fault that can encompass several cases in which protection mechanisms within the processor architecture are violated by any of the programs that are running, either the kernel or a...
, made appearances. The non-comic characters from Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is an American cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Best Brains, Inc., that ran from 1988 to 1999....
also appear, in their famous silhouetted form.
There are several implicit cross-overs with R.K. Milholland's Something Positive
Something Positive
Something Positive or S*P is a webcomic by R. K. Milholland, which debuted on December 19, 2001. The comic is characterized by a cynical tone and off-beat humor, including its portrayals of geeks, gamers, and goths....
, where Bun-bun is indirectly referred to. Milholland goes as far as imply that Bun-bun was Aubrey Chorde's bunny when she was a teen, and stole her flick-knife when she was forced to sell him to Kikis' Petstore by her mother. In an episode of Freefall, wolf engineer Florence has caught a couple of rabbits for dinner; the robot Helix thinks they are intended as pets and names them Kevin (presumably after Kevin Dewclaw in Kevin and Kell
Kevin and Kell
Kevin and Kell is a furry comedy webcomic strip by syndicated cartoonist Bill Holbrook. The strip began on September 3, 1995. It is one of the oldest continuously running webcomics....
) and Bun-Bun. The comic is part of the Create a Comic Project
Create a Comic Project
The Create a Comic Project is a youth literacy program and webcomic created by John Baird. The program uses comics, many taken from the Internet, to encourage children to write their own narratives. The program began in November 2006 at the main branch of the New Haven Free Public Library as an...
.
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
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a 1974 British comedy film written and performed by the comedy group Monty Python , and directed by Gilliam and Jones...
. In the expansion called Munchkin Bites there is a monster card called "The Evil" which refers to a horror story in the comic.
Critical reaction
London's The Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
has described Sluggy Freelance as "TV buff heaven ... think The Office
The Office (UK TV series)
The Office is a British sitcom television series that was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on 9 July 2001. Created, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the programme is about the day-to-day lives of office employees in the Slough branch of the fictitious...
-style sardonic observations about everyday life set in Buffyverse
Buffyverse
The Buffyverse, also known as the Whedonverse or Slayerverse , is the shared fictional universe in which the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are set. This term, originally coined by fans of the TV series, has since been used in the titles of published works, and adopted by Joss...
Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction franchise created by Glen A. Larson. The franchise began with the Battlestar Galactica TV series in 1978, and was followed by a brief sequel TV series in 1980, a line of book adaptations, original novels, comic books, a board game, and video games...
thrown in ... very funny indeed."
In its early years, Sluggy Freelance's various online and print incarnations received several other notable reviews charting out its pioneering spirit in the early world of web comics. In her 2002 review of Abram's fifth printed collection The Onion A.V. Club National Associate Editor Tasha Robinson described Abrams' work as the leading edge of creative comics going online to escape the "depressing downward spiral into paralytic banality" of tightly managed, formulaic syndicated newspaper strips. Mourning the loss of comic greats like the Far Side
The Far Side
The Far Side is a popular single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from January 1, 1980, to January 1, 1995. Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world,...
and Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes is a syndicated daily comic strip that was written and illustrated by American cartoonist Bill Watterson, and syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995. It follows the humorous antics of Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his...
, she argues that "it makes sense that the spiritual children of Watterson and company have migrated to the Internet, where they can indulge themselves in humor that doesn't require corporate approval." Admiring Abram's mastery of the form but not the content of strip-a-day comics, she praises Sluggy Freelances balance of humor and lengthy, intricate story development. She lauds Sluggy at the top of the class of newer up-and-coming web comics for unique "left-field" humor far too "geeky," "twisted" and astute in social commentary for the average newspaper.
Even as early as 1999 The Tech
The Tech
The Tech may refer to:* The Tech Museum of Innovation, in San Jose, California* The Tech , the oldest and largest student newspaper at MIT and the first newspaper ever on the internet...
, MIT's oldest and largest newspaper provided a stellar review by Contributing Editor Dan McGuire of Abram's first printed collection, Is It Not Nifty? Poking fun at the Internet's stereotypical association with pornography, McGuire introduces Sluggy Freelance as a cutting edge alternative endeavor on this virtual frontier and the relative artistic freedom it allows its creator, and ability to speak well to the culture of its audiences. While regretting the initial book lacks color weekends (something improved in future editions), McGuire praises the memorable characters, the inclusion of a bonus story for fans, and declares "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."
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 conventionScience fiction convention
Science fiction conventions are gatherings of fans of various forms of speculative fiction including science fiction and fantasy. Historically, science fiction conventions had focused primarily on literature, but the purview of many extends to such other avenues of expression as movies and...
s as well as on the web.
- Sluggy Freelance: Is It Not Nifty? (Plan 9 PublishingPlan 9 PublishingPlan Nine Publishing was a small press book publisher known for publishing webcomics in printed form. The first series published, and perhaps its most famous, was Kevin and Kell....
, December 1, 1998) - Sluggy Freelance: Worship the Comic (Plan 9 Publishing, June 30, 1999)
- Sluggy Freelance: When Holidays Attack! (Plan 9 Publishing, December 17, 1999)
- Sluggy Freelance: Game Called on Account of Naked Chick (Plan 9 Publishing, September 25, 2000)
- Sluggy Freelance: Yippy Skippy, the Evil! (Plan 9 Publishing, February 1, 2001)
- The Bug, The Witch, And The Robot (Plan 9 Publishing, January 1, 2001)
- Sluggy Freelance - A Very Big Bang! (Plan 9 Publishing, 2002)
- Sluggy Freelance: Fire and Rain (Plan 9 Publishing, 2003)
- Sluggy Freelance: Dangerous Days
- Sluggy Freelance: Ghosts in the Gastank
- Sluggy Freelance : Born of Nifty : Megatome 01: Books 1-3 Is it Not Nifty / Worship the Comic / When Holidays Attack (2006)
- Sluggy Freelance: Little Evils: MegaTome 02 (Books 4, 5 & 6) (Red Brick Press, September 18, 2007) Includes 25 bonus pages of never-before printed storylines.
Card game
Rob BalderRob Balder
Robert T. Balder is a professional cartoonist, singer/songwriter, game designer and web entrepreneur. He graduated from Roanoke College with a major in English in 1993, and after a variety of jobs, entered a seven year career in IT, starting as a Manager of Database Development, which he left for...
designed a card game
Card game
A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games...
based on Sluggy Freelance named Get Nifty. The player does not need to read or know anything about the webcomic in order to play the game, but the knowledge is useful for setting up deeper strategies.
A game lasts at least an hour, depending on how many people are playing. The ultimate goal of the game is to win attacks of Danger and Boredom to Get Safe and Weird and further defending those states while accumulating the necessary points to "Get Nifty". Players use characters and objects, each with their own points of danger, niftiness, weirdness, and safety, to attack each other or themselves in order to achieve the basic states before being allowed to accumulate Niftiness. Other players may interfere or be requested to interfere by adding to attacking or defending points or by even changing the plot (overall stage and base statistics and constant effects).
Most cards have special effects to them, ranging from canceling others to sorting through either the draw or discard decks. Players should be aware of what affects what before considering playing certain attacks as these can significantly change the course of the game. For example, Oasis returns to her player's hand unless she succeeds in battle and Aylee can override the Playstayshun 2 (which gives infinite weirdness, giving immunity to boredom attacks). A card that would be canceled by one that is already in play is canceled the moment it comes into play, and should also be taken into account.
Role-playing game
In 2006 a Sluggy Freelance RPGRole-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
was written by R. Brent Palmer in consultation with strip originator Pete Abrams. It was first playtested at Dragon Con
Dragon Con
Dragon*Con is a North America multigenre convention, founded in 1987, which takes place once each year in Atlanta, Georgia...
later that year.
Author
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
s he was used to drawing, so instead he went for a quickly drawn daily strip http://www.astronerdboy.com/comic-strips/kiosks/advice/Pete_Abrams-p1.html. 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 webcomic
Webcomic
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....
s. He currently lives in Denville, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and is married with two daughters, Leah Nicole Abrams and Sarah Emily Abrams.
External links
- Sluggy Freelance
- A Decade of Niftiness, interview with Pete Abrams at ComixTalk (June 2007)