History Main / FillerStrips

Blog/{{Websnark}} discusses the best kinds of [[http://www.websnark.com/archives/2004/08/zen_and_the_art.html original filler material here.]]

* Even worse was ''Webcomic/{{Avalon}}'', which had more filler than real comics.

** Other people associated with ''Sluggy'' have provided filler strips as well, including among others "Shirt-Guy Tom" (who handles the merchandise or something, including t-shirts, hence the name), and colourist Joe Sunday. Tom, no artist himself as far as one can tell from ''Sluggy'', did an intentionally terrible version of his own of stick-figure week, which established the filler-specific RunningGag that "Stick-Figure Shirt-Guy Tom" wants to take over the comic from Pete.

* ''Webcomic/{{Megatokyo}}'' went through a period where it was notorious for every second or third day being either a "Dead Piro Day", ie a day where artist Piro was only up to providing a sketch from his scrapbook, or a "Shirt Guy Dom" day, a "borrowing" of ''Sluggy Freelance'''s filler concept with considerably more crude stick figures. Recently, this hasn't happened that often - he just simply stopped updating regularly.

** Probably the best notable were the {{Stick Figure Comic}}s, drawn by Pete himself, starting with "Stick Figure Week", in which the characters were stick figures and nothing much happened, and continuing with many sequels. These involved for example [[RageAgainstTheAuthor Torg trying to make events take such a turn that Pete would have to make an effort to draw them]], and eventually more complicated RecycledInSpace versions, including one that was even called "Stick Figures in Spaaaaaace" and grew into a multi-part but unambitiously random StoryArc.
** Pete also did a couple of filler stories that involved the characters in their normal state but not doing anything much. One included their testing a time machine that kept rewinding time to the moment before they tested it, and events repeated with only slight variations as they slowly became aware that they were stuck in a loop. Another featured everyone sitting around being bored. (Pete still managed to wring out a joke out of [[http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20001010 dialogue in which no-one said anything but variations of "dude" and "man" during one strip]].)

** Then there are the numerous [[GuestStrip filler stories by other actual comic artists]], notably "Sluggy Freelance, where are you?" in 2000 in the middle of "Love Potion" when Pete's daughter Leah was born and a number of others, apparently led by Ian [=McDonald=], whipped up a story that involved the [[AnimatedActors "cast"]] of ''Sluggy Freelance'' going missing and characters from other comics trying to substitute and looking for them. [[spoiler: It turned out Shirt-Guy Tom had kidnapped them.]] There are a whole number of others scattered around the comic, with authors ranging from Ian [=McDonald=] to Creator/PhilFoglio. The circle comes to a close nicely with the 2016 filler strips ''by'' Leah Abrams. ([[http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/160510 "Justine Kasich Goes Terribly Wrong"]])

** Torg, the most central main character with noteworthy art skills of his own, has also acted as a guest artist -- the art obviously drawn by Pete himself but still counting as filler. This culminated in Torg's "the greatest comic book of all time", ''[[http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20080217 Gunman Stan McKurt vs. the Gates of the City of the Damned]]'', which, while well drawn and having a certainly... interesting plot, consisted entirely of cut-and-paste pieces of the same detailed image with different text. So, yes, that was filler too.
** There are also the regularly scheduled fillers that started appearing on Saturdays and then Sundays, which include sketches by Pete and other things of the sorts mentioned above. Two long-running guest strips on the Saturday slots included Ian [=McDonald's=] "Meanwhile in the Dimension of Pain" (or elsewhere) that was received less well for being even wackier than the comic usually was, and "Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days" by Clay Yount, which contained non-canonical strips set in the pre-CerebusSyndrome days of the comic's timeline. Pete also drew "No Content on Saturdays", which featured Kiki looking for the "no content", which proved to be difficult because her presence constituted content, and also because she was mailed to Siberia at one point.

** What's more, many of those pages are just [[http://www.drunkduck.com/Conventional_Wisdom/index.php?p=646598 cute]] [[http://www.drunkduck.com/Conventional_Wisdom/index.php?p=673280 mascot]] [[http://www.drunkduck.com/Conventional_Wisdom/index.php?p=681091 characters]] explaining why there's no "real" comic that week. That's right, ''Conventional Wisdom'' actually has filler [[UpToEleven FOR THE FILLER]].

Blog/{{Websnark}} discusses the best kinds of original filler material [[http://www.websnark.com/archives/2004/08/zen_and_the_art.html here]].

[[quoteright:212:[[Webcomic/SluggyFreelance https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/suggyfiller_small_3451.JPG]]]]
[-[[caption-width-right:212:The end result of ScheduleSlip.]]-]
%%

* ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'' has a separate section of the archives for FillerStrips (later renamed "sketchbook"). The site used to provide a choice of reading them separately or not, but after a site upgrade/migration they're now completely separate.

[[quoteright:350:[[Webcomic/ElGoonishShive https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/FillerStrips_9513.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350: Not to be confused with the [[http://www.firefox.com/ Mozilla Firefox]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firesheep add-on.]]]]

* Perhaps the best-known example is from ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'', which has gone through a huge variety of different sorts over the years. You name it, they've had it as filler. Even though the ones made by the author Pete Abrams himself were intended to conserve his effort, they still often turned up something clever and funny, though not by any means always. The twentieth-anniversary overhaul of the strip presumably brought the filler strips to an end, since there's no longer any promise of something being posted every day or every weekday, and hence there are no gaps to fill.

** Then there are the numerous [[GuestStrip filler stories by other actual comic artists]], notably "Sluggy Freelance, where are you?" in 2000 in the middle of "Love Potion" when Pete's daughter Leah was born and a number of others, apparently led by Ian [=McDonald=], whipped up a story that involved the [[AnimatedActors "cast"]] of ''Sluggy Freelance'' going missing and characters from other comics trying to substitute and looking for them. [[spoiler: It turned out Shirt-Guy Tom had kidnapped them.]] There are a whole number of others scattered around the comic, with authors ranging from Ian [=McDonald=] to Creator/PhilFoglio. The circle comes to a close nicely with the 2016 filler strips ''by'' Leah Abrams. ([[http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/160510 "Justine Kasich "Goes Terribly Wrong"]])

** Finally, there has also been a variety of random odd things like photos of ''Sluggy'' characters as Legos (in one case re-enacting Creator/JohnCarpenter's ''Film/TheThing1982''), ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' screenshots, and ''Sluggy'' Mad Libs.

* Perhaps the best-known example is from ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'', which has gone through a huge variety of different sorts over the years. You name it, they've had it as filler. Even though the ones made by the author Pete Abrams himself were intended to conserve his effort, they still often turned up something clever and funny, though not by any means always. The twentieth-anniversary overhaul of the strip presumably brought the filler strips to an end, since there's no longer any promise of something being posted every day or every weekday, and hence no gaps to fill.

* Perhaps the best-known example is from ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'', which has gone through a huge variety of different sorts over the years. You name it, they've had it as filler. Even though the ones made by the author Pete Abrams himself were intended to conserve his effort, they still often turned up something clever and funny, though not by any means always.\\
\\
The twentieth-anniversary overhaul of the strip presumably brought the filler strips to an end, since there's no longer any promise of something being posted every day or every weekday, and hence no gaps to fill.

* Perhaps the best-known example is from ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'', which has gone through a huge variety of different sorts over the years. You name it, they've had it as filler. Even though the ones made by the author Pete Abrams himself were intended to conserve his effort, they still often turned up something clever and funny, though not by any means always.

* ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'' has a separate section of the archives for FillerStrips.

** Finally, there has also been a variety of random odd things like photos of ''Sluggy'' characters as Legos (in one case re-enacting Cretor/{{John Carpenter}}'s ''Film/TheThing1982''), ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' screenshots, and ''Sluggy'' Mad Libs.

* ''Webcomic/ColourWheel'' has these from time to time as the author tries to balance creating a buffer and having a life. Fillers usually depict the day-to-day lives of the author, "Phillr Kitty" (aka Phil, a mildly psycho creature raised by WebOriginal/LOLCats), and the [[DeadpanSnarker snarky]] silhouette of an as-yet-unintroduced main character. Once a regular page goes up, fillers are moved to the [[http://colourwheelcomic.com/gallery/ Extras page.]]

** Probably the best notable were the stick-figure comics, drawn by Pete himself, starting with "Stick Figure Week", in which the characters were stick figures and nothing much happened, and continuing with many sequels. These involved for example [[RageAgainstTheAuthor Torg trying to make events take such a turn that Pete would have to make an effort to draw them]], and eventually more complicated RecycledInSpace versions, including one that was even called "Stick Figures in Spaaaaaace" and grew into a multi-part but unambitiously random StoryArc.