"What's weirder? Bug aliens having boobs or bug aliens having their own Will Smith? This is the kind of question serious writers of science fiction ask themselves all the time."
— Hussie via his former Formspring
Andrew Hussie is a Webcomic artist best known for MS Paint Adventures, who rose to particular fame with his largest project Homestuck.
Before he created MSPA around 2006, he spent several years trying his hand at a fairly diverse array of webcomic endeavors and wrote a small number of graphic novels (only one was actually published). Other old endeavors of his include ironic reviews of muscular horse pornography (no longer available), and Jandrew Edits, a
series of humourous edits of Star Trek: The Next Generation in collaboration with Jan Van Den Hemel. He was also involved in writing a High School AU Dating Sim for Namco characters. Seriously.
It's abundantly clear that Hussie is a man who knows his tropes really, really well. Practically everything he does (but especially MSPA) plays with, subverts, double-subverts, deconstructs, exaggerates, hangs lampshades on, and otherwise works the hell out of the conventions of multiple genres at the same time. Also, if This Very Wiki is anything to go by, he's very, very quotable.
He maintains a Twitter account. He previously maintained two Formspring accounts and a Tumblr blog. His Formspring accounts, old deleted Tumblr posts, Q&A's and Blogspot, as well as his older works are archived both here and here.
Works by Hussie:
- Team Special Olympics Webcomics:
- Humanimals
- Inappropriate Time For Ham
- Zoosmell
- Scribblettes
- 3 Cheers for Steak!
- A Steep Price for Pie
- Riddler's Gammon
- What A Scoop!
- And It Don't Stop
- Neon Ice Cream Headache
- Jandrew Edits (in collaboration with Jan Van Den Hemel)
- MS Paint Adventures:
- Jailbreak (2006)
- Bard Quest (2007)
- Problem Sleuth (2008–2009)
- Homestuck (2009–2016)
- Paradox Space (2014–2016): Wrote "You Have A Feeling It's Going To Be A Long Day", "Quality Time", "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven", and "Vrisky Business"
- The Homestuck Epilogues (2019)
- Homestuck: Beyond Canon (2019–)
- Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff (2009)
Published books:
- Whistles (2005–2007) (out of print; available online)
- Problem Sleuth (five volumes total)
- Homestuck (six volumes, covering Acts 1-5, Part 2)
- The Homestuck Epilogues
- Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff
Video Games:
- Namco High (Winter 2013)
- Hiveswap (2017–)
- Hiveswap Friendsim (2018)
- Pesterquest (2019)
- Psycholonials (2021)
Tropes related to Hussie's works:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: How Data is portrayed in his Star Trek: The Next Generation edits.
- He has a habit of painting random muscle porn, especially if it's horse-related. In the edit "it's not lupus", the crew witnesses Data shamelessly painting one of these, declare him irreparable, throw him out the airlock, and blow him up with a proton torpedo.
- In "PicArt", after looking at Picard's painting of a horse playing a saxophone, Data proceeds to kill everyone on board the Enterprise-D by disabling the life support systems, throw the painting out of the airlock, and blow it up with a proton torpedo.
- He has a habit of painting random muscle porn, especially if it's horse-related. In the edit "it's not lupus
- Animal Motifs: Horses. Something of an odd example, however, as Hussie has claimed that he mostly just finds them to be inherently funny, rather than having an actual affinity for them.
- Art Evolution: Aversion. Hussie's actual skill level is unknown but is far above the work that he usually does. His writing and skill with Flash however, have improved.
- The art of Whistles and And It Don't Stop◊ really display how far beneath his skill level MSPA is.
- One need only look at the cover art for Homestuck's second volume◊ and compare it to the actual panel it's a representation of to see an immediate difference.
- The art of Whistles
- Bestiality Is Depraved: Of the alien variant between ALF and Willie Tanner in his Mister Meatloaf edit.
- Big Brother Is Watching: A running gag in his Star Trek: The Next Generation edits is that Picard would monitor every event in multiple angles on his screen from his quarters with a look of satisfaction on his face.
- Creator Thumbprint: Glasses, especially shades, all manner of treatments of hiphop/rap and its surrounding culture, clowns, heavy video game influences, and always a dash of
Crazy Is Cool. - Dada Comics: A very sizable portion of his earlier work is like this, as well as Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. Shades of this still crop up in MSPA every so often.
- Darker and Edgier: His body of work got much darker and more dramatic over time. His early comics and the first three MS Paint Adventures are all fairly light-hearted and gag-based, while Homestuck starts out somewhat more seriously and only gets more dramatic and cynical as the story progresses. Psycholonials is even darker, with deeply flawed protagonists and only a few comedic moments to balance out the darkness.
- General Failure: Picard in the "flauting danger" edit, who focuses on playing his flute very badly while the Enterprise is being torn apart.
- Genre-Busting: Individual genres (or mediums, for that matter!) mean little to Hussie; most of his work shows something of a genre blend, best exemplified in Homestuck.
- Manipulative Editing: Despite being the writer of the scenarios, his old movie and tv edits have... interesting stories.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The Humanimals. Very much Played for Laughs.
- Mundane Utility: A recurring gag in Humanimals, where any given character's unique physiology is utilised to, say, refill the printer at the office.
- Mythology Gag: At this point, a sizable sample of his older work has been referenced in Homestuck. Yes, even the horse porn reviews (hint: pay attention to Equius's taste in art).
- Naked Q In The Living Room: In his The NaQed Now edit.
- One-Man Army
- Screw Yourself: Done to William T. Riker and his clone in his beard on beard edit.
- Seen It All: The premise of his Uneventful Day edit of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
- Self-Deprecation: Surprisingly frequent on his part, both in his work and otherwise. It provides an interesting contrast to how he's much more well known for going the other way.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Jokingly portrays himself as this often through Author Avatar.
- Stylistic Suck: A specialty of his, usually explored through art but occasionally through writing. He has said that his goal is to replicate the Unintentional Uncanny Valley which the works of inexperienced artists who are just on the very edge of actually being good naturally occupy.
- The Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff book takes this to an art form. The fancy, gold foil stamped hardcover has a random hole in the glossy finish resembling a coffee cup stain, with letters made out in the same way next to it spelling out "woopps".
- The Walrus Was Paul: Occasionally.
- Troll: After exploring Picard's painting a collage of the scenes from Star Trek: Generations in "a frank evaluation", Data proceeds to sloppily paint horse porn over it, much to the chagrin of a crying Picard. Data could barely hold his laughter after leaving the room.
- Worst News Judgment Ever: The primary point of What A Scoop!.
Pages headlined with a HussQuote™:
- Affectionate Parody
- Andrew Hussie
- Bad Bedroom, Bad Life (Psycholonials)
- Changing Clothes Is a Free Action
- Homestuck
- Jailbreak
- Man Hug (Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff)
- Marathon Boss (Problem Sleuth)
- Midair Motion Shot (from a Homestuck character's blog)
- MS Paint Adventures
- Laughing at Your Own Jokes
- Problem Sleuth
- Shipping Goggles
- Ship Sinking
- Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?
- Square Peg, Round Trope
- Wham Line
- Homestuck
- Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff
- You Wake Up in a Room (Jailbreak)
- "Super Sentai" Stance (Problem Sleuth)
