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alt title(s): Dada Comic
This makes even less sense in context
->"MY NAME IS POKEY THE PENGUIN I LOVE CHESS!! IT IS LIKE BALLET ONLY WITH MORE EXPLOSIONS!"

Geeks have a weird sense of humor. Geeks also read a lot of webcomics. As a result, many webcomics tend to have a bent towards surreal, non sequitur humor. Dada Comics take this to the extreme, being composed of nothing but surreal, non sequitur humor. They may be gag-a-day comics, or cover story arcs that make little or no sense. They may also be (intentionally) badly drawn and scripted—the biggest difference between this and unintentional bad drawings and scripts is the difference between imitations of timecube.com and The Eye of Argon.

Since they're not meant to be taken seriously, Dada Comics are (with one egregious exception) almost never subject to Cerebus Syndrome, bless their tiny, crippled souls.

A Sub Trope of Surreal Humor. Compare Dream Land, Surreal Theme Tune. See also Post Modernism.

Examples:

  • Pokey The Penguin, a bizarre comic about a penguin who lives in the Arctic Circle with Mr. Nutty, a drunken and inexplicably British snowman, Skeptopotamous, an Eeyore-esque hippo, and a bunch of other penguins, going on crazy misadventures and occasionally butting heads with the Italians, who want his Arctic Circle Candy. Dialogue is in all-caps, occasionally scribbled out or in strike-through, and is peppered with lines like "THE FLYER HAS A CUTE KITTEN DRAWN ON IT! IT REPRESENTS VIOLENCE AND CARNAGE."
  • Most of the comics at Renderosity fit this category.
  • Though rare, Dada Comics do appear on the printed page. Some better known examples:
    • Bill Griffith's Zippy The Pinhead
    • Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot Comics, combining surreal humor with occasional bits of wisdom. Also formed the basis for a movie that wasn't much like the original: Mystery Men.
    • "The Angriest Dog in the World" consists of a panel that briefly explains the, um, "premise" of the comic, followed by three panels of the dog in his owners' yard. The final panel is the same as the preceding three, but set at night. The only way to distinguish one comic from another is by the word balloons emanating from the house, which expound on topics ranging from silly puns to existentialist dilemmas to the makeup of obscure chemical compounds. Oh, by the way, it's written by David Lynch.
    • Max Cannon's Red Meat
    • Steve Notley's Bob the Angry Flower (Also available online)
    • Gary Larson's The Far Side (no recurring characters, twisted non-sequiturs, blenderized pop-culture injokes - pretty much the forerunner of all the other Dada Comics in the newspapers)
    • Gahan Wilson's comics in Playboy, The New Yorker and other publications.
    • Charles Addams' comics in The New Yorker.
    • As a manga example, One Piece is quite dadaistic. It's able to be totally serious and totally silly at the same time.
  • There is perhaps also no better way to describe the oddities of artist Glen Baxter.
  • If Listening to 11.975MHz doesn't count, nothing does. It seems to take place in a literal Dream Land. The cast includes a girl with antennae (of Pac-Man chasing a ghost) who speaks only nonsensical French, a girl in swirly Nerd Glasses who speaks only in calculus equations, a Chinese Girl who speaks only nonsensical Chinese, a Anime Anatomy-subverting Innocent Fanservice Girl (possibly Brazilian, from her dark hair and Markov-chain Portuguese) Hippie Chick who wears 1 less item of clothing each time she appears (last seen wearing a lab coat, glasses, peace sign, hair band, sandals, and nothing else), and a walking radio that can only say the words "Zachary", "Acetaminophen", and "Beige". Oh, and random scenery that quotes... random things. Like the names of European dictators, or random snippets from 1960s novels. Randomly. This doesn't include the backgrounds and minor characters, which can be charitably described as "screwed up." Oh, and the contact page gives information on contacting the author over CB radio.
    • (Note: The author claims to have never heard of Dadaism.)
  • Super Mega Comics certainly qualifies. The art consists entirely of poorly-drawn stick figures that put Shirt Guy Dom to shame, and the plots make a marginal amount of sense, at most.
  • Buttercup Festival usually consists of a protagonist, dressed like the Grim Reaper, conversing with an off-screen character about nothing in particular, and features some exceptionally strange dialogue. An early example can be found here.
  • Witch's Brew is literally Dada. Each strip is produced via the Exquisite Corpse game, where multiple artists collaborate on each strip, but must make their contributions without seeing any more than one panel of the strip.
  • Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle.
  • Chicanery, a sprite comic starring an assortment of Earthbound characters and other clip art. After the events of the game, Pokey embezzles $44 million from Giygas so that he and Ness "have enough legal tender to go on nonsensical zany adventures". They are quickly joined in their escapades by a trigger-happy Mr. Saturn who is relatively more coherent than others of his kind, Mr. T (represented by the "generic black guy" sprite from Earthbound, which looked unmistakably like the real T), Ness's former comrade Jeff, and Pip from Chrono Cross. These escapades include traveling through time to prevent a nuclear detonation (and briefly ending up in medieval times, represented by graphics from Ultima I), the occasional treasure hunt, extended parodies of Parasite Eve and Metal Gear Solid, and a fight between a giant Mister B. Natural and a Humongous Mecha based on MST3K's Frank Conniff ("the 2000-inch TV's Frank").
  • Beaver And Steve, in their unfeasible adventures, do encounter the occasional recurring character or plot point (which occasions probably make for the weaker of the strips); at its best, though, this sometimes-single-page, sometimes-story-arc webcomic shows no interest in consorting with such dull companions as continuity or logic. There Are No Rules here. Anything can happen. (Although there is a better-than-average chance that there will be toasters, robots, and time travel involved.)
  • Framed!!! is very surreal, starting with its self-referential metafictional premise of real people trapped in a comic strip. It frequently identifies conventions just so that it can violate them, such as having a character turn into abstract art or shove a tilting panel back into position. It's also responsible for the massive "Framed!!! Great Escape" crossover event, a weeks-long orgy of metafiction.
  • Loserz sometimes falls into that, as in this strip.
  • The webcomic Dresden Codak and it's science-based surrealism qualifies, despite an outbreak of Cerebus Syndrome.
    • Though it recovered from it.
  • This editor doesn't know how to describe the black-and-white comic Something Happens, but it sure fits in this category.
  • Another webcomic example is Fluble, with evil penguins (why is it always penguins?) working for THEM bent on galactic domination, clowns, fish, and random celebrities killed with axes.
  • From Brazilian comic Monica's Gang, Louco (Nutty Ned). Animated example.
  • Dadasaurus Rex takes the already eccentric Dinosaur Comics right off the rails.
  • Ctrl Alt Del does this occasionally.
  • Electric Retard has this, along with Refuge In Audacity
  • Subnormality! Yes, the exclamation mark is part of the title.
  • Garfield Minus Garfield. While some show how much of a woobie Jon is, others simply make absolutely no sense.
    • I don't know, troper. Garfield Minus Garfield isn't quite as dada as the Garfield Randomizer. [1]
  • And don't forget The Dada Detective, which neatly subeverts this trope by having a technically sensible plot - a detective is trying to find a missing duck - but is filled with talkative mimes, goons who are overly fond of metaphor, disco, and Peter Lorre.
  • Mezzacotta. It's expected when there are trillions of strips and that they are generated by randomizing the lines.
  • Penny Arcade does this occasionally, usually with the Twisp and Catsby strips.
  • Girly uses this for a bit of its humor, though it is not exclusively Dada.
  • Jerkcity
  • Slow Wave is a collective dream diary in comic form. It makes roughly no sense.
  • Mountain Time is completely inane, though the author claims it is deeply meaningful.
  • megaGAMERZ 3l33T is a parody of this genre. It is ostensibly written by Diablo, a fictional evil chicken (not to be confused with all those real evil chickens) from the comic Goats. Early strips are barely distinguishable from real Dada Comics, but over the comic's year-long run "Diablo" pushed the comic into being a more obvious and extreme parody.
  • Flying Man and Friends. Pick a strip. Any strip.
  • This one's called Dada. There are references to the original Dada movement; for instance, the Mona Lisa is a major character. Plots are followable, but are interrupted by word-association battles so often that you might not notice.
  • The Comic Adventures Of Left & Right is about two very similar friends that crack contrived Visual Puns when they're not plotting to kill each other.
  • Everything at Is This Tomorrow qualifies, especially Aether Transmission.
  • W A AA AA AA AA AA AA AA !
  • Sweet Bro And Hella Jeff a webcomic that ties into Home Stuck. It's a two gamers on a couch series only totally incomprehensible and so ironic you can't even begin to understand all the layers of irony.
  • Unwinder's Tall Comics sometimes veers into this territory, as well as having at least one in-universe example.
  • Axe Cop

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