alt title(s): Gonter Verse; David Foxfire
David Gonterman (also known by his pen name of Daveykins FoxFire, or David Foxfire) is a long-running internet celebrity (for many negative reasons). He has also been known as 'The
Ed Wood of the Internet' and 'The Internet's Most Dangerous Cartoonist'. Opinons vary on his work ranging from
So Bad Its Good to
So Bad Its Horrible; although as time goes on and even-worse fanfiction and webcomics have appeared, it leans towards the former.
A
fanfic writer (or '
fanfict' as he spells it) and cartoonist, he first started posting on various websites sometime around 1995. His most famous works include
Blood and Metal (a fanfic of the Archie Comics
Sonic The Hedgehog series),
Sailor Moon: American Kitsune (a crossover of
Sailor Moon and
Power Rangers, amongst others), and his original webcomic
FoxFire (retroactively renamed
Scarlet P.I.). Most of his fame comes from his outspoken views on several topics, such as race and sexual orientation, and his generally hostile demeanor towards criticism of his work. Other earmarks of his style include powerful
Marty Stu characters, a
Kudzu Plot that never follows through on important elements, and how his art style hasn't even evolved over more than a decade of drawing.
His biggest break was probably
the guest strip
◊ he did for
It's Walky! that appears to be a half-assed attempt at tying it to the plot of
FoxFire. As usual, it makes no sense whatsoever.
David Gonterman remains probably the most well known internet celebrity to gain his position through notoriety. He is frequently cited when the topic of bad fiction and overreactive writers/cartoonists comes up. It feels like he has stumbled upon just the right formula to maintain a "prominent" image for over a decade without having anything really positive being said about him.
* For that, we salute him.
He seems to attend the
Shoji Kawamori school of continuity, i.e. pick and choose whatever you want from the previous stories and throw the rest out, although several of his works can be assigned to several different
'verses, although the possibility exists that it's really
just one big one
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The Davey Crockett Trilogy
A trilogy of tangentially linked stories incorporating the character of David "Davey Crockett" Kintobor. Technically,
Blood and Metal was released first, with
The Piasa Monster being written as a prequel. Not to be confused with the historical figure of Davy Crockett.
The Piasa Monster
When a monster attacks St. Louis, local resident Davey Crockett fights and kills it. Less than 24 hours later, a black history teacher makes an attempt on Crockett's life, causing a racial riot in the process.
Blood and Metal
Davey Crockett gets sent off to Mobius to fight against Robotnik. Having lost an arm due to the racial riot in the previous story, he is given a cybernetic replacement. Using the abilities granted to him by this machinery, he racks up more kills than Sonic in a short period of time before taking down and defeating Robotnik once and for all.
This story was the "breakout" (such as it is) for Gonterman, having been decently popular within a couple online communities. It ended up incorporating a number of cameos of people Gonterman met and also inspired many collaborative projects.
A
Remake of the story is currently in the works, though according to Gonterman the new story will not have any basis in the
Sonic The Hedgehog universe.
Sailor Moon: American Kitsune
An important piece of Gonterlore, and the most infamous. A crossover of
Sailor Moon,
Power Rangers and everything else, including the kitchen sink. Many villains from the Sailor Moon and Power Rangers universes team up, and Sailor Moon is knocked clear over the Pacific and caught by Davey. As an interesting note, this is the same Davey who had lived a long, full life on Mobius... who has been reincarnated on Earth as a kitsune due to the interference of
Old Man Coyote. Davey and company then go on a disjointed, near-plotless adventure to defeat the villains.
The infamy comes from the chapter where Davey goes on a long rant about how people kept on telling him he was gay during high school, and therefore he's justified in killing the homosexual villain and his minions (who are also gay). All of the other heroes agree with his justification.
So Yeah...
This story was abandoned after eleven chapters during a point when internal strife was breaking apart the makeshift alliance of good guys.
Gonterman openly hates on this fanfiction now.
Scarlet P.I.
Two separate but interrelated strips. The first series, which was named
FoxFire, ran for 240 strips before being dropped without a resolution. After a recent comic convention, Jim Goodlow comes home to find a package with a fursuit in it. He's surprised to find out that it's a sentient creature and needs to a symbiotic relationship to survive. This female fox "Zoot", Scarlet (introduced as Susan for some reason), becomes Jim's crime fighting alter ego as he continues his career as a professional cartoonist. Things get a little confusing from that point on.
In 2004, a total
Re Tool and reboot was started under the name of
Scarlet PI, with there being 123 strips. Jim Goodlow reappears, but is changed from a cartoonist to a prodigy cop that can't get a job. (Interestingly enough, he's also
Straight Gay, but it instead just feels like repentance on Gonterman's part.) After failing to find a job, he happens upon a box dumped near his apartment. It contains an advanced prototype female fox fursuit, which was created by a corrupt corporation (not an
Alien Invasion this time,
Benevolent or not). Of course, he leaps right into it due to wanting to seduce men, investigating the corporation as an obligatory exchange.
The Packbellverse
These stories and comics intially seem unrelated, but they are apparently set in the same universe due to the many crossovers of various characters. Most of them incorporate the character of Adam Packbell, if at least only tangentially.
Lost Boy Found
A self-published
Peter Pan fanfic(t) about a Lost Boy named Adam Packbell. The advertising blurb claims that it is "equal parts autobiography, adventure story, and
Shrek-style parody of every recent novel set in Neverland including the official sequel". Adam Packbell is a central character in many of the Planewalker-verse comics and books.
Night Soldiers
A
Sailor Moon inspired story about a young witch in a southern community. After Sue "comes out of the broom closet", life goes well for her as everybody accepts it. However, her lifestyle is threatened when a
succubus attacks and kills a couple people, with only her able to stop it. It abruptly ends before she starts her journey, so what happens is unknown. Like
Fauna Force, this was meant to steal the audience from its source of inspiration.
Baka Breakers
The plotless adventures of a robotic foxgirl and her boyfriend (three guesses as to who he's supposed to represent). Can't really describe it further than that.
Livewire Latte
A continuation of Baka Breakers, with Adam Packbell (yes, the one from Lost Boy Found) running a coffee shop in a small town roughly 70 miles from Vegas, or 'Sin City' as Gonterman loves calling it. Is mostly
Slice Of Life,
except for the
android catgirl Tara and the
anthropomorphic mice running around; as well as the hints to Adam's magical side. Arguably half-decent for the first three dozen pages or so,
precisely due to its less ambitious, slice-of-life style... at least until the
Token Minority Japanese girl comes in.
Planeswalker
An original story based loosely on
Magic The Gathering done in a
Magical Girl style. In ancient times, a portal between Earth and Dominaria was briefly opened and sealed off, leaving artifacts behind containing the souls of mages. In modern times, a young girl named Jamie came in contact with one of these books and became infused with a spirit of a Planeswalker. The symbiotic creature now act as a paragon of justice... when not just being a giant
Jerkass. Adam Packbell appears in a
Yu Gi Oh-esque tournament based on Magic, and Richard Kronos and Sue from Night Soldiers appear in the audience.
Other Gonterman Works
Fauna Force
Gontman's response to Sonic the Hedgehog,
Fauna Force starred Johnathan Brisby, originally introduced in the Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers/Secret of NIMH crossover story
The Rangers of NIMH. Johnathan, an accomplished street magician, stumbles upon a lion who has recently turned a small cadre of humans into animals via a process known as 'furricization' (a none-too-subtle play on roboticization from the Sonic universe) and takes them in to form a team that can fight against the unnamed villain. It was intended to "steal" the audience from Archie's
Sonic The Hedgehog...
So Yeah.
The Kissing Contest
An inept Disney
Script Fic of sorts, which includes Gonterman's self-insert being praised by Disney executives as an insightful genuis for portraying
Pocahontas as a "donamatrix" in his fanfiction and a paragraph-long sidenote about how none of the Disney characters actually died in their films.
Kitsune .44
Scott Trucker, a Texas Ranger, gets sent back in time to Feudal Japan after a tornado scoops him up. He becomes part of a war against another time traveler that has taken over a sizable portion of Japan. As the site hosting the comic points out, the self-insert isn't named after Gonterman this time, but the hairstyle is a dead giveaway.
The Mobius Chronicles
Sort of the follow-up to
Sally Protest,
The Mobius Chronicles diverges from issue 47 of the official
Sonic The Hedgehog comic book. Of course, Gonterman promptly makes himself the main character.
MSTed here,
here and
here.
NiGHTS: The Third Dreamer
A rare Gontercomic about
NiGHTs: Into Dreams, ostensibly a spinoff from Archie's own
NiGHTs miniseries.. The plot does not seem to exist until about two pages before the comic abruptly stops, when the titular 'third dreamer' is revealed. Notable for containing the most strangely rugged Gonterman insert known to date. Who beats Charles Barkley in a one-on-one basketball game and dunks right over his head. Seriously. He also has an
uncanny resemblance◊ to Ali Al-Saacchez of [[Gundam00 Gundam 00]] fame. Hide your women, lock your doors and get in the Gundam!
NiTRO
David Gonterman gets fed up with the MSTs of his work, creating a reactionary comic in which he
defeats brutally kills his most vocal opponents and takes over the Satellite of Love. Also includes a bunny
Sexbot for no real reason but
Author Appeal. The source of the infamous "Clinton Jobs".
The Rangers of NIMH
Medical equipment is being stolen by Nimnul. After meeting up with Johnathan Brisby, the Rescue Rangers go out to stop him. Pretty much the gold standard for both
blind trust in the spellchecker and absolutely no proofreading whatsoever, its first sentence reads "The Ranger's where flowing a leaded of break-ins." Usual tripe that wouldn't be too exceptional except for the fact that it created Johnathan Brisby, who became Gonterman's mascot of sorts.
Sailor Moon USA
After the US cancellation of
Sailor Moon, David ends up catching said character after an explosion in Japan launched her across the Pacific. An
Adaptation Distillation of
Sailor Moon: American Kitsune. Note: link is to a "
Fan Art"
MST, since the unaltered artwork is generally considered to be lost.
Sally Protest
A reactionary comic made when he discovered Archie Comics' plan to kill off Sally in the
Sonic The Hedgehog comic continuity. After assigning his own sense of outrage at the idea to, uh, everyone else in the world, David consoles an outraged Sally, offering a solution. Famous that it got
Ken Pender's attention.
Gonterman's work provides examples of:
- Acceptable Targets: Avoided. Gonterman targets whomever he wants to target.
- Aerith And Bob: With so many crossovers, it's inevitable. A good example: Davey and Lord Zedd.
- Author Avatar: Nearly every main male protagonist.
- Alien Invasion: The villains in the original Scarlet P.I.
- All There In The Manual: Gonterman gives a lot of supplemental information in random-side stories, blog entries, pages buried within his websites, scribbled notes on sketches of characters, and in descriptions on DeviantART submissions. Gee, it'd sure be handy for him to tell us this stuff in the stories, eh?
- Author Appeal: Anthropomorphic foxes, robot girls, masks, mimes, clowns and mind control.
- Author Filibuster: Taken to the extreme in American Kitsune, where Davey-kins rants about how homosexuals made his life a living hell. Adam Packbell has 'blog entries' in the Lost Boy Found novel where he rants about Ritalin; and goes out of his way to call MSTings "troll fanfiction" during a court case.
- Ascended Fanboy: David in Sailor Moon USA.
- Anti Hero: Richard Cronos and a few of his 'edgier' self-inserts appear to be attempts at Antiheroes, but they're more like Disney Anti-Heroes
- Becoming The Mask: Most "Zoot" wearers start to lose their original identity. Even Jim and Scarlet seem to mush into a single being.
- Bi The Way: Copper Mystrian ...maybe.
- Brother Sister Incest: Davey and Usagi in BAM 1.0
- The Cameo: Shall we list the ways?
- President Barack Obama appears in BAM 2.0. I am not kidding.
- Gonterman has a less-than-flattering cameo of his real self when Adam looks through a magic mirror in Livewire Latte. Characters from other comics and stories appear in short cameos in both Planeswalker and Livewire Latte.
- In Scarlet P.I. 1.0, Rael the Transvestite Bunny is based on a real person (Do not click if you are faint of heart, or faint of butt) ...repeat, a 100% real person.
- Many celebrities in Scarlet P.I. 1.0
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Adam uses this in Lost Boy Found to bring the fairy he found back to life, albeit using a computer program to find websites via a search engine about the belief in fairies being true and to make a clap spound through the speakers.
- Clothes Make The Superman: In both Scaret PI comics, It's the sentient fursuits that have the powers, not the people wearing them. The wearers just serve as a glorified power battery.
- Complete Monster: It's hard to tell, but maybe this was his point with the original Pipikin?
- Connecticut Yankee: The driving point of Kitsune .44.
- Curb Stomp Battle: The typical result of Gonterman's self-insert entering a battle.
- Crazy Awesome: With his sheer amount of output, eventually there had to be one moment like this - A werewolf riding upside down through a dimensional portal, on a rocket-propelled Harley, after having a beer and bragging about getting laid the night before to a king, a scientist, and the American President; is one of those things that is so unabashedly ridiculous it loops around to some strange sort of awesome.
- Determinator: Let's be honest here, Gonterman himself. Only a Determinator would have the will to keep on doing what he does, even if he's near-universally regarded as bad.
- Designated Hero: Copper Mystrian, Adam's adoptive father, uses hypnosis to assemble an army of girls dressed like dolls (along with a few guys), he uses some of these girls as a harem, which typically confers insta-villian status. And he's still one of the good guys. Gonterman writes this off as just a vice.
- Do Not Touch The Funnel Cloud: The opening of Kitsune .44.
- Even Fail Has Standards: Even Davey-Kins thinks Christian Weston Chandler is a failure.
- Expansion Pack Past: Davey and Ed.
- Fanfic Chop Suey: Take some Sonic the Hedgehog, put in a self insert, a lil' Salior Moon, just a pinch of Battletech and a healthy shake of Power Rangers... half bake for three weeks...
- For The Evulz: Some of his villains don't seem to have much of a motive other than making people miserable.
- Flanderization: Most of the characters from the external canons only had one or two of their character traits kept intact, being defined exclusively by the traits that Gonterman viewed as most vital. Even his original characters tend to flatten over time.
- Furry Fandom: Scarlet PI To the max.
- Giftedly Bad
- God Mode Sue: Scarlet, Davey, everyone.
- Hands In Pockets: Much like Rob Liefeld, Gonterman avoids drawing feet whenever possible. Unless a character is wearing hooker boots, he can apparently draw those.
- Hollywood Cyborg: Many, many instances.
- Human Resources: The evil Zoots in Scarlet PI use humans as glorified batteries and memory storage.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Davey shooting and destroying Lord Zedd's throne, located on the moon, from the Earth, using a sawed-off shotgun. Oh, and with Lord Zedd not getting hit by a single pellet in spite of sitting in the throne at the time.
- Informed Flaw: In the remake of BAM, Gonterman informs us in supplemental materials that Eric likes beer a little too much. This doesn't seem to play at all into the plot.
- Interquel: There's a few side-stories on one of Gonterman's site that appears to take place sometime during the new series of BAM. The Scarlet P.I. novel is one of these, too.
- Instant Fan Club: Scarlet gains a lot of fans overnight.
- Kudzu Plot: Do we REALLY need to explain this one?
- Luke I Am Your Father: Davey's father is Robotnik. Averted in the remake.
- Kavorka Man: Unintentionally evoked in pretty much everything he creates.
- Lawyer Friendly Cameo: Blatently avoided in Scarlet P.I. 1.0
- Magic Negro: A psued-example happens in the BAM remake, as the scientist who transforms Eric and gives him his powers is black.
- Mega Crossover: Everything is liable to crossover with everything else.
- Mighty Whitey: Played perfectly straight and without irony in Kitsune .44; also partial cases of this happen in other works. Typically the character in question is a furry or something going to another dimension, but it plays out exactly the same.
- Mind Control: Evil Zoots in Scarlet P.I. get hosts through this. One of them even has hypno eyes. Copper Mystrian gets a lot of mileage out of this, too.
- Moral Dissonance
- The Moorcock Effect: Due to the Mega Crossover tendencies, it appears that everything takes place on one big world. It doesn't make it any easier that he frequently reuses character names and appearances, making it unclear if it's supposed to be the same character at different stages of life, or not.
- Mundane Fantastic: Lost Boys, fairies, android foxgirls and other blatantly magical and science-fiction elements exist in a world that's more or less the 'real world.'
- Nakama: Several instances, but most noticeable in Lost Boy Found, as Adam's gang goes everywhere together; even Neverland.
- New Powers As The Plot Demands: Davey's cybernetic arm, Ed's closet, and many miscellaneous objects that Davey has collected. Scarlet becomes a psionic capable of teleportation within one strip in Scarlet P.I. 1.0
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Davey Crockett himself in BAM, but also the introduction of the Sailor Senshi to the Morphing Grid and the highly modified Battletech robots.
- No Ending: He rarely finishes anything, leading to this. Only Lost Boy Found got finished, and Scarlet P.I. had a psuedo-ending where Scarlet rides off into the sunset, or in this case, the furry convention circuit.
- Old Shame: Gonterman hates BAM 1.0 and American Kitsune
- Only Six Faces: More like only two, male and female. Maybe three if you throw in "furry." Only one set of eyes, that's for sure.
- Out Of Character: All the Sailor Moon characters, but especially Usagi. Rampant elsewhere.
- Orphaned Series: Almost everything.
- Powers As Programs
- The Puppetmasters: Good Zoots get permission from their hosts. Evil zoots don't.
- Planet Eris: Here's a fun game: take a shot with each new reference to a completely different canon. Your liver won't make it through to the end.
- Take Over The World: The motive of many villains.
- Took The Bad Movie Seriously
- Token Minority: Gina the hospital intern and Professor Obacain (lolwut) in BAM 2.0. Most of Adam's gang in Lost Boy Found. Jim Goodlow in Scarlet P.I. 2.0. There's a Muslim in Baka Breakers, but he seems to be a psuedo-Lampshade Hanging of this trope due to his strange behavior, like jokingly suggesting to Davey that he'd get Allah to call in a jihad; making it sound like a divine airstrike. At least he's not written as a terrorist, but just a weird guy.
- Trickster Mentor: Old Man Coyote in the original version of the BAM cycle.
- He's a cartoonist who needs a job! She's an alien symbiotic costume! They Fight Crime.
- The Remake: Blood and Metal, Scarlet P.I. Other stories and comics have recieved psuedo-remakes
- Robot Girl: Roll-chan in NiTRO and Tara Kit in Baka Breakers and Lost Boy Found. The latter also mentions one named Aline Rabbit who used to work in Las Vegas's Red Light District.
- Rouge Angles Of Satin: The Rangers of NIMH.
- Thirty Sue Pileup
- Unfortunate Implications: Gonterman's portrayal of women as being Living Props for his self-inserts.
- Unsound Effect: DRAMATIC ENTRANCE!!! AUTOMATIC MACHINE GUN FIRE!!!
- Unusual Euphemism: At the end of NiTRO, Roll-Chan reveals she gave Gonterman some "Clinton Jobs." "Oh yerf" (which is a Take That to yerf.com, which Gonterman had some drama with); along with the standard furryism of 'yiffing' in Scarlet P.I.
- Sexbot: Gonterman loves this trope, nearly every more-recent creation of his includes at least one. The most obvious is Aline in Baka Breakers, who is a former robo-hooker who kills terrorists in Afganistan ... or something.
- Shout Out: To many things, perhaps even TV Tropes in BAM 2.0.
- Showing Off The New Body: Scarlet, after Jim becomes her host.
- Slice Of Life: Livewire Latte and Baka Breakers, but Livewire moreso.
- Suetiful All Along: Gonterman's attempt at Lampshade Hanging in Baka Breakers.
- Star System: Reuse of names, character archetypes and designs is frequently common and intentional.
- Straight Gay: Jim Goodlow in
- Squick: In the latest incarnation, Eric/Davey has sex with a human woman... after he's turned into a furry. Also the incestuous relationship of Davey and Usagi in American Kitsune. Oh, and the mind control stuff, too.
- What The Hell Hero: Unintentionally evoked many, many times. Blatant examples include Davey Crokett murdering a bunch of homosexuals, or Copper Mystrian creating a hypnotized personal army of young girls, some of whom serve as a harem of sorts.
- Values Dissonance: Sometimes the reasons the heroes fight, the things they do or what they say just doesn't quite match up to most of the reader's ideals, and even if they do; it's oftentimes handled in a way to be offputing anyway.
One trope fortunately averted:
- Rule 34: Who knows if someone else made some, but unlike another giftedly bad cartoonist, Gonterman has never subjected us to "on-screen" sex, and even has gone out of his way to tell us that he's cutting out a sex scene on purpose.
Websites detailing Gonterman's work:
- FoxFire Studios - The official David Gonterman website. Note how he has the nerve to offer autographed copies of his "work."
- DaveykinsFoxFire on DeviantART - The official DeviantART page maintained by him.
- The Gonterman Shrine - A website that compiles some of Gonterman's more infamous older works. It hasn't been updated since May 2001, but it feels just as current now as it did back then. Contains the entire published texts of Blood and Metal and Sailor Moon: American Kitsune, amongst others.
- This section delves deep into Gonterman's psyche, analyzing and exposing his mental and life issues to the entire world.
-
MSTron - An MS T3k style website that includes FoxFire, Night Soldiers, Baka Breakers, and Planeswalker. — Dead
◊ he did for It's Walky! that appears to be a half-assed attempt at tying it to the plot of FoxFire. As usual, it makes no sense whatsoever.
David Gonterman remains probably the most well known internet celebrity to gain his position through notoriety. He is frequently cited when the topic of bad fiction and overreactive writers/cartoonists comes up. It feels like he has stumbled upon just the right formula to maintain a "prominent" image for over a decade without having anything really positive being said about him. * For that, we salute him.
He seems to attend the Shoji Kawamori school of continuity, i.e. pick and choose whatever you want from the previous stories and throw the rest out, although several of his works can be assigned to several different 'verses, although the possibility exists that it's really just one big one
