Webcomics are primarily a self published medium, which means there's no editors or publishers to get in the way of an old-fashioned personal vendetta.
Web comics with their own pages
- After doing a series of Star Wars parodies, Irregular Webcomic! did this strip.
- Antimony from Gunnerkrigg Court has been compared a few times to that other orphan with strange powers who attends a strange boarding school. Tom Siddell is too much of a gentleman to make fun of another author, so guest comic author Ali Graham did it for him.
- Tom Siddell reserves his snark for the Internet. See this page and the explanatory note below.
- This◊ alternative strip is a Take That! at people who complained that the flashback wasn't made obvious enough.
- The Order of the Stick:
- The webcomic once poked fun at Eberron, for that Dungeons & Dragons setting's magical trains. It should come as no surprise, as the author's own proposed setting won second place in Wizards of the Coast's setting contest — which Eberron won. Rich Burlew and Keith Baker seem to have what could be described as a friendly rivalry, so this is probably more of a Shout-Out, especially considering that Baker himself got a cameo in the second prequel book, Start of Darkness.
- The swipes at Harry Potter taken in "Larry Gardener and the Angry Half-Orc", on the other hand, are somewhat less friendly. In his commentary in the compilation book, he took a parting shot at the people who sent him hate mail over it: "...hey! Harry Potter fans who can't take a joke! I have a spell for you: developus sensus humorous!" In that same commentary, Burlew wrote that he likes the Harry Potter movies, and he makes fun of stuff he likes — see D&D and The Lord of the Rings.
- And as for Céline Dion, well, suffice to say Even Evil Has Standards.
- "Well There is That 'Saint' Prestige Class" has an averted Take That at Fox News. As in, news provided by a (non-anthropomorphic) fox.
- The few digs taken at Video Games in "Wow, That's a Spicy Meatball!" are more or less neutral on the nasty-humorous axis. Though the Bistro is named "Blizzari's Ristorante".
- Much of "Meanwhile, His Teammate Was in Rhodes" and the first panel of "Pop Idolatry" reference Lost. The second is where it shifts from gentle poke to Take That.
- A quick swipe at Magic of Incarnum here, when Redcloak is trying every scrying method he can think of, and rates an 18th-level Incarnum user beneath fortune cookies and a Magic 8-Ball.
- Penny Arcade took a swipe at Ctrl+Alt+Del with the side character L.H. Franzibald, a self-obsessed litigious pseudo-intellectual who writes books based on ideas plagiarised from Tycho. He talks in a slimy, needlessly wordy manner, often explaining the joke of a strip in the last panel, or indulging in acts of pointless violence — once, a comic with him in even imitated the four-panel format◊ of CAD. He wears a large pair of B-shaped sunglasses and his mouth is always only slightly open to give him the distinctive B^U look. To Penny Arcade's credit, it's used as self-deprecating humour, too — according to the lore, the accusations of plagiarism are very tenuous, and Tycho's resentment of Franzibald is repeatedly shown to be pointless since Franzibald is still very successful.
- VG Cats also took a shot at Ctrl+Alt+Del for April Fool's Day 2008.
- Jeffrey Rowland gave Buckley a kick in the pants with this Overcompensating comic.
- In fact a lot of people have, and for the sake of not turning this article into one, long CAD rant, we won't be posting any more.
- Not to mention the Memetic Mutation that sprung up in the wake of his miscarriage storyline of people and other webcomic artists inserting the last panel where appropriate for maximum funnies. That was a small industry of Take Thats.
- Several Penny Arcade strips make Take Thats at bad video games. One of the recurring Take Thats in earlier strips were directed towards John Romero, creator of the widely-panned Daikatana. Earlier strips also made fun of the PS2's launch (one E3-related strip even showed Gabe urinating on PS2 equipment), but around the 2001 mark, they started to be more kind toward the console.
- Perhaps Penny Arcade's most famous Take That! was aimed at Jack Thompson, who offered $10,000 donated to charity if anyone who would follow his specifications for an over-the-top violent video game targeting the video game industry itself. Someone did. Thompson reneged on his offer and Penny Arcade stepped up to the plate, donating the $10,000 to the Entertainment Software Association Foundation charity in Thompson's name. Was accompanied by a short blog post:
You know what, Jack? We’re going to be the men you’re not. You said that your insulting, illusory ten thousand dollars would go to the charity of Paul Eibeler‘s choice. We’ve got a good guess that he’d direct your nonexistant largesse toward The Entertainment Software Association Foundation, a body that has raised over six point seven million dollars over the last eight years. We’ve just made the donation you never would, and never meant to. Ten thousand dollars’ worth. And we made it in your name. - A lot of User Friendly involves attacks on Microsoft.
- This Adventurers!! strip is a Take That! at PC games in general and the notoriously buggy PC port of Final Fantasy VII in particular.
- Then again, pretty much the entire comic is an Affectionate Parody of games like Final Fantasy VII and their various clichés, so pinpointing one strip seems to miss the big picture.
- In The KA Mics this comic gives the doomed guard the same name as another cartoonist who had done a comic trashing other comics characters & authors.
- In Dark Legacy Comics, after there had been on storyline about NPCs overthrowing PCs for several weeks, the author got enough of forum-goers complaining about the unrealism of such a concept and did this strip.
- This PvP strip was similarly levelled at people who complained about the then-current Story Arc. Specifically, the strip was a response to this earlier Take That! from the webcomic The Whiteboard regarding his disappointment in the wasted potential of that Story Arc.
- minus. had a fairly gentle Take That against most of the criticisms you'd expect to hear aimed at the idea of a comic about someone with infinite power. For extra points, imagine it as a Superman comic.
- Shortpacked!, when not taking shots at Walky's own past exploits, takes the occasional swipe at certain newspaper comics, and lots of jabs at the worst aspects of ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' fandom and fandom in general. And, sometimes, he manages to combine the two.
- and recently another webcomic
- And another Transformers strip here.
- And this takes a shot at Macs, with the help of Transformers.
- Honestly, it would take up an entire page catalouging the number of times Shortpacked did a Take That against the worst parts of Transformers fandom.
- And obligatory kicking a dead, but sparkling horse: Mummyonahorse! Did you know that the Mummies "shroud their glittering skin with flowing cloth to disguise themselves from jealous mortal humans"?
- Achewood took potshots at stereotypically mediocre fantasy and furry webcomics hosted at places like Keenspot in this strip. Their activities are so poorly conveyed.
- Kris Straub's Chainsawsuit has done multiple Take Thats against other comics in the span of a few updates. These include Perry Bible Fellowship and XKCD. Twice.
- ...turning to Batman movies, and Dragon Ball Z and Obligatory Star Trek joke. Also, George Lucas, his remakes, more of Lucas, and his retcons. Then, Braid, a certain fastfood and Conan O'Brien as well as Law & Order and Dateline. Also, poked fun at Pædo Hunt and trolled unfunny political trolls (see the next page), parodied Green Aesop spam, "Disastorm" Global Warming and Let's Meet the Meat ads.
- xkcd has parodied Penny Arcade twice. The two comics are here and here. But from the ending of the second and the Alt Text of the first, they definitely go into Affectionate Parody rather than Take That!.
- Also, The Other Wiki. Again, see Alt Text.
- And news (you know the drill). And Texas Instruments.
- Take THAT Science Fiction! from El Goonish Shive
- That? In comics with "An Evil Monkey -American"? And "Does This Remind You... Of Anything?"
- "George Lucas: Take That! Is Back!"; "Vampire sparkling: what exactly is a big Fetish Retardant". "Get out of here, you blonde androgynous interloper! Go play Final Fantasy X or something!"
- The return of Vampire Romance Novels!
- Sketchbook got Miss Sensorshep.
- 8-Bit Theater once did a comic in which is, effectively, Black Mage making a pee joke and everyone else reacting with confusion and mild disgust. The name of the strip? "VG Mages".
- It also had a joke about Red Mage's outrageously idiotic plan which included "the grossly suspect part" where Thief had to dodge explosions while he's in them. That's exactly how D&D3 Reflex Save works with Rogue ("Thief" in all previous editions) Evasion ability: it allows them to dodge completely unscathed being caught in any area effects with "Reflex for half" save, such as Fireballs and explosions proper (even some wall type effects).
- A plan to deceive Fighter by telling him that he needs to win a race in 0.0 seconds to get his ultimate weapon is considered too stupid. This is actually what you need to do in Final Fantasy X to get a key component of Tidus's ultimate weapon, although at least there are balloons that lower your time. It then moves onto taking potshots at another FFX cliche, namely the underwater sport of blitzball, or as Clevinger has it, "Drownball".
- The ending of Brian Clevinger's Nuklear Age was meant to be a massive Take That at Cerebus Syndrome.
- Two Lumps has taken several pot shots at Garfield. This is one of the more blatant examples.
- R.K. Milholland says "Take That, TV Tropes!" in the first line of this Super Stupor comic. Apparently this was the result of someone parroting "Rape as Comedy" in a Dude, Not Funny! LiveJournal comment accusation against him.
- Well, this one is more of a Take That against people who link to us as opposed to forming their own opinions, as well as Unpleasable Fanbases and the pure distilled awfulness of One More Day. It's hard to tell exactly how effective it is to "puppet" the opinions of a wiki, which, after all, can be changed by anyone. note
- This isn't the only case of Take That that Milholland has ever done, of course. For example:Davan: I think I read the "Excited" entry on Wikipedia right before some idiot had it deleted for relevance.
- Sluggy Freelance once had the cast go to war with Dilbert and kill off every single character from that strip. Their reasons? "Dilbert just really ticks us off!" The news media also came in for a lampooning in that one.
- This (spoilerly) comic was a remarkably civil Take That to those who still insist that a certain character is still alive.
- Early on, in "The Sci-Fi Adventure," Torg and Riff find a ship that dumps toxic waste into random dimensions, which might be their way home.
Torg: Wait a minute, according to the manifest, this ship is carrying first season Voyager scripts! That's not toxic waste!
Riff: That's debatable. - In response to people who demanded faster updates, suggesting a sacrifice in art quality to achieve it, Thunt of Goblins offered this◊ to appease them.
- Least I Could Do launches one huge Take That! against overblown Crisis Crossovers, Comic Book Death, Wasp Fridge Stuffing and sloppy retcons; starting here.
- And Overcompensating, in defense of the webcomics whose characters were used without credit, retaliated.
- This DMFA strip.
- The Good Witch is an extended Take That! against aspects of The Wotch'', mostly its rampant abuse of male-to-female genderbending and such transformations being "good for the victim"; this strip in particular gives the idea.
- UG Madness, a Magic: The Gathering webcomic, has done a few Take Thats against Yu-Gi-Oh!.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal does this regularly. Besides the ones on religion: Take that art community! Take that sitcom platitudes! Take that imaginary government bureaucrats! Take that nerds!
- Dueling Analogs did one to the Hatedom of Ctrl+Alt+Del.
- Questionable Content had Sven and Faye starting up a Karaoke Take That against each other for three comics, starting here.
- Better Days artist Jay Naylor once frequented FurryMUCK, an online roleplaying environment for furries; during his time there, there was a specific section that he visited regularly, but when his behavior started to get on people's nerves, the owner of the "building" called him out on it in a rather public manner. So what does Naylor do? He leaves FurryMUCK and makes an entire chapter of his comic a prolonged Take That!, turning D'anna into what is essentially the Big Bad of the chapter.
- The announcement that the long-running Power Rangers show would end with its current incarnation Power Rangers RPM has led to all sorts of fandom reactions, including this rather belated one◊ from the Kamen Rider-themed Soucha-Koma.
- Tales of the Questor takes a jab at sparkly unicorns.
- Sheldon:
- This strip has Gramp celebrating the fact that he has never seen Cats on stage.
- In this strip, Arthur gets bent out-of-shape because Flaco watches Desperate Housewives.
- One of the first strips has Sheldon tell Dante that running a computer company is like growing a Chia Pet - "You start with a strong base of talent, sprinkle on good ideas, and you step back and watch the company grow!" To which Dante responds, "Into a lame gag gift?"
- The Tales of the Questor spin-off Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger has been the vehicle for many odd Take Thats, including one against pirates (according to the artist, due to the fact that at the time that arc was being planned out, people were going ga-ga over the Pirates of the Caribbean). Includes a very heavy-handed Take That! aimed at Star Trek, starting from their strange designs and stranger idea of workplace safety, and proceeding to poke fun at Planet of Hats.
- Extends to Star Trek's Prime Directive, Star Wars Jedi Order, Dilbert-level bureaucracy, and Warhammer 40,000's insane... insanity-everything, really.
- VG Cats did numerous of Take Thats, but one of the best is this.
- Freefall these from time to time — a typical example.
- A Take That! against The Twilight Saga in the Retarded Animal Babies guy's webcomic.
- Dead of Summer did a Take That! against the Bush Administration here.
- Strip #231 (Bonejerk Homework) of Sexy Losers takes a swipe at fans of MegaTokyo.
- Hijinks Ensue exists almost solely to hurl Take Thats against various people and companies, most frequently FOX for their habit of picking up geek-centric shows (Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, etc.) only to cancel them prematurely. The very first strip was a Take That! against Spider-Man 3.
- The Wotch was at one point attacked by Something Awful. A few weeks later there came a minor plotline where Anne was besieged by a giant troll; Miranda West saved the day by banishing it to a dimension named Sapoe.
- "I sent it to a troll dimension, he'll like it, full of trolls"
- Living with Insanity indulges in these occasionally. Be they an Animal Wrongs Group like here, annoying customers, emos and even David attacking himself.
- The Finale of The Authors Fatman Returns saga is a blatant TAKE THAT at another website that accused the creator of plagiarism. The other "Fatman" site accused the creator of stealing ideas, and posting them on his site before they got a chance to post it on theirs. The (hilarious) accusation was unfounded since the other site was set up 5 months after The Author started his Fatman sagas.
- The bug of Bug sometimes really dislikes Michael Bay.
- There's also a quick jab at Two and a Half Men.
- The Whiteboard:
- Doc broadsides journalists who claim paintball is a war simulator by saying that the college courses seem to narrow their vocabulary.
- The password to Doc's e-mail account is "pbnsuxxors".
- Ret Conned took a shot at Grant Morrison, after his shocking reveal in Batman & Robin #12.
- Head Trip did a lot of this, mostly to The Twilight Saga (itself, its fans and its author), The Last Avatar and brainless TV shows (scare included).
- Though Boston Mooninite Invasion, Emo Potter, Childfree, Otherkin, Sailor Moon, Cosplayers and one very special abortion of the fashion also earned "honorable" mentions... plus a handful of others who didn't even deserve a separate strip.
- Sets the right baseline to appraise Michael Bay's version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
- Amazing Super Powers on certain legalisms. And one for Robocop (see the name and Alt Text).
- Sequential Art to The Twilight Saga. And Uwe Boll. Of course.
- Martians (EXTERMINATE!) look like trash cans. But at least like cool, modern and stairway-capable trash cans.
- Luke Surl launched a many-pronged one (see Alt Text).
- In this Blip strip, three friends, a witch, a vampire, and a Cyborg, watch a marathon of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Twilight Saga, and 'Terminator Salvation. Their reactions are priceless''.
- Now even mezzacotta pokes fun at TV Tropes!
- Exterminatus Now had some good ones.
- The Oatmeal:
- Artist/writer Matthew Inman expresses his 14 years of agonizing frustration as a web designer with this strip. No wonder the dude quit to make web comics.
- Ladies and gentlemen, behold what happened when Funny Junk tried to demand $20,000 in damages from The Oatmeal after he called them out for uploading his comics without permission. As payback he threatened to raise the money, mail photos of it to Funny Junk along with a nasty drawing of the site owner's mother, and then split the money to donate to the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society. He raised over $200,000 and remained true to his word.
- Sinfest is full of this. Got a good one to Toon Town and Mickey Mouse. And Bread and Circuses mini-arc (see also the previous page). Also, about Michael Bay.
- From +EV: Is Gold Coast really that shitty? No idea.
- In At Arm's Length, "The Song Remains the Same" story arc is a big one at pop singers and also the entire pop music establishment.
- Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic:
- The comic reminds: be thankful for small gifts of Fate (hey, at least they don't sparkle).
- The DinSea Princess visits Drostardy and "Um... How can I put it politely? ...I can't. There's no polite term for it". Also, the huge cloth box is pink.
- Schlock Mercenary had an arc involving an expy of What Not to Wear. The host had a misfortune to accost a boosted Elf in a rather irritable mood. Naturally, it wasn't long before she "put assault back in Glamour Assault".
- Calliope and Caliborn of Homestuck are widely believed to be jabs at two sectors of the HS fandom. Calliope represents the fans who obsess over it, doing fanart etc. and trying to drag their friends into reading HS. By contrast, Caliborn represents the impatience and rage of fans whenever Hussie dares take more than 24 hours to update, as well as spluttering intolerance of the fans represented by Calliope. Exaggerated in a series of updates which have Caliborn living out many of the complaints: He removed the pesterlogs, gets right down to action, introduces characters much sooner... all in the most shitty way conceivable.
- A playful one in Commander Kitty has CK tweeting to Daisy Owl and Homestar Runner and asking if he could have their audiences if they were done with them.
- Among a few other Take That! strips, as well as a few points of Self-Deprecation, Completely Serious Comics has made two pretty harsh jabs towards Jeff Dunham.
- From the exceedingly well done comic The Abominable Charles Christopher, comes this:Patient (a ferret): What's the word for when you can't stand being in big crowds?Psychiatrist (a cockroach): Agoraphobic.Patient: Well then what's the word you can't stand anything?Psychiatrist: Critic.
- Fans! has taken its share of potshots at pop culture. One notable Take That! against the Star Wars prequels took place during the storyline "Three", where Rikk, Aly and Rumy had dinner together for the first time since becoming a triad relationship. After a couple of attempts to get Rikk and Rumy to open up (the two of them were only speaking in two-word sentences), Aly asked, "What, George Lucas is writin' y'r dialogue now?" This leads to an ice-breaking discussion of what was wrong with the prequels, especially the Anakin/Padme romantic subplot.Rumy: Lucas makes me afraid. He's what happens when artists stop seeking criticism. Promise me you'll tell me when my work is bad?
- Problem Sleuth: While trying to sort out a four-way conflict between elves, clowns, hogs, and weasels, Problem Sleuth opens an "Allegiance Mesh," a confusing grid that supposedly shows that allegiance of the four groups. The page in question has two suggestions: One is a "dead-end" gag page, the other being the story cutting away to a different plotline. The gag page is for him to press ctrl, alt, and del, which results in him getting the memetic "B^U" face from Ctrl+Alt+Del, as well as a caption that reads "GAME FUCKING OVER" and links to their site. Unlike most of the "dead-end" pages, this one does not have a link within the text itself to go back (suggesting that this action really did break the "game"), but it's easy to either click the link back below or just go back a page.
- Existential Comics: Corey can get pretty brutal, even with philosophers that he likes.
- He can fairly be judged as not Socrates's greatest fan, given that every appearance of his is as an annoying gadfly. While even his fans and Socrates himself would probably agree with that to some degree, this isn't shown as really being used in a meaningful or substantive way. Sartre is also shown mostly using his "radical freedom" concept for an excuse to do inane things, and ignoring reservations others have at his advice.
- In one comic, he calls Sartre's account of "bad faith" in Being and Nothingness "the worst example in the history of philosophy", citing how poorly it illustrates his actual point, and how it seems like he's criticizing a waiter for properly doing his job while he writes books and drinks wine. In a similar vein, he loves to make fun of how incoherent Hegel's philosophy is, with every single appearance and reference to him having something to do with that.
- Whenever Ayn Rand is featured in a comic, the afterword explanation can always be summed up as a subtle way of saying "her philosophy is obtuse and her books aren't very good" - assuming, of course, that he even calls it philosophy rather than train fanfiction. In a similar vein, he loves to make fun of how incoherent Hegel's philosophy is, with every single appearance and reference to him having something to do with that.
- This comic about Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir using their views to attract customers at a bar compares this with the show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia thus: "instead of a gang of nihilistic, uneducated narcissists it is a gang of nihilistic, educated narcissists."
- Corey's personal Berserk Button appears to be people who don't think philosophy is a worthwhile field. There are a number of examples throughout the comics' run, but in particular, see this comic. Even more, also see The Rant beneath it. It appears Corey is... not a fan of New Atheism. Some of his unofficial Comics had mocked Sam Harris in particular as well.
- It turns out that Existential Comics actually started out as Corey drawing comics for friends of his on a particular subreddit, /r/badphilosophy. These comics actually predate him doing the webcomic seriously and were the impetus that moved him towards webcomics in the first place.
- A less serious example is his view on the Cleveland Browns, which to be fair he probably shares with half the team's fanbase.
- A number of his comics parody utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham, who founded the philosophy, specifically) by taking it to an extreme (Bentham's view has been frequently criticized for its unpleasant implications of this kind). For instance, Bentham as a knight is a very... different hero.
- Half the point of Consolers is doing this towards various game companies and their actions. Konami, from 2015 and onwards, seem to be an especially popular target.
- Sonichu, just... Sonichu. Half the reason the comic's become so controversial is that it's devolved into a vehicle to relentlessly bash anything its author doesn't like. Or anything that pisses the author off. Internet trolls have had a field day with this.
- Comic creator Inkling Studios uses these in various status posts, but occasionally in comics too. The most (in)famous example would be in his Splatoon series Orange and Blue V2, where in one comic he had the user SeanTheInkling be in it... as an Inkling Ebony kills.note Even though he did similar things before, he didn't take it very well. To the point of making this, and having the community attack the creator to the point where he replaced Sean with some random Inkling.
- The Petri Dish:
- One series of strips focuses on Thaddeus trying to give up Candy Crush.
- When Thaddeus and Bob enter a parallel universe where they speak in Justin Bieber lyrics, they hate it.
- When Thaddeus plays Mozart, the bacteria spell out "Plz make it stop".
- In Kevin & Kell, two nameless characters comment that Churtsey Ealing, a long-lost member of the British royal family, is the only one who isn't an embarrassment to the family.
- Peter Parker: Foreign Exchange Student has a subtle tongue-in-cheek jab at how the MCU version of Peter struggles to look like The Everyman when he's incredibly good-looking, an Avenger, and gets tons of free stuff from Tony Stark in the "Into the Spider-Fanfic Verse" .PPFES Peter: Alright, so you're also me. But you're cooler, more popular, richer, and buddy buddy with Iron Man. All that and you're practically an Avenger? I mean... Damn... Iron Man barely knows my name. He keeps calling me "Tarantula Boy". You're giving me a complex, man.
MCU Peter: You've got it all wrong! First off, I'm not rich! I don't even have $20 on me! And Mr. Stark is just my mentor! He made me my suits and he didn't have to do it at all! He's just generous.
AF Peter and PPFES Peter: [unamused glance at each other] Yup, he's rich. - Subnormality devoted an entire strip to how brilliant Stephen Harper is, and in a later strip, he's by far the most requested person for the Sphynx to eat. Winston also never lets pass an opportunity to call Nickelback terrible.
- Inverted Fate:
- Papybot incessantly talking about spaghetti and Chara calling it "a shallow misrepresentation of something far more complex" lampoons fan works that boil Papyrus himself (and other characters) in such a way.
- Rift 2 can be considered one to either religious cults or groups who appropriate religious imagery without understanding any of the actual history behind them. It also helps that the entire thing is presented as Asriel's ego trip to justify his god complex, and that it's outright stated in Rift 3 that Asriel is a false god.