A webcomic done with LEGO figures and roleplaying miniatures, by David Morgan-Mar, an Australian physicist, who also perpetrates Darths & Droids. Yes, he's One of Us. No need to run.Full of deliberately bad puns and surprisingly erudite references; one can learn a great deal just by reading the annotations. Despite the name it was updated daily. As of strip #3198 on October 29th 2011 the comic is now finished, although weekly annotations will continue. It is also re-running its entire archive, adding a re-run annotation to each strip. Covers a number of ongoing motifs and topics, including:
Fantasy: A group of roleplayers guide their party through a quest that tips the hat to Tolkien... before laughing at him.
Espionage: a spoof of James Bond, this time directly following the plot of the movies and with very few crossovers with other themes. Currently on From Russia with Love.
Supers: A hand-drawn theme featuring the adventures of some superhero RPG characters. Hasn't been done in a while as DMM doesn't draw those strips himself and the artist who did could only draw them in his spare time.
Me: the ongoing adventures of the comic's author. Who was dead for a long time. Specifically, murdered by himself from the future. He then went on the run from death, but now is on a mission to kill his past self....
Star Wars and Harry Potter parodies. The former isn't done much anymore, likely to leave some jokes for Darths & Droids, while the latter is often part of Shakespeare's fanfics.
The themes Cross Over very, very often in combinations you would not expect.Death is common in all the themes and has its own theme as well. There is not just one Death, but Deaths for different causes, who get moved around depending on job performance. One, Death Of Being Wrestled To Death By Steve, got wrestled to death by Steve. Twice. The favorite death is Insanely Overpowered Fireballs, who has been demoted and re-promoted several times.Can be found hereThere is an accompanying podcast (Irregular Podcast!), which does original material. Number #13 is particularly funny for tropers.
Irregular Webcomic! provides examples of:
And the Adventure Continues: When the crossover problems were resolved all of the different themes finished their quests and then had this ending.
Death Is Cheap: None of the Deaths have actually collected more than one soul in the entire storyline. Nor, for that matter, have they collected a pay-check, leading to Death Takes a Holiday...
Death of Being Ground by a Mars Rover Rock Abrasion Tool might be getting his chance soon, though!
Demoted to Extra: Quercus from the Space theme is currently this.
Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Wrestle out Cthulhu, technically. Steve also wrestled to death Death of Being Wrestled to Death by Steve when he showed up to collect the soul, which caused its own problems. That introduced the Paradox Department, which is run by a giant frog. He has also wrestled a Balrog to death. Without even getting any burns.
Done a George Lucas: Redirect Namer (with kind permission from Dr. Morgan-Mar), referencing his adding missing sound effects to a podcast.
Don't Explain the Joke: This is the comic that averts this rule so hard and fast that you'd never know it existed. If there is any chance that a non-genius in the audience will not get the joke, it will be explained, in great detail. Not only are the explanations incredibly interesting in their own right but they often make the actual joke funnier. This comic's annotation brings explaining the joke Up to Eleven.
Dying Race: The author pointed out that a page on this trope is desperately needed here, in The Rant to strip #2765. Four days later, he apparently got tired of waiting and started the page.
Early-Bird Cameo: The Great Dragon Sage Ardaxar makes one in this strip, during the simultaneous explosions the characters cause to restart the universe.
Eldritch Abomination: Cthulhu (in the form of a Lego octopus mounted on a tyrannosaurus miniature) is a recurring character, and often gets wrestled by Steve.
Fate Worse than Death: Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs is demoted to this at one point. He's not clear on exactly what he's supposed to do with the people who suffer from him — he can't collect them like a proper Death does, after all...
George Jetson Job Security: As stated above, Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs has been demoted and then reinstated so many times that it is hard to keep track of his job. Other deaths are also shuffled around, but poor, old Fireballs falls victim to this the most This may not happen anymore, though.
Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: At one point, one of Death of Insanely Overly Powered Fireballs' demotions had an extremely strange name. Death of Being Stared at by a Giant Frog.
No Swastikas: Not in the comic itself, which features swastikas in some of the early "Cliffhangers" strips, but Lego doesn't make a Hitler figurine (although you can make one using certain parts, the author chose not to). The author made him a brain in a jar. Before WWII.
The Nothing After Death: Parodied a bit with the Infinite Featureless Plane of Death. Which isn't featureless as Head Death has a desk and the Paradox Department has an office door and his receptionist has a desk.
The start of 2009. The Scientific Revolution theme currently (Aug. 2010) has a story line dealing with paradoxes created as a result of the explosion that destroyed the universe.
Will Shakespeare's discussion of overuse of Beat Panel.
Overly-Long Name: Valentina Irina Ranevskaya Galina Ivana Natalya Iriyushka Anastasia Sonyechka Marinochka Ineslenka Tatyana Hvorostovsky, a.k.a. Dr Ginny Smith.
Running Gag: Mostly involving Death, giant frogs and insanely-overpowered fireballs. Not to mention regular (every 100 strips or so) hobbit puns, "Oh yeah, I killed a Balrog [some number of "Again"s]", and "Nazi science sneers at X!" Two of these are lampshadedhere.
Schedule Slip: Averted; despite the name, it's had a regular schedule more or less since launch.
Shakespeare in Fiction: A modern version, who writes Harry Potterfanfics. He likes self-inserts, which means there's also Shakespeare in Fiction in Fiction. Provided it's canon in both storylines, Will was kicked out of the TARDIS by the scientists in the Scientific Revolution storyline as they were gathering scientists after it was pointed out Will wasn't a scientist. He was kicked out around 1990 because they didn't have time to take him back to the 1500s.
Stable Time Loop Unstable Time Loop]]: Occurs in almost every theme, often subverted. Of note is the time Serron and Iki Piki's future selves attempt to bust them out of jail. It fails. Their past selves ultimately get their organs stolen, so they end up stealing the organs from their future selves. Then...
Timey Wimey Ball: Things eventually get so bad that the universe gets destroyed.)
Stuff Blowing Up: The line from Excel Saga "Explosions fix everything!" could have applied here, since several characters think it might be able to restart the universe, and some are preparing to make things explode. The existence of the character "Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs" says a lot.
Temporal Paradox: Built up to during the latter half of 2008, when pretty much all the themes started Time Travelstory arcs, and eventually a few of those (as well as the Large Hadron Collider) started leading to paradoxes. 5 or so paradoxes occurred, and on New Year's Eve culminated in an "ominously silent explosion". New Year's Day's comic is just a big blank expanse, marked as a crossover between every theme except the "isolated" ones. Later, it was the subject of another crossover arc.
Tonight Someone Dies: Morgan-Mar announced the permanent death of a major character before the end of 2007. After setting up most of the regulars in highly perilous situations, 31 December came about — and the "Me" character, Morgan-Mar in person, was killed.
Too Soon: The "Steve and Terry" theme got a bit of flack when the real Steve Irwin died, though the fact that Steve woke up in the hospital from a serious injury when Steve Irwin died was entirely accidental, thanks to the miracle of comic buffers. He even apologized for the mix-up in the blurb.
TV Tropes: The Rant frequently includes links to this very wiki, best summed up in this one-liner: "It's really good when I can just link to TV Tropes, because then I know you'll have hours of reading without me having to do anything else."
Using strip count as a metric. He notes his strip-a-day schedule means his count increases more than twice as fast as the popular Monday-Wednesday-Friday pattern.
Writer on Board: The Shakespeare theme started out as a one shot railing against the culture-deadening evils of Microsoft PowerPoint, though it moved away from this quickly.
There is an accompanying podcast (Irregular Podcast!), which does original material. Number #13 is particularly funny for tropers.
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