A gag-a-day webcomic by the legendary Kris Straub, of Starslip and Checkerboard Nightmare fame. Currently available here.
Featuring lots of irony, violence, lazy art, and random humor. Straub originally named it "Indie Comic," but switched to "Chainsawsuit" when it became clear that he wanted to do more with the strip than make fun of indie comics.
Recurring characters include but are not limited to:
- The rarely-appearing title character, a dude with a suit made of chainsaws. He kicks zombie ass, but it's very hard for him to go to the bathroom.
- Famous Chef, a famous chef and a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Gordon Ramsay.
- Pizza Force, consisting of a eighties-style Action Hero with Cool Shades and awesome hair who delivers pizza, usually using gratuitous violence.
- Two Cops, a police officer who accidentally enlisted in Police Academy twice, and is thus treated as two cops. Hilarity Ensues.
- Huntyr Chase, pickup artist extraordinaire.
- Lazy Cat, who is basically James Bond meets Garfield.
- Time Ruiner, a Jerkass Time Traveler who goes around ruining causality and history.
- Elder God Cthulhu, who is rather depressed at the Misaimed Fandom he receives from humans.
- H.P. Wuvcraft, basically H. P. Lovecraft as if he was overwhelmed with joy at all times despite the incredibly dark stories he wrote.
- Boiga Bruddas, an allegedly forgotten video game from the early 80's that makes no sense.
- Time Friends, a pair of friends whose travels into the future always wind up not working out.
- Surprise Italians, a pair of twins who really know how to make a statement in restaurants.
- Action Champ Walkaway. Everything he walks away from explodes.
- An unnamed nerd from the anime Super-Boobs-look-at-High-School 3, who constantly looks at boobs and gets nosebleeds.
- Jet Wiggledick, a hardball journalist who has a difficult time being taken seriously due to his unfortunate name. Killed off but inexplicably brought back to life.
- A cast of thousands.
This comic contains examples of:
- Absurdity Ascendant: The best way to sum it all up, really.
- Alien Geometries: "You can't use non-Euclidean dice."
- Anal Probing: Put into context. With one phrase...
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Lazy Cat, badass secret agent he might be, but he's still a cat and rather prone to this.
- Author Guest Spot: Occasionally.
- Bait-and-Switch: One strip seems to be setting up Huntyr to slip a woman a roofie in her drink, with the monologue being "if you want a girl, you gotta do what it takes". It then turns out he was actually slipping her an anti-acid tablet and she's very grateful that he spotted her heartburn.
- Better by a Different Name: Snuggers, which are just sweats.
- Black Comedy Rape: Subverted. "Rape is never funny".
- Buddy Cop Show: Two Cops is his own buddy.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Dr. Murder and whoever Lazy Cat battles, among others.
- Chainsaw Good: The strip that named this comic: a suit made of chainsaws, perfect for fending off the zombie hordes.
- Cruel Twist Ending: Parodied several times in "The Irony Zone"
- Dada Comics
- Cthulhu Is A Loser: He's kind of pathetic.
- Digging Yourself Deeper: This.
- Eskimos Aren't Real: ""The Australia Hoax"
- Extreme Libido: The comic "Addiction and the Human Toll" depicts the protagonist of Least I Could Do as a realistic sex addict. The Rant (back when it existed) further drove the point home by giving a dry, clinical description of sex addiction.The behavior is commonly brought on by unresolved feelings of shame, anger or unresolved conflict. this ritualized, life-interrupting need for sexual conquest is an attempt to resolve these feelings in an unhealthy way.
- Eyepatch of Power: Lazy Cat.
- Fantastic Fantasy Is Mundane: Cthulhu and friends play a tabletop RPG called "Humans and Habitats". Cthulhu's character, Doug, is a "level 6 businessman."
- Fetish: Spoofed here, with a guy having a fetish for R2-D2 after he was spit out by the swamp monster.
- Funetik Aksent: Boiga Bruddas (Burger Brothers).
- Furry Fandom: Yiff City, Psychic P.I.
- Gift of the Magi Plot: [1] A human astronaut is running out of oxygen, and a plant astronaut is running out of carbon dioxide. "We could have planned this out better."
- Global Warming: Parodied to death in the "Disastorm: The Movie" arc. Highlights include underground tornados and a weather forecast predicting a "Partly Exploding" Thursday.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: Parodied here.
- Hands in Pockets: Parodied here, where the character's hands and feet are conspicuously covered.
- Handsome Lech: Huntyr Chase.
- Humanoid Abomination: Mary Poppins.
- Hollywood Atheist: r/atheism.
- I Coulda Been a Contender!: Two Cops feels this way towards Axe Cop.
- In Name Only: Dante's Inferno: Based on the epic poem. A pointed Take That! to a real game.
- Karmic Twist Ending: Again, parodied on "The Irony Zone".
- Lifetime Movie of the Week: Parodied with "She Cried Veto: The Susan Miller Story", in which a woman is raped by the President, and then her husband dumps her, and then the evil President declares rape to be the new currency of America, and then everything is resolved out of nowhere.
- Merchandise-Driven: Made fun of here.
- Mundane Made Awesome:
- Everything is exciting with the Game of Thrones theme music.
- The Rant also added With Lyrics for the music.
- Everything is exciting
- Murder Is the Best Solution: To just about anything.
- My Instincts Are Showing: Oh, Lazy Cat...
- My Nayme Is: Huntyr Chase.
- Naughty Tentacles: Subverted with Dr. Polybius the tentacle monster, who is a competent and professional OB/GYN. Check out the newspaper headline:WONDER DOC SAVES CONGRESSWOMAN
FINDS TUMOR IN NICK OF TIME, IS NOT PERVERT - Never Give the Captain a Straight Answer: Described here as "The Star Trek Dilemma".
- New Media Are Evil / Old Media Are Evil: Jokes at the expense of Newspaper Comics and Web Comics.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Used in this parody of The Oatmeal.
- Nosebleed: The kid at Super Boobs-Look-At High School has very High-Pressure Blood.
- Not That Kind of Doctor: Tucker Cogburn provides the page image.
- Oh, Crap!: The secret ingredient is...
- The Picture Came with the Frame: Her name is Dawn Kensington and she also really does live in Canada.
- The Rant: Generally used to extend the joke of the strip, as in the Extreme Libido example above. All rants went missing during a semi-disastrous website migration in mid-2021, and (as of July 2021) it is unclear if or when they will be restored.note
- Real Trailer, Fake Movie: a recurring feature.
- Ripped from the Headlines: After the flub with Barack Obama taking the presidential oath and him taking it again, Straub naturally parodied the incident with "Two Cops" replaced by Obama as "Two Presidents".
- Rule of Funny
- Shout-Out: Huntyr Chase's brother is named Gallant.
- Side Effects Include...: You know what, this was a bad idea.
- Staging an Intervention: The comic gets meta with it. In "The BUTT Algorithm," the character gets a Twitter algorithm that recommends posts relevant to his interests... and it gives him nothing but "news about men's butts!" The Rant below the comic stated: this page is procedurally generated. no one else is seeing this comic today. it’s about you and how much your dumb butt hangup is ruining your life. this is a web intervention from me and your family.
- Such a Phony: In one strip, a group of people is talking behind a guy called Mike's back because he's approaching them. They say that Mike is The Killjoy and an asshole; they lament his coming. As soon as Mike reaches them, they all greet him as if he were the real deal.
- Take That!:
- xkcd is a frequent target of mockery.
- As is The Perry Bible Fellowship.
- The Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot example above pulls no punches.
- "Addictions and the Human Toll" deconstructs the entire premise of Least I Could Do.
- Rageface comics get skewered for their lack of originality.
- Makes fun of Questionable Content for plugging shirts they plan on selling later.
- Think Happy Thoughts: "Tucker Cogburn, the wrong kind of doctor."
- Two Gamers on a Couch: Occasionally utilized.
- Unflinching Walk: Action Champ Walkaway, as mentioned above. His walk causes the explosion. In later appearances he doesn't even have to walk; just turning away is enough.
- White Dude, Black Dude: Mocked in this early strip. Apparently white people and black people make different sounds while eating, and simply pointing this out is the "greatest comedy ever" and will earn you a giant pile of money.
- Wishing for More Wishes:
- In this comic, a character wishes for a genie that lets him wish for more wishes.
- In an earlier strip, after the guy finds out that he's not allowed to wish for more wishes, he wishes for his current wish instead. This is allowed.
- In this
- Word-Salad Humor: Used to parody its use in Nerdcore music.
