Webcomic / Powerup Comics

Hope you like those poses. And those shit-eating grins. Because you're going to be seeing them a lot.

Powerup Comics is a Two Gamers on a Couch webcomic detailing the awesome adventures of the uber PS3/360 gamers, Shadow and Chug.

Wait, no.

Powerup Comics is the half-baked product of two man-child PS3/360 fanboys. The protagonists are a pair of Marty Stu self-inserts who talk big about their gaming prowess, but spend most of the comic getting into inane adventures that are only tangentially (at best) connected to video games. And this excuse for a plot often gets tossed to the side so the authors can soapbox their uninformed opinions on whatever topics happens to have grabbed their interest that week. The artwork consists of, at most, two poses for every character (which are then abusively copied and pasted), and the punchlines are either nonexistent, or consist of Shadow shooting whoever he happens to disagree with.

Wait, no, that’s not it either.

Powerup Comics is an elaborate prank in webcomic form. Chad “Shadow” Wilson and Jason “Chug” Krydenski, the alleged author and artist, are just as fictional as the webcomic they created. In reality, the comic was conceived by Eli Parker, and created with plenty of input from other members of the Truth & Beauty Bombs forum (at the time, the home of the Dinosaur Comics fandom). The entire point was to create a So Unfunny, It's Funny Stealth Parody of Two Gamers on a Couch webcomics in general, and of Ctrl+Alt+Del in particular—thus, all the aforementioned flaws were completely deliberate on the creators’ parts. Whether or not they succeeded too well in making a bad webcomic is left for the reader to determine.

A secondary goal of Powerup's creators was to troll The Duck (back when it was known as Drunk Duck). Reasoning that the only thing more infuriating than bad art was inexplicably popular bad art, T&BB members created accounts on the site solely to pose as Powerup fans. Their ensuing arguments with Duck users who weren’t in on the joke brought Powerup enough page views to propel it to a spot on the Duck’s automatically-generated Top Ten list.

A few years after Powerup’s inception, participation from Truth & Beauty Bombs dried up, so Parker continued the comic solo. He also worked Chad and Jason (the authors, not the Marty Stus) into his main comic series, Unwinder's Tall Comics, as minor recurring characters.

Eventually, Jason left for college, forcing Chad to bring Powerup Comics to an end, though he insisted that it was just a temporary hiatus until a new artist could be found. Over a year later, Chad found his artist—Amy Sauce, another Tall Comics character—and relaunched the comic with almost none of the old characters, and a painfully hip art style that clashed just a little bit with the writing.

After a whopping 5 strips by Amy, the new duo encountered "creative differences" (Chad didn't like that "she kind of made Shadow look gay") and the comic entered another year-and-a-half long hiatus. The comic was then re-resurrected with another new artist, Draz (a self insert/parody of artist Kimball Anderson, T&BB member), who drew the comic as a series of mostly uncoloured digital pencil sketches. During this time, Jason returned to visit Chad, met Draz, and "revealed" that he didn't put much effort into the comic when he was the artist. Meanwhile, Chad became increasingly frustrated with Draz's tendency to make confusing additions to the planned story without asking, and eventually they decided to once again stop making Powerup.

Following the latest hiatus, the comic has abruptly returned with no explanation as to what has happened to the characters in the intervening time, with Jason returning as the comic's artist using the exact same copy-pasted art from the original iteration of the comic.

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This webcomic provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: Early in the comic's run, one of the T&BB crowd's many plans for the comic's ending involved Shadow (the author) slowly going insane, while the comic itself became increasingly Mind Screwy to match its author's deterioration. There's a single strip (in which Shadow wakes up in the middle of a field and has no idea how he got there) that was intended to foreshadow this story arc; it was never followed up on.
• Adaptation Decay: In-Universe. Shadow's book Gamer Heaven is Real gets adapted into a movie. The director casts Dwayne Johnson as Dorkwinkle, and casts the real Dorkwinkle as Shadow (after briefly trying Abdi as Shadow). Overall, he tries to turn the entire thing into Le Film Artistique.
• Ambiguously Brown: Darkwinkle. Not for lack of information, but because his race changes every time the subject comes up: he's black in some comics and Indian in others.
• Angry White Man: in this comic, Moobs becomes radicalized by some imageboard. Since then, he commits mass shootings, complains about why he can't get women, and declares that white people in america are the most oppressed race. He snaps back after simply forgetting why he was so angry in the first place, while the mass shooter was revealed to be Woobs in a mask.
• Art Evolution:
  • Here, Jason debuts a new style after taking some art classes. It's more detailed, yet uglier than before. It only lasts about five pages before Jason quietly switches back to the old style.
  • The final page Jason draws before leaving for college is basically a huge middle finger directed at Chad. The art features actual shading, backgrounds, new poses and facial expressions, and a distinct lack of copy-pasting—demonstrating that Jason could have drawn better all along, but chose not to. To drive the point home, the art fades back to the usual, crappy style as soon as Chug leaves the page.
  • Amy Sauce and Draz's new art styles are wildly different (and a huge step up) from Jason's style.
  • And then Jason returns, and the comic immediately snaps back to his crappy old style.
• Bait-and-Switch: Panda's pregnancy arc focuses on her unhealthy habits and family's penchant for miscarriage potentially ruining her chances at having a kid, setting up a spoof of Ctrl+Alt+Del's miscarriage arc. It reaches its zenith when she goes back into boxing to defend Dorkwinkle's honor, and everyone is trying their damndest to keep her from putting the baby in danger...and she succeeds, blocking all blows to her womb.
  • When she finally has the child, it indeed is a miscarriage, and Dorkwinkle is so upset he leaves the delivery room to think... but he comes back to learn she had quintuplets, and her other four children turned out okay.
• Black Comedy Rape: Subverted. Shadow getting raped by Harriet is treated deathly seriously and played for drama, completely at odds with the Unfortunate Implications and Dude, Not Funny! that the comic usually utilises. Then double subverted, as the storyline ends with God telling Shadow that he should just be happy he got more sex, and Shadow fully embracing it.
  • Subverted yet again, with Biden winning the presidential nomination causing Shadow to have flashbacks to the incident and describing the situation as his “nightmare [becoming] America’s nightmare”.
  • Averted clumsily in stories after Shadow's rape. Every single character who gets in a questionable sexual situation will verbally acknowledge their partner's ability to consent, and immediately backs down when they say no.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Jason is actually capable of drawing pretty good cartoon art, but puts zero effort into Powerup—as a passive-aggressive act of rebellion against Chad. He has all kinds of ideas for his own artistic projects, as shown in one of Draz's comics. But once he's at college, away from Chad, he can't motivate himself to get any of those projects off the ground. Depressingly, Powerup Comics remains Jason's most successful work, just because it's the only work he's actually published.
• Camp Straight: Marvin the Metrosexual.
• Camping Episode: Shadow goes on a trip with Shana and Ladow, but while it goes well enough for everyone else, he's incredibly depressed due to being away from games for so long. He ends up bailing with other depressed gamers halfway through the arc.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Politicians (save Shadow's personal pick). A summit of all the world leaders is blatantly called the "World Corruption Summit" with the express purpose of discussing how to get away with political crimes.
• Cast Full of Gay: Powerup Adventure, a spinoff, does this. Francis, Gobwii, Dorkizar, Abracamoobs, Thompsonaur and Dork Chug are all gay (most of them evil); Shadowlord and Chuggeth have also had sex with men (but The Rant says it 'wasn't gay'), and Shadowlord freaks out when Shaddark calls him homophobic insults. Shadowlord has also had sex with Dorkizar while he was transformed into a woman.
• Cerebus Retcon: Dorkwinkle dying and coming back to life is initially presented as Negative Continuity. But this strip actually plays his death (somewhat) seriously, and shortly afterwards it's revealed that he really has the ability to respawn after death.
• Cerebus Syndrome:
  • Spoofed in a series that is about Shadow being raped in his sleep for years. It's Played for Drama up until the end, and the only punchline is the fact that Shadow sometimes still grins while crying. The real joke, of course, is that we aren't attached to Shadow, even as the "writer" thinks that we are.
  • Played straight throughout the comic, as it slowly becomes more arc-heavy and focuses more on Shadow's personal issues.
• Character Development: Development in-comic is rather lackluster, but the events of the comic are very revealing about the "real" Chad's psyche—for instance, the way his relationship with his father is portrayed in the comic says a lot about his real father. His commentaries in The Rant also provide insight, showing Chad developing interest in politics (and Comically Missing the Point), political correctness (and Comically Missing the Point), and so on. His cameos in Unwinder's Tall Comics support this interpretation, showing him as an oppressive bully who controls Jason, but is too stupid even to realise this is what he's doing. Since Shadow is the comic's real joke, from a meta perspective, this trope is the only reason the comic exists.
• Cooking Duel: Alan the alien is unable to kill George W. Bush with his telepathy, so he challenges Bush to a gaming duel.
• Color Me Black: Shadow is randomly turned black by a Jamaican Wizard (a recolored Moobs) just so he can prove to the audience just how not-racist he is. This mostly involves being chased by the police, and having Darkwinkle (who is black for this story) act like an extreme racist stereotype, so Shadow can comment on how even Black people can be racist.
• Cosmic Deadline: With the real-life Jason's departure (and thus, the end of the comic) looming, every conceivable plot line gets wrapped up, the answers are revealed to mysteries that the audience didn't even know were mysteries, and half of the supporting characters reveal themselves to be long-lost relatives of Shadow.
• Crazy Cat Lady: Chad apparently thinks all feminists are like this:.
  Alix: I joined a feminist gamer forum.
  Shadow: That explains the cats.
  Alix: They came with the membership.
• Cut and Paste Comic: Abused.
• Death of the Author: Invoked by the movie director here, to justify Adaptation Decay. Shadow (being the author) is a much bigger fan of "Death of the Director".
• Diagonal Cut: An entire story arc consists of nothing but a ninja sneaking around, bisecting his targets this way.
• Dull Surprise: Owing to the cut-and-paste art, character's facial expressions often have nothing whatsoever to do with the emotions they're allegedly feeling.
• Driven to Suicide: Shadow killed himself... and came back to life.
• Easy Amnesia: Starting here, Jack Thompson gets a sofa dropped on his head, and wakes up with no memory. One sentence from Shadow and Chug convinces Jack to become a clone of them. George W Bush attempts to pull the same stunt on Shadow, but Shadow is "too cool to be brainwashed".
• Fake-Out Make-Out: Here, Shadow and Chug evade an ISIS assassin by stripping naked and making out with each other.
• Fan Disservice: Here and here (sorta).
• Flawless Token: Shadow-the-author makes Abdi, the new token black guy, a genius specifically because "that should shut up the sjw's."
• Flipping the Bird: Shadow’s hair, as drawn by Amy Sauce: his bangs are in five distinct spikes, four of them tightly curled, and the middle spike pointing straight up.
• Follow the Leader: invoked This strip, where Shadow admits outright that he's trying to appeal to xkcd fans.
• Foil: Game Boy is one to PS2, as he's portrayed as the Tuxedo and Martini spy to PS2's Bond Villain. Unlike PS2, Game Boy's jokes are actually tied to his games and peripherals (and even have some humor to them), and he's proactive in his goal to protect the world leaders compared to PS2's constant fruitless scheming.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Chug's mom is a lesbian; Shadow is incapable of talking about her without mentioning how hot he thinks it is.
• GIS Syndrome: Parodied in one comic which had a giant iStockphoto watermark left in the background.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Gay?: Played for laughs in a June 2021 arc; after Chug accidentally drinks "gay brain chemicals" and turns gay, he immediately gets a Coming-Out Story about being bisexual that's almost fairly standard, except that every other comic ends with a gratuitous reminder that the gay brain chemicals he drank has made the entire thing irrelevant.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Shadow runs for President because he's not happy with either of the big-ticket candidates. He starts lying about his position in order to get more votes; Dorkwinkle, of all people, points out that, by doing so, Shadow has become just as "lame" as the politicians he's running against.
• Hipster: Teabag, who joined ISIS "ironically".
• Ho Yay: Frequently invoked intentionally to underline Shadow's neediness, especially in Powerup Adventure, when Shadow and Chug had an argument and Shadow had to draw the strips himself. I'm glad we're friends, Chuggeth.
  • Upgraded to full Homoerotic Subtext during Draz's run of the comic, where Shadow's strained friendship with Chug after he left for college is written like the aftermath of a break-up Shadow couldn't get over.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Here, Shadow mocks Dorkwinkle for creating a Sprite Comic: "I suppose you think that copying sprites is art, huh?"
  • Shadow admonishes Moobs for making a "joke" about planning a mass shooting, on the grounds that "There's nothing funny about shooting people for no reason!" You know, that thing he does to Dorkwinkle all the time as a punchline.
• Ignored Aesop:
  • Here, Shadow relates the aftermath of an incident where he was shot in the "magnum" (with ketchup) after making sexist jokes to Alix (who had just become a feminist).
  Shadow: I guess she just wanted to teach me a lesson regarding my own rash judgements, shallow views, and general insensitivity towards others.
  But really, all I learned was that all women are overemotional psychos.
  • In the "Shadowgate" storyline, Shadow finds himself on the receiving end of a harassment campaign remarkably similar to Gamergate. In the final comic, Shadow learns about Zoe Quinn going through the same thing he did. His conclusion?
  Shadow: Well, as my story proves, sexism has nothing to do with it. It can happen just as easily to a man as it can to a woman. I'd like to shoot every single moron who thinks gamers are sexist. Now show me her leaked nudes.
• Implausible Deniability: When cops find a bong in Abdi's car, he claims that it's a clock. And then his explanation of how this "clock" works gets completely Metaphorgotten. And the excuse actually works.
  Abdi: Yeah, see the uh... height of the smoke indicates what hour it is. And the minute is indicated by the massiveness of the bong rip that I take. Right now I'd say it's about... 4:20.
• Killed Off for Real: Played with on a few occasions.
  • Towards the end of Jason's first run as an artist, Dorkwinkle lost his ability to respawn after being killed, which Shadow didn't find out before he'd killed him again. This was treated as the permanent death of Dorkwinkle... but then, during Draz's run as an artist, Shadow decides to bring Dorkwinkle back to life again. Post-reboot, everything goes back to normal with Dorkwinkle being casually killed off every so often and returning with no comment.
  • For a long time it looked like it would be played straight with Alix, who after Shana was introduced into the comic went through some excessive Flanderization and her entire character now revolved around wanting to have sex with Shadow and being turned down because he was with Shana now. Apparently the "real" Shana was getting tired of Chad endlessly writing storylines about Alix throwing herself at Shadow and suggested that he might develop Alix a little and maybe give her a real boyfriend. Chad, claiming that this would be totally against Alix's character, instead chose to unceremoniously kill her off and tell the readers to blame Shana if they were angry about Alix's death. Then, much later, Chad found a way to return Alix to the comic by having her reincarnated as a heterosexual man named "Alex" who remembered lusting after Shadow but no longer actually did.
  • Played straight with Yoda the cat, who was never a big part of the comic but who post-reboot got an entire storyline dedicated to his death of old age. Afterwards, Shadow adopted a new kitten that Ladow named "Baby Yoda."
• Loose Canon: Following one cameo in Unwinder's Tall Comics, Parker points out in The Rant that the Tall Comics canon regarding the “real” Shadow and Chug isn’t 100% official Powerup Comics canon. Parker specifies that he doesn’t want his concept of the “real” Shadow and Chug to invalidate anyone else's theories about the “real” Shadow and Chug.
• Lost in Character: Dwayne Johnson gets cast as Dorkwinkle for the movie of Shadow's life. Dwayne resorts to invokedMethod Acting and, as seen here, has "gone full Jared Leto". In the end, he can't get out of character, even after the movie's cancelled, and has to be Mercy Killed.
• Moose and Maple Syrup: More like Can'tada.
  Canadian: Boot it's troo eh! We loove too sing aboot seal humping and maple syrup eh!
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Zombie Ninja Werepyre.
• Not That There's Anything Wrong with That: The comic constantly uses "gay" as a pejorative, yet Shadow awkwardly insists he's got no problem with gay men.
  Shadow: See, when I created Gayland for you years ago, it wasn't because I was homophobic. It's because I really wanted you to have a place where you're free to express your sexuality.
• Nuclear Option: Here.
  PS2: Ninjas are hard to kill because they could be anywhere, right? So what we do is, we blow up everywhere. Just say the word, and boom! Total nuclear annihilation.
• One-Steve Limit: Shadow's not happy upon hearing that Abdi also goes by the nickname Shadow.
  Shadow: Sorry, but there's already a Shadow around here. I'm calling you Darkwinkle.
  Abdi: Fine by me, Whitewinkle.
• Only Six Faces: Chug's cousin is a recolor of him, and single-use character Woobs is just Moobs with feminine traits MS Painted-on. Then there's the multiple straw nerds with Dorkwinkle's face, as well as supposedly "hot" guys having Shafow's face — though the latter point is justified because over half the male cast turns out to be Shadow's illegitimate half-brothers.
• Out of Focus: For a while after the reboot, Chug wasn't seen much in the comic and Shadow was more often seen hanging out with Dorkwinkle, who (while still a Straw Loser who frequently got shot in the face as a punchline) started being treated slightly more sympathetically by both Shadow and the narrative. Chug would later return as a main character, and started getting more focus in the stories — especially after his live-in girlfriend Raven was introduced.
• Overly Preprepared Gag: Turns out there is no movie adaptation of Shadow's book. It was all just an elaborate ruse to trick Dorkwinkle into shooting himself.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Subverted. Here, Chug sees that Woobs is obviously just Moobs wearing a wig and lipstick... until the real Moobs also shows up and stands right next to Woobs.
• Product Placement: In lieu of a punchline, have Shadow and Chug's faces on a Mountain Dew can.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Shadow and Chug have both killed people just because they don't agree with them. And when Shadow kills himself, He goes to Gamer heaven.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: In-Universe.
  • Jason's departure for college results in his character, Chad, also leaving for college in the comic. And Chad rushes through the plot to fit it all in before Jason goes.
  • Sometime during Jason's absence, Chad got into a long-term relationship with Shana, and had a son. So in the rebooted comic, Shadow and Shana are now a thing, and they have a baby named Ladow.
  • In this comic, he pauses a story to apologize to the "real" Shana for a comic that offended her. And then spends the next few comics passive-aggressively sniping at her for being offended.
• Really Gets Around: Chug's girlfriend Raven. Though their relationship is apparently quite stable, she is introduced hitting on Shadow behind Chug's back (in the commentary, Chad insists that the "real" Raven thought it would be a hilarious joke), and later on, in a storyline where she has to spend a month in jail, she insists that she "had to go lesbian to survive," and clearly got... a little carried away with it.
  Raven: Hey babe, I'm back from jail.
  Chug: Nice. How did you get out?
  Raven: Oh, it sucked. First I had to seduce my cellmate. Then I had to seduce the guard. Then I had to talk to the warden about why I kept trying to seduce everybody, and I wound up needing to seduce the warden! Then they brought in this psychologist to analyze my hypersexualized behavior, and I had to seduce her too!
  Chug: And... this resulted in you getting out?
  Raven: Yeah. It wasn't a long sentence, my month was up. But then of course to get home I had to seduce an Uber driver.
• The Real Remington Steele:
  • The original Darkwinkle is revealed as a false identity. Then the reboot introduces Abdi, who was allegedly the inspiration for the "Darkwinkle" persona.
  • Francis pre-reboot turned out to be Shana pretending to be Chug's cousin. Post-reboot, an Alternate Self of the real Francis becomes a regular.
• Running Gag: The "I <3 OIL!" t-shirt which inevitable shows up every time the United States elects a new president.
• Secret Test of Character: Darkwinkle is revealed to be Barack Obama in disguise, secretly testing whether Shadow is racist. Shadow passes, of course, and is awarded N-Word Privileges.
• Shallow Parody:invoked
  • Shadow's idea of political satire is George W. Bush (and every president following him) wearing an "I <3 OIL" t-shirt.
  • The two Nintendo execs are used for "Nintendo is on drugs" punchlines and little else, mainly because Shadow refuses to play Nintendo games.
• Snap Back: In a bizarre Meta Fiction example, the comic was put on hiatus after (fictional) "creative differences" between Shadow and Chug. The comic came back abruptly in late 2016 without addressing this. The only attention ever given to this major change is a brief part of The Rant to comic #136 of Unwinder's Tall Comics.
  I feel like it's time for a serious Powerup Comics revival, what with the current climate of gaming culture. Shadow and Chug are at a really different place in life now, and I'm excited to play it out.
• Snarky Inanimate Object: Moobs' computer often displays a sarcastic remark based on the situation in every panel it appears in.
• So Unfunny, It's Funny: The comic is a Stealth Parody of the Two Gamers on a Couch genre of webcomics, which is mostly known for its flat humor and uninteresting art.
• Spoof Aesop: Here, apropos of nothing, Chug hopes that everyone's learned something.
  Dorkwinkle: I learned how to do Pikachu's super combo!
  Chug: Christ.
  Nintendo executive: I learn no get so freaking high. Hard to get down.
  Alix: I learned that white plastic contains thirteen different hallucinogenic compounds.
  Shadow: I didn't learn crap. What is this, school?
• Stepford Smiler: Characters often smile at inappropriate times; usually more due to lazy copy-and-paste artwork than anything else.
• Straw Loser: Dorkwinkle, whose love of Nintendo games, casual games, and everything short of "manly" earns Shadow's wrath.
• Stealth Parody: Of Two Gamers on a Couch webcomics in general, and of Ctrl+Alt+Del in particular. While Powerup rarely directly mentions CAD, it copies all the features that Truth & Beauty Bombs members considered CAD’s biggest flaws (Only Six Faces, the gamer religion, the one "dramatic" story, claiming to be a gaming webcomic while focusing on story arcs that have nothing to do with gaming, etc.).
• Stylistic Suck: The comic is lazily-made, inconsistent, shallow and stupid, and it's all part of the joke.
• Take That!:
  • In general, the entire comic is a Stealth Parody of works like Ctrl+Alt+Del.
  • In the comic itself, Shadow's way of illustrating what he dislikes is by shooting Dorkwinkle after they say "Do you like this thing?"
  • Zig-zagged with the typical Ctrl+Alt+Del potshot to "Loss": when Panda miscarried her first child, Ethan himself showed up to tell Dorkwinkle their arc wasn't going to end like his and that the miscarriage shouldn't be their legacy, wishing them a better fate. However, Ethan doesn't flatly bash the arc and instead relates it to Dorkwinkle as personal experience.
  • Immediately after the "Loss" joke, there's a second cameo from Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade. Unlike Ethan, though, their only advice is "don't do any jokes about dickwolves".
• Take That, Critics!: Shadow responds to criticism by putting their words in Dorkwinkle's mouth, just before shooting him in the groin. Later, he cuts out the middleman and just shoots the fourth wall.
• They Killed Kenny Again: Characters in this comic get killed really often　(especially Dorkwinkle), but they usually show up again without any explanation.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Dorkwinkle's marriage arc ended in Shadow actually encouraging him to go through with it, even if he was embarrased to be his best man. Of course, this is before Shadow shoots him at the end.
• Toilet Humor: It's not frequent, but occasionally the comic throws in some fart jokes. 99% of the time they're delivered by Moobs.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Ladow is a gun-toting, sexually frustrated baby. This is quietly dropped after Ladow becomes a toddler, where he's portrayed as a normal child.
• Tsundere: Alix. "When will Shadow realize that I only tease him because I love him???"
• Wham Line: Parodied in one of Draz's comics.
  Chug: Shad, I don't know how to tell you this, but I never really put that much effort into Powerup.
• Word-Salad Humor: Here.
  PS2: Beep beep!
  PS2: I'm a cupcake!
  Chug: Well, that was random.

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