The Whiteboard is an unusual paintball-themed Furry Comic about an Alaskan airsmith polar bear named Doc and his animal friends (all of them Funny Animals) as they play paintball, deal with ornery customers of Doc's shop, and cause crazy stuff to happen by building machines way more powerful than is necessary.
The Whiteboard provides examples of:
Abhorrent Admirer: It's not completely clear, but it's hinted that Doc may be one of these to Pirta. And Kasi is definitely this to Jinx. For now.
In this strip, a no-neck who's had a few too many has his comment peppered with hics.
Animal Stereotypes: Most of the non-human characters display some obvious stereotypical behavior from time to time.
April Fools' Day: Many April Firsts since the beginning have had a special strip, on the general theme of Fanservice.
Art Evolution: Okay, so it's a bit hard to tell, but Doc's appearance, along with the other regulars, has been refined since the beginning strips.
Artifact Title: And how! The first five strips were doodled on a whiteboard. Between strips #11 and #12, there's a sixth for the 4th of July. He now uses the computer for his comic-drawing needs, so strips on the titular medium now account for less than 0.5% of all strips, and that percentage gets smaller every update.
Author Avatar: Doc is more or less the author as a polar bear.
Before that, Doc fitted a regular M2A3 Bradley IFV with a hot tub, complete with girls and probably an entertainment system, as a gift for the Army after the Real Life capture of Saddam Hussein, in 2003.
Big Eater: Doc, granted he is a polar bear but once he ate an entire deep-fried walrus.
Big Lipped Alligator Moment: To celebrate the 1500th strip, a big can-can line appears out of nowhere on Red's paintball field with most of the main cast, leaving behind some debris in the last panel along with a very confused Pirta.invoked
Butt Monkey: Swampy regularly gets stapled to the ceiling, among other things.
Caffeine Bullet Time: Done fairly realistically in one arc. Doc has to wear goggles in order to see in the wind-tunnel-like air friction, and causes objects he exerts force on to blow to pieces. He even accidentally plows through several buildings. Of course, it's started by a quart mug of energy shots.
The Cameo: Nearly every Halloween, other comic characters show up for Doc's party. The list is extensive.
Carnivore Confusion: Averted. Rainman wanted lettuce on his half of the pizza. Swampy wanted fieldmouse and ground squirrel while Jinx wanted lemmings.
Clown Car Base: Red asks Doc if his truck was bought from a circus clown after seeing a bunch of players and gear being unloaded. Doc says no, but notes that it uses the same technology.
Duct Tape For Everything: Doc uses duct tape to fix anything, as well as using it to remind people not to take off their helmets during a paintball match. Usually because he can't find the stapler instead.
Doc, Swamp Fox, Bandit, Snowshoe, and Rainman are all primarily referred to by their nicknames. Rainy's mother once called him Daniel but most of the others' real names are unknown.
Exactly What It Says on the Tin: In this strip, the title of the movie the gang is going to see isn't stated, but Roger points out that "guns, fast cars, and explosions" are specifically mentioned in the title.
The Faceless: Swampy, who is almost never seen without his face obstructed by his hat or some object, and almost every human character, by virtue of having indistinct circles-for-heads.
Failsafe Failure: Thing blow up regularly in this webcomic. One of the reasons for this is that the fail-safes never work in this comic.
Foreign Queasine: No, not the moose-burgers. Those are pretty tame. Try deep fried walrus. Then again, Doc IS a polar bear.
Four-Fingered Hands: In the first few strips, Doc was depicted with 5-digit hands, but shortly after the strip's name became an Artifact Title, the character design was changed to have 4-digit hands, with a note by the author explaining the change.
The animals mouths are seldom seen, even when they're talking. They're usually only seen if they're shouting.
The technical and mechanical devices though, oh-ho, they're drawn exquisitely! According to several posts by the author on the TWB forums in August 2011, however, he's using more detailed humans to get more practice with drawing them, and moving away from the "floating bubble heads".
Gadgeteer Genius: Both Doc and Roger are very good at what they do. When they work together, they make very dangerous machines.
Gender Bender: After pressing a button with a Shmuck Bait warning sign, in the May 22, 2012 strip Roger is transformed into a woman.
Genius Bruiser: Doc easily qualifies, being built like one would expect of a polar bear, and who builds things like pizza teleporters, mecha, and reality-altering devices (as a paintball gun!) as a hobby.
Girls With Moustaches: Sandy greets a customer to Doc's shop, and is told by the customer that he wants to deal with a male employee. She ducks behind the counter, and comes back up with a fake moustache on her face, asking again if she can help him.
The Grim Reaper: The standard skeleton in a cloak showed up a couple times in one-shots to pick up a marker, while Doc came face to face with a somewhat less traditional psychopomp at the end of the "Doc ODs on caffeine arc".
Halloween Episode: There's almost always has a Halloween-related story around October. Mostly it's just parties where Cameos from other webcomics abound, but on occasion it's a full story arc, like with the 2010 Zombie Apocalypse story arc.
Hyperspace Mallet: Often used by Doc against customers. Sometimes appears much larger. Subverted in some instances where Doc's mallet is seen in a glass case behind his desk.
I Have A Family: In this strip, after watching an awful movie Doc threatens a janitor with violence over it. The janitor pleads for pity on account of having three mouths to feed. Two goldfish and a gerbil, which is sufficient to get the janitor off the hook.
Insane Troll Logic: According to Doc, he won't need a parachute when he next goes skydiving. He'll just bring along an extension cord or some welding leads, and it's an even bet that they'll snag on something before he lands.
Interspecies Romance: Jake (skunk) and Pirta (snow leopard), Kasi's mother (Cheetah) and Howie (wolf).
Klatchian Coffee: The crew of The Whiteboard, after (or in the middle of) a particularly interesting New Years' party (and that's saying something), manages by accident to create a coffee strong enough to cure astigmatism, boost intellect, and add a cup size to women. The effects are temporary.
Long Runner: The comic has been on the net since June 2002.
Loophole Abuse: Cross-country skis are perfectly acceptable on a Paintball Field.
Luminescent Blush: Sandy shows one of these when the usual crowd is cheering Swampy's having slept with her the night before.
Meat Versus Veggies: "Vegies are what food eats". Poor Rainman, who is a rabbit in a cast full of carnivores.
Misapplied Phlebotinum: Multiple cases. Doc uses a teleporter to get pizza delivered to his shop, and Roger once built a Tokamak fusion reactor into an Autococker.
Ms. Fanservice: Pirta, in-universe at least. The fact that she favors scanty clothing (even in Alaska) and her feline anatomy means she's always walking on her toes (and therefore looks like she's always wearing very high heels) may imply this for real life readers as well, or at least for the author. (Considering Doc is at the very least... fascinated... with her, this is not likely unintentional.)
Must Have Caffeine: Goes to ridiculous levels when the refrigerator full of Mountain Dew is crushed, the coffee machine wasn't fixed from its last misadventure, and Doc resorts to drinking energy drinks. By the 5-gallon bucket.
Near Death Experience: Starting here, though a bit unusual as the manifestation is telling him he should have died. A long time ago.
"Son, you use high explosives just to make breakfast. We're amazed you made it past puberty."
Or, in the cases of Sandy and Pirta, sane women. They are the only ones who don't take the other character's antics in stride.
Now that she's gotten a proper arc, Tawny is in this role too as the counterpoint to Snowshoe.
Jake, in almost every situation, is far more level-headed than his friends, and is often frustrated by their extremes (see Roger dragging him off during the PvP/The Whiteboard crossover).
Powered Armor: Roger once improvised one for reffing, but scrapped it after he fell over and needed a can opener to get back up. Some later strips suggest he might be trying a Mini Mecha design.
Punny Name/Bilingual Bonus: Pirta is Inuit for "snowpack," the pun comes from the fact that she's a snow leopard, at least according to her.
Puppy Love: Kasi towards Jinx. At present the feeling is somewhat one-sided.
Happens to the strip, from time to time. Usually accompanied by a strip in which Doc and Roger both look like flounder with both eyes on the same side of their heads. Also accompanied by an explanation for why that day's strip isn't up. The flounder strips never appear in the archives.
Shmuck Bait: In this strip, Roger is presented with a button with a warning sign reading "For the love of God do not push this button!", as a filler strip. Doc Nickel invited readers to suggest the results of pressing the button, and got several hundred replies (after expecting only a dozen or so). Strips illustrating the suggestions are usually posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Shout Out: Quite a few of them are for fairly old movies and old TV series:
There's also the "Webcomic of the Week" footnotes beneath the comics, which give shout out's to other webcomics that Doc reads.
Jinx was introduced as having a more formal name of Jimmy, and in this strip his last name is revealed to be Olsen.
Strip 1152 has a sign on the counter saying "Beware of the Leopard". Likely a H2G2 reference.
Shower Scene: Done as part of the 2007 April Fools' Day strip, here, and again for 2012. The second time the end result wasn't quite so pleasant for Doc and Roger.
Shown Their Work: In this July Fourth strip, take a close look at Roger's shirt. "Red legs" is the nickname for US Artillery personnel, from the red stripe along the leg of their uniform pants during the American Civil War.
Sudden Anatomy: Characters usually talk without their mouths visible. Occasionally they do when they're saying something with a lot of force or emotion.
Tom Boy: Kasi, apparently one of the reasons she and Jinx get along so well.
Trademark Favorite Drink: Mountain Dew! Which Doc has his own brewing plant for, and makes several times stronger than the commercial variety.
Up to Eleven: Doc and Roger often build very dangerous things — usually weapons — together. This even applies to the coffee, which smokes, sparks and melts glass pots.
Viewers Are Geniuses: Some shout-outs are fairly old or obscure (or both) and there is some science which can be difficult to understand, such as Doc's explanation of teleporter physics.
Webcomic Time: The characters often spend most (or all) of the summer of each year playing one-days-worth of paintball. Lampshaded at least several times:
Later, it comes up again in this strip. For those at the paintball field it's been only a few minutes, but for Pirta it feels like it's been two weeks.
Daryl asks himself that about Doc when on the field, but given Daryl isn't a rather large polar bear who runs a paintball shop, the possible answers don't do him much good.
Wrench Wench: Apparently, Tawny — she's a better paintballer than Snowshoe, to the point of being responsible for taking care of his equipment.
Write What You Know: The author's biography makes it pretty clear that he knows what he's talking about (he even owned a paintball field for a couple years).
is an unusual paintball-themed Furry Comic about an Alaskan airsmith polar bear named Doc and his animal friends (all of them Funny Animals) as they play paintball, deal with ornery customers of Doc's shop, and cause crazy stuff to happen by building machines way more powerful than is necessary.
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