A crossover fancomic based on the Mystery Kids fandom, Whispering Rock and Roll! follows the adventures of the main characters from Gravity Falls, Coraline, ParaNorman, and Psychonauts, as they embark on epic adventures exploring supernatural phenomenon... but mostly just spend their time messing around and getting into comical hijinks.
Created in 2014 as a Psychonauts fan blog on Tumblr, the author, as they described it, "sort of stumbled into" creating a comic series. It now has over 1400+ strips and 300+ followers. The creator has since released multiple collections of his comics for free on his blog, separated into multiple "seasons".
True to the fandom that inspired it, the comic also occasionally sprinkles in characters and elements from Invader Zim and Danny Phantom. As well as a ton of other sources the author seems to just throw in at will.
You can read the blog here.
The author also release a compilation of comics for download here.
This Webcomic contains examples of
- Adaptational Comic Relief: Every character acts a little sillier than the source material, to varying degrees. Mabel is pretty much the same, though.
- Art Evolution: Despite still being extremely simplistic, the art has noticably improved. Raz went from looking like an open deodorant bottle with literal white skin to actually looking like, well, Raz.
- Ascended Extra: Salma Ramsay from Paranorman was a minor character who barely appeared for two scenes. In the comic, she's Neil's girlfriend and a major member of the team.
- Butt-Monkey: Dib's existence is just barely acknowledged by the other Mystery Kids. When it is, it's usually because he's in horrible pain or they're trying to avoid him.
- Crossover Punchline: The Mooninites from Aqua Teen Hunger Force show up multiple times as totally useless gag villains. Holden Caulfield also inexplicably shows up out of nowhere one day and just sorta hangs around, with no explanation.
- Crossover Ship: The comic clearly enjoys playing around with these. Norman and Mabel date for an entire story arc, Dipper and Lili date an alternate universe where Norman and Raz are also dating (it's a long story), Gideon is apparently interest enough in Lili to try to sabotage her and Raz's relationship (it doesn't end well for him), there's some ship teasing between Dib and Lilo Pelekai, and some general flirting and fluff between the characters is a recurring theme.
- Demoted to Extra: Coach Oleander was very briefly the main character when the comic started. Within only a few months he became a side character, a fact the author occasionally jokes about.
- Denser and Wackier: The comic is far more focused on humor than serious adventures, with some occasional exceptions. Likely to compensate for the lower production budget.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Early comics featured banners that seemed to imply they belonged to their own comics entirely, like "Raz Loves Lili" and "Oleander's Exciting Life." Oleander had a much more prominent role, and the comic was exclusively based Psychonauts before the other members of the Mystery Kids just showed up out of the blue one day.
- Original Character: Done mostly sparingly. The most prominent of them is a Psychonauts agent named "Elijah Rovak" who has robotic parts. Whenever he's involved in a storyline, he's usually given an antagonistic role. Sometimes as a threat, other times as a goofy nuisance.
- Recursive Fanfiction
- Ruder and Cruder: With no S&P or FCC to worry about, the comic is filled with way more swearing than any of its source materials. There's also no filter on "adult subject matter." One of the earliest comics features Raz telling Oleander he has to take Lili to an abortion clinic as a lie to avoid going to a TV party with Oleander.
- Shout-Out: Comes with the territory of making a crossover comic. Still, there's a few unsuspected nuggets occasionally. Like the blog's own banner being an inexplicable tribute to Sufjan Stevens "Illinoise" album.
- Stylistic Suck: The comic's bread and butter. The whole thing is drawn in MS Paint with a pixel brush, every character is a copy+pasted stock template, and the drawings are extremely simplistic. It's technically a sprite comic.
