Line #25 ShowWithinAShow/ComicBooks


1	!!Characters involved in production
2
3	* Johnny C., the crazy main character of ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'', draws a comic book that is the next "level" of insanity: ''[[TalkativeLoon Happy Noodle Boy]]''.
4	* The ''Literature/CaptainUnderpants'' books frequently feature comics based on the title character created by George Beard and Harold Hutchins. Almost every book begins with George and Harold presenting a comic providing exposition on the series up to that point. The ''Super Diaper Baby'' spinoff books have the ''entire books'' in the same comic format.
5	* ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' includes excerpts from the autobiography of one of the characters, as well as interviews with various others. ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' also includes the meta-comic ''Tales of the Black Freighter'' which is drawn by an artist who is [[ChekhovMIA missing throughout the story]].
6	* ''ComicBook/MarvelNoir''
7	** ''ComicBook/XMenNoir'' has Bolivar Trask's sci-fi pulp series ''The Sentinels''. For bonus points, the original series featured chapters from ''The Sentinels'' as back-ups.
8	** ''ComicBook/PunisherNoir'' has Frank Castelione, Jr.'s favorite radio drama, ''The Punisher''.
9	** ''ComicBook/IronManNoir'' has ''Marvels: A Magazine of Men's Adventure'', a pulp magazine featuring the (heavily fictionalized) exploits of Tony Stark as written by his friend Virgil Munsey and, later, Pepper Potts.
10	* 'Mazing Man's friend Denton Fixx writes comic books. His ''Zoot Sputnik'' stories appear in a few issues of ''[='=]ComicBook/MazingMan''.
11	* In ''ComicBook/ReidFlemingWorldsToughestMilkman'', Lena plays Betty on the local kids show, ''Commander Bob and Betty''.
12	* ''ComicBook/AmericanFlagg'' ran ''Bob Violence'' (a popular InUniverse animated show) as a backup feature for several issues.
13	* ComicBook/SpiderMan's former wife Mary Jane was an actress in a soap opera called ''Secret Hospital'' for a while. (Her character's name was "Sybil Shane" and from what we saw of the show (which was very little), her character seemed to be a vixen of sorts, and the show pretty much had every soap opera stereotype included.)
14	* In one issue of ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'', Shakespeare and his actors perform ''Theatre/AMidsummerNightsDream'' for Oberon, Titania, and numerous members of the fairy realm. Since, as noted above, ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' already contains a ShowWithinAShow, this makes the play about Pyramus and Thisbe a show within a show ''within a show''.
15	* ComicBook/AnimalMan's wife Ellen used to be the artist for a parody of ''ComicBook/ThePunisher'' called ''The Penalizer''. This gets a MythologyGag in ComicBook/TheNew52, where it's their son's favourite comic book.
16	* In ''ComicBook/{{Supreme}}'', Ethan Crane and Diana Dane are the creative team on ''Omniman'', a fictional character who is ''even more'' like Franchise/{{Superman}} than Supreme is. The same company also publishes ''Warrior Woman''.
17	* A Bronze Age Superman story from ''ComicBook/ActionComics'' #429 where he fought a creature named Ozymaxias, a man/plant monster from ancient Earth, turned out to be Superman using a creative writing exercise to learn how the Daily Planet's morgue keeper had learned his secret identity.
18	* The post-Crisis Superman graphic novel ''ComicBook/UnderAYellowSun'' paralleled Clark Kent's titular novel with his Superman activities, with many of the characters in the book being based off people or events he knew. A plot point was that the hero of the novel made choices Clark ''wouldn't'', such as joining the Luthor analogue when offered a job, and eventually realizing his mistake and atoning for it.
19	* As of the latest volume of her series (''Mighty Captain Marvel'', from 2017), [[ComicBook/MsMarvel Carol Danvers]] has been saddled with one of these. In a disbelief-straining setup, she's been told that the production of the loathsome fictionalized TV show about her, "''Cap'n Marvel''," is vitally important to funding her Alpha Flight team. Thus she's forced to be a technical advisor and even allow the show to film on her space station.
20	* As part of his ''ComicBook/UltimateIronMan'' mini-series for Marvel Comics' Main/UltimateUniverse, Creator/OrsonScottCard had Tony Stark's entire flesh mutated into neural tissue while in womb due to an accident, which also granted him regenerative abilities. This reimagining of the character was considered so off-the-wall that all other Iron Man stories in the Ultimate universe resolved to ignore it entirely, and eventually Creator/MarkMillar officially retconned it out of the Ultimate Universe's continuity, establishing instead that the events from ''Ultimate Iron Man'' were part of a pseudobiographical cartoon of the same name produced by Tony Stark himself. The cartoon was extremely successful, being sold in eighty-seven territories and getting tons of merchandise.
21	* ''ComicBook/Superboy1994'': Superboy, Dubbilex, Tana, Roxy and Rex watch the pilot of a Superboy cartoon Rex Leech had made. Tana correctly predicts that no-one will pick it up for syndication and Superboy and the rest make a few snide comments about the fact that the show made Rex the main character, and made him much more upright, better looking and likeable than the real Rex.
22	* ''{{ComicBook/Transmetropolitan}}'' contains three examples of TV-shows about the protagonist, gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem: {{Animesque}} edutainment show ''[[AdjectiveNounFred Magical Truthsaying Bastard Spidey]]'', a nameless overblown action-thriller showing a hilariously Hollywood-ized version of the events of the first album, and a PornParody titled "I Hump It Here". It is worth mentioning that while Spider (or rather, a in various ways heavily Flanderized version of Spider) is the protagonist of all these shows, he was not actually involved in the production, and is distraught at the idea of "becoming television".
23	* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'':
24	** ''ComicBook/{{Wonder Woman\|1942}}'' #161: Wonder Woman and ComicBook/SteveTrevor get involved with the production of a film about "the Curse of Cleopatra" after the stars are attacked by the WW villain Countess Draska Nishki
25	** In [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1987 Volume 2]] Diana writes an autobiographical book called ''Reflections'' and goes on a book tour.
26	** In [[ComicBook/WonderWoman2006 Volume 3]] one of Diana's enemies tries to produce an infuriatingly bad "biographical film" about Wonder Woman and the Amazons. When Diana is brought in to get her to sign off on the production she refuses and has a fight with the villain. Considering the circumstances the film is never completed.
27	* In ''[[ComicBook/EmmieAndFriends Truly Tyler]]'' Emmie and Tyler collaborate on a comic called ''Up in the Attic'' that they work on together for art class.
28	* ''ComicBook/StrikeforceMorituri'' uses multiple versions of this trope. For this case, the protagonists' exploits are featured in television shows based on their adventures, and they participate in a press junket with the actors portraying them.
29
30	----
31	!!Characters are fans
32
33	* In the comic book ''ComicBook/YoungJustice'', the characters watched a TV show called ''Wendy the Werewolf Stalker'', a parody of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. Eventually Cissie King-Jones (Arrowette) guest-starred in an episode after becoming famous during the [[UsefulNotes/OlympicGames Sydney Summer Games]]. This show is also brought up in ''ComicBook/Superboy1994'' and ''ComicBook/Robin1993'' since Kon, Tim and Stephanie are fans.
34	* In the ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' comic books, Mario is a huge fan of comic-book-within-a-comic-book ''Dirk Drain-Head'', which is hated by the other good guys (including Luigi, who ironically looks exactly like Dirk), but loved also by Bowser's minions.
35	* One issue of ''ComicBook/HackSlash'' has Cassie and Vlad battling a slasher at a comic book convention; needless to say, there are a few comics within the comic. The most significant one, ''Wunderkind'', is a blatant CaptainErsatz of ''[[ComicBook/{{Shazam}} Captain Marvel]]''.
36	* Al Capp's classic comic strip ''ComicStrip/LilAbner'' had the comic-strip-within-a-comic-strip [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fearless_Fosdick ''Fearless Fosdick'']], which was a parody of ''ComicStrip/DickTracy'' that became almost as popular as ''Li'l Abner'' itself. Later Capp did a similar parody of ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'' called ''Pee Wee''.
37	* ''Justice Girl'' is a comic within a comic in ''ComicBook/TheMazeAgency'' (and, in universe, spawned a short-lived TV series). jen was a huge fan of ''Justice Girl'' when she was younger.
38	* The comic strip ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' sometimes has Garfield watching the kids' shows "Uncle Roy" and "Binky the Clown", parodies of ''Series/MisterRogersNeighborhood'' and ''Series/TheBozoShow'', respectively.
39	* In ''ComicBook/ReidFlemingWorldsToughestMilkman'', Reid is a huge fan of the show ''Dangers of Ivan'' -- which later becomes [[spoiler:''Horrors of Ivan'']] after [[spoiler:Ivan dies]].
40	* ''ComicBook/{{Hawkeye}}'': There's a running gag in ''ComicBook/Hawkeye2012'' #6 concerning a show called "Dog Cops", which is apparently a very popular program among members of the Avengers. We know nothing about it except that one of the characters is "Sergeant Whiskers", but its existence has occasioned manic speculation among fans to the point where fan art exists.
41	* In ''ComicBook/{{FF}}'', Luna of ComicBook/TheInhumans is shown to be a fan of a [[{{Shoujo}} Shoujo]] {{anime}} about Marvel heroes.
42	* In Paul Chadwick's ''ComicBook/{{Concrete}}'', the title character enjoys watching "Sky of Heads", an in-universe TV show about an afterlife where the heads of the deceased float around aimlessly and tell each other stories about their former lives. At one point, Concrete wonders: "If I showed up there, would I have this head, or my old human one?"
43	* A few issues of ''ComicBook/GreenLantern'' in the Kyle Rayner days mention that Kyle used to be a fan of a comicbook character called the Cannoneer. One splash page shows that the Cannoneer is a cross between Cable and Shatterstar, drawn in a parody of Creator/RobLiefeld's style. He used to be a member of a group called the Y-Contingent, who are presumably equivalent to ComicBook/XForce.
44	* The anthropomorphic comic ''Rocketship Rodents'' (itself a parody of ''ComicStrip/BuckRogers'') has its own ''Series/DoctorWho'' Show Within A Show parody called ''Professor Chronofur''... And as it's an anthropomorphic comic, you probably know where it leads.
45	* [[ComicBook/MsMarvel2014 Kamala Khan]] is a fan of ''Magical Pony Adventures'', the Marvel Universe's analogue to ''Franchise/MyLittlePony''.
46	** She also ''writes fanfiction'' for ''Magical Pony Adventures'' and Super Heroes (which in the Marvelverse would mean RealPersonFic).
47	* The 80s (fake) space opera porn film ''Captain Hammer Meets the Space Vixens'' shows up twice in ''ComicBook/LesbianZombiesFromOuterSpace'': the first couple pages of Issue #1 come directly from the show within the show, until we pull out and find Ace watching porn in the back room of a video store; and later in Issue #4, Ace finds Mr. Hagerty watching the same porn video in the auditorium of the local high school.
48	* One issue of ''ComicBook/{{Xombi}}'' opens with the cast discussing a film they just saw - which, based on the plot and cast details mentioned, is 'Habeas Corpus', the film within a film from ''Film/ThePlayer''.
49	* ''ComicBook/FrankMillersRoboCop'', based on Creator/FrankMiller's original ''Film/RoboCop2'' script, not only features ''[=MediaBreak=]'' but also the talk shows ''The Luke Spindle Show'' and ''Lilac'', the respective eponymous hosts being a homophobic and misogynistic SmarmyHost and a transgendered woman. The latter show is also used to introduce Margaret Love, the character who'd become ''2'''s Juliette Faxx.
50	----
51	!!Show is plot point
52
53	* A show-within-a-comic plays a pivotal role in ''ComicBook/Ronin1983''.
54	* In ''ComicBook/TheTaleOfOneBadRat'', Helen imagines herself finding a lost book by Creator/BeatrixPotter, ''The Tale of One Bad Rat'', which is told and drawn in the style of Potter's books.
55	* ''ComicBook/{{Silverblade}}'': While bits and pieces of Jonathan Lord's filmography are seen throughout the series, ''The Silver Blade'' gets the most attention, with multiple scenes being shown on the pages. Brian Vane's superhero TV show ''The Winged Avenger'' also gets a fair amount of attention. Becomes a major plot because Jonathan is granted the power to become any character he ever portrayed on film, and he most commonly assumes the role of Silverblade. The Executioner possesses Brian's Winged Avenger costume and gains the powers of the Winged Avenger.
56	* ''ComicBook/StrikeforceMorituri'' uses multiple versions of this trope. In this case, issue #1 includes excerpts from a promotional comic book about the first team of Morituri volunteers. When Harold Everson considers joining, his briefing includes watching a video of what ''really'' happened to them.
57
58	----
59	!!PlotParallel
60
61	* There are several in the comic ''ComicBook/YTheLastMan''. ''The Last Man'' is a play written and performed by the Fish & Bicycles acting troupe (Yorick, the ''real'' last man, is not happy to discover that the play ends with ''him'' dying). The same people are seen several years later (unsuccessfully) trying to make an action movie about the radical man-hating Daughters of the Amazon, then finally end up creating a successful comic series about the last woman on Earth (Yorick is equally unimpressed with it). And when the protagonists are in Japan they watch traditional Noh theatre featuring a demon called Hitogoroshi (Manslaughter).
62	* Franchise/MarvelUniverse:
63	** There's an actual Creator/MarvelComics company that produces licensed comics based on the real-life adventures of the heroes. This started as early as ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'' #10, January 1963. The ''She-Hulk'' series uses these in-universe comics in the title character's legal cases. Creator/DCComics, after abandoning Earth-Prime, took this idea into their own canon.
64	** Amusingly, since in most cases the superheroes themselves gain licensing money and are actually somewhat involved in the comic's production, it's implied that the in-universe Marvel comics are slightly more skewered to portray the heroes in a better light than our real-world versions of the same comics. The heroes themselves usually answer the fanmail in the comics, too, which leads to some really odd things being said -- like Reed Richards wanting to get rid of fashion and force everyone in the world to wear a Fantastic Four-style uniform.
65	** At one point, the Marvel Universe Marvel Comics company hired a new artist for their Captain America comic... named Steve Rogers.
66	** While some heroes, like the aforementioned She-Hulk and Fantastic Four, are public figures in the Marvel Universe, others, like ComicBook/SpiderMan or ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}, aren't about to spill their secret identities on newsstands, so their comics-within-a-comic are only accurate as far as the superheroics go, and make up the heroes' personal lives and origin stories out of whole cloth.
67	** Marvel once printed a [[FifthWeekEvent series of one-shots]], called 'Marvels Comics' which were supposed to be the comics that exist in the 616 universe.
68	* ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' also has ''Tales of the Black Freighter'', a dark pirate comic (since superhero comics didn't catch on in a world with real superheroes, pirate comics became common instead) which is used as a metaphor for various parts of the story and the characters' plights.
69	* DanielClowes' comic ''David Boring'' has the protagonist find "The Yellow Streak," a one-shot comic by his father that seems to suggest why his parents divorced, while individual panels are used in the main story to suggest David's reactions.
70	* In issue #17 of Matt Fraction's ''ComicBook/{{Hawkeye}}'', the main character watches a TV special, which parallels his life, featuring the "Winter Friends," a group of super heroic animals (an analogue to the Avengers), including a non-powered dog who wants to take matters into his own hands (analogue to Hawkeye), who has a fellow canine friend who supports him (analogue to Kate Bishop), as well as three super-powered allies (analogues to Mockingbird, Spider-Man and Black Widow), and a group of tracksuit dogs (analogue to the "Tracksuit Draculas").
71	* Played with in ''ComicBook/TheMultiversity''; various comics that superheroes in alternate realities are fans of reflect the events of the story ... because they're recording actual events in other universes that are affected.
72	** The idea has a long history with DC, dating back to the Silver Age, where the comics of the main DC universe reflected what was going on in Earth-Two, where DC's Golden Age characters lived. (However, for the period when there was no DC multiverse, they went with Marvel's solution, as mentioned above.)
73	* ''ComicBook/VForVendetta'' is about a OneManArmy fighting an oppressive and totalitarian government. ''Series/StormSaxon'' is a propaganda piece made by said government that depicts a OneManArmy fighting [[DeliberateValuesDissonance ethnic and racial minorities]] in a lawless wasteland.
74	* In the ''ComicBook/DoctorWhoIDW Twelfth Doctor'' book, a creative team was inspired by vague rumours of a time-travelling Doctor to create ''Time Surgeon'', a comic about a punked-up version of Twelfth and his companion Kara, travelling in a Time Cabinet and fighting the Minister and the Deathroids with his sonic scalpel.
75	* ''ComicBook/DetectiveComics'' #622-624 deals with Batman trying to figure out who is behind a group of murders who is using a Batman comic as an inspiration. The comic in question takes a ''lot'' of liberties over Batman and other figures, turning most of them into demons.
76	* ''ComicBook/StrikeforceMorituri'' uses multiple versions of this trope. Within the story, government propagandists produce ComicBooks featuring glorified versions of actual events, while television shows use film from actual battles as "green-screen" backdrop and stock footage for fictional dramas.
77

Context ShowWithinAShow / ComicBooks