Webcomic / Dudim In The Family

"Dang ol' talk about big predicament for baby, goo goo ga ga"

— Miles, lamenting their trapped status on the "Casual Planet"

A more well-drawn than usual representation of the main cast.

Dudim in the Family is a web comic started in 2016 and lasted until 2021. Originally envisioned as a quasi-spinoff of the equally little-known fangame Super Charisma Bros., Dudim in the Family centers around a decently sized ensemble cast of various strange characters that largely originated from said fangame but are as equally as likely to just be completely made-up on the spot (special mention goes to "Goggles Yoshi", a recurring character derived from a one-panel joke early in the comic's run).

Though it began as a less-than-stellar one note parody of the critically acclaimed Brawl in the Family, it has morphed into a beast quite unlike anything else online, before or since. Drawn by multiple artists (resulting in amusingly different art styles) with varying levels of attention to detail (resulting in... yeah), the comic has gone through several "arcs", telling bizarre stories that somehow manage to have a degree of continuity and effort thrown into the mix. The many characters that are represented in Dudim in the Family are meant to be the comic artists themselves and the many, many people they interact with. Of course, not everyone is meant to be true-to-life - some characters, such as the nefarious "Tim Rogers" and his cronies, are entirely fictional and range from being based off of a typo dating back 8 years ago to evil "Dark Matter" clones of our heroes.

The comic's many overarching storylines - dubbed "arcs" officially - are categorized as follows:

• The Heavy Fire Arc (Part 1, 2016): Heavy Fire is revived and forcefully takes control of Kirby's Adventure, resulting in the rest of the gang taking flight to the Casual Planet (Heavy Fire's base of operations) to stop him.
• The Burger King Crown Arc (Part 2, 2016): The crown that Dustin periodically wears is revealed to be an Artifact of Doom, and he starts to slowly take control of the comic and replace everyone with knockoffs who reluctantly do his bidding.
• The Presidential Election Arc (Part 2, 2016): An election in Pastaland that was loosely inspired by a similar election taking place in America at the time invoked is capturing everyone's interest.
• The Friendly Tissues/Santa Arc (Part 2, 2016): Friendly is confronted over his masturbating addiction and is encouraged to go to a clinic, meeting Dudim and Enchlore in the process. Together, the rest of the gang (sans Dustin) travel to Russia in a bid to meet Santa.
• The Alternate Universe Arc (Part 3, 2017): When Dudim seemingly goes beyond insane into violent and dangerous and kidnaps Cruise, a few of the other members of the gang catch wise and discover that the evil Dudim is actually from an alternate universe where Dustin's tyranny managed to take hold after all (alluding to the Burger King Crown arc).
• The Dark Matter Arc (Part 3, 2017): The most well-known arc; the gang travel back to the Casual Planet on a whim to ensure that Heavy Fire was truly eradicated. What they find instead - evil clones of themselves created by a mysterious dark matter - leaves them frightened yet ready to fight.
• The Art Style Universes Arc (Part 4, 2017): When a mysterious swirling portal emits in Kirby's Adventure's Restaurant, Kirby's Adventure and Dudim stumble through it to find copies of themselves who speak and act ever-so slightly different. Eventually meeting a third set of copies, the many sets of the main cast have to traverse to the past to set right what was once so wrong.
• The Family Feud Arc (Part 5, 2018): Dudim has important news for the gang: he's managed to get them all on the popular game show Family Feud! In a very surreal and bizarre take on a Game Show Appearance, the six of them tackle their Dark Matter counterparts from the Dark Matter arc in a Winner-Takes-All, Absolutely-No-Stakes showdown.
• The Return of Heavy Fire Arc (Part 5, 2018): In an homage to Part 1, Heavy Fire is revealed to have survived space after all and returns to Earth and takes Kirby's Adventure along with him.
• The I Love Samantha Arc (Part 6, 2018): When Dudim goes too far and sabotages Cruise's relationship with Samantha (as well as his good standing with her parents!), the two of them are joined by Kirby's Adventure in an espionage mission to figure out who her parents are to stop the chaos before it begins.
• The Time Travel Arc (Part 7, 2019): When Dudim eats some of Miles' Time Altered Emergency Fries, he is flung back to the Dark Matter arc (and somehow also on the Casual Planet proper), and accidentally ruins the 2017 gang's successful efforts to stop the Charisminuses.
• And finally, the Tim Rogers Arc (Part 9, 2020), which sees the first in-person appearance of longtime unseen villain Tim Rogers as he aims to rule Pasta Land with an iron fist.

The comic finished in 2021 after the group mutually agreed that they ran out of stories and ideas and wanted to end on a high note. While still largely an obscure relic among many, many indie web comics, it has a unique bend to its humor - it probably helps that the entire thing can probably be read in an afternoon if one took the notion to.

---

alright everyone tv tropes is coming to town so everyone be on their best behavior:

• Aborted Arc: Most of them. Their work ethic isn't very sustainable...
• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Completely and utterly subverted with the Family Feud arc. Despite the main characters dueling with their direct evil counterparts, no deal is made about the arrangement and the most the villains do when they lose to a contrived plot point is swear revenge and then take off in a van.
• Accidental Innuendoinvoked: In-Universe: "The vast open sea, and no tissue jokes in sight..."
• Accidental Misnaming: Dudim has a habit of calling everyone "Jimmy", "Johnny" or some variation thereof.
• Acid-Trip Dimension: Bleeds into Cloudcuckooland a bit, but as with its parent series, Pastaland is a completely deranged world with colourful characters and where the laws of physics really don't apply.
• Adaptation Personality Change: The original Charisma fangames depict Dudim as having a sort of Deadpan Snarker streak (though external material such as MFGG and This Very Wiki insisted he was a bit of a nut), while the Dudim we see in these comics is... more outwardly strange, comparatively.
• Affably Evil: The Charisminus group never get away with causing much harm, apart from their sinister frontman Madox.
• Affectionate Parody:
  • The Family Feud arc seems to borrow liberally from an Always Sunny episode with a very similar premise.
  • The Dark Matter arc (apart from its overall plot) has many scenes/gags lifted from the Alien series of films.
• Alternate Universe:
  • There's the "Friendly in the Family" universe, where Kirby's Adventure is a king constantly demanding images, Friendly has a big beefy arm, and Dudim explicitly speaks in what the comic insists is a "Swedish accent".
  • There's "Hylian in the Family", which is somehow even more poorly drawn and nonsensical (we presume on purpose).
  • They actually visit an alternate universe in a half-finished arc in Part 3, where Willsaber is a democratically elected official and Dustin is somehow a tyrant.
  • An earlier arc in Part 2 implies the Pac-Man world is an alternate universe as well.
• Arc Words: Carried over from Charisma, "have enjoyment". Though it appears much less frequently, it should be said.
• Artifact Title: The comic's gag of mimicking Brawl in the Family pretty much ended after the first couple of strips.
• Berserk Button: Dustin really does not appreciate when people show disinterest in StarTropics. Miles and Cruise learned the hard way.
• Book Dumb: Dudim displays a surprisingly astute level of self-awareness for a bizarre character such as himself... and a complete lack of common sense.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: This comic demonstrates Friendly getting so fed up with Cruise that he leaps out of the laptop the comic was made in.
• Comic-Book Time: Well... duh. The characters don't appear to visibly age or express a passage of time, so it's a given.
• Comically Small Bribe: Dustin's reward for "taking care" of Samantha's parents is a single HD Retrovision cable.
• Cute and Psycho: Dudim is a friendly looking dolphin with a character design lifted straight from Super Mario World, but make no mistake: he's legitimately unhinged.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • Kirby's Adventure very early on was depicted as little more than having a potty-mouth and an attitude to match. He mellowed out significantly as the comic expanded and became more of a well-spoken Deadpan Snarker with a soft side when the plot demands.
  • Friendly Dictator didn't necessarily have much of a personality when the comic began, but a joke about him being a Covert Pervert was taken and absolutely milked for all it was worth. As time went by, this character trait was dropped in favour of making Friendly a bit more like his real-life counterpart: unrealistically optimistic, if a bit politically outspoken.
  • Dustin is absolutely all over the place - his initial characterization was that of a selfish-yet-meaningful dork who was easily persuaded by power (two entire arcs depict him as being perfectly willing to hold an iron fist against his own friends and the rest of Pastaland), whereas the more recent comics have him come across as an everyman who happens to like retro video games and isn't all that sociable. Between these two starkly different characters was about 3 years worth of jokes, gags, and rewritten or aborted storylines that showcase many other slight variations of the character.
  • Cruise Elroy was always a bit of a meme-er, but his similar gravitation towards being an Only Sane Man was more towards the latter half of the comic. The Family Feud arc where he comically overreacts to the characters blowing their chances on national television is a great example of this newer trait.
  • Langton's earliest depiction was someone with a very thick British accent and not much else. Then at one point or another, he became Cap'n Crunch. The two characters then converged into one final iteration of him: a ghost who wears a monocle, a large blue hat, and speaks very professionally and antiquated.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Although many supporting characters make one-off reappearances (mostly in the background, and entirely as a gag), a lot of them simply don't. Gato from the election arc is a good example, having essentially disappeared ever since.
• Continuity Drift: The Family Feud arc introduces the rule that Dudim can only teleport twice in any given storyline, which seems to ignore the fact that he's done it multiple times repeatedly before.
• Deconstruction:
  • The comic as a whole deconstructs Cloudcuckooland by demonstrating exactly how trying to live a relatively normal life in one might actually go. Though the residents of Pastaland are largely unaffected by its status as a sprawling and alive Acid-Trip Dimension, even something as plain and boring as running a restaurant can be realistically derailed by having wacky personalities such as Dudim or Heavy Fire running amuck.
  • In a very self-aware way, the comic has deconstructed Depending on the Artist hard - an entire arc implied that the various art styles and inconsistencies were straight up alternate universes and used the ramifications of having to interact with the earliest art styles as an allegory for coming to terms with your past.
• Different States of America: Implied. Pastaland seems to be America if it existed in a time of absurdity and surrealism. To mirror this, "Asking Land" is the name of a Canada-like nation above Pastaland.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The very earliest comics from its inception as a shallow Brawl in the Family parody were the same poses of Dudim facing a new "foe" and inheriting their powers. This lasted maybe 3 or 4 comics before it was already being toyed around with to the fullest extent.
  • A lot of Part 1 is Strictly Formula and had a recurring setup of "Dudim introduces the gang to a new character/guest star", with the joke often being surrealistic in nature and not really pertaining to the guest star. Space Ghost was once depicted as muttering gibberish, if that gives any indication of what we mean.
  • As explained above in Characterization Marches On, many of the characters went through personality changes/general development before they truly hit their stride later in the comic.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Though the comic is well known for its multitude of art style changes, the individual styles of the main artists would undergo their own development over the many years that the comic has been drawn in. Of particular note, Dudim's goggles used to be primarily drawn over his nose, until Vitiman began drawing the nose first somewhere around Part 6. The Time Travel arc where he goes back to Part 3's Dark Matter arc hangs a lampshade over this.
• Evil Knockoff: The Charisminuses, evil counterparts of the main cast made of "Dark Matter"
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Dustin tells Littlelum (this universe's equivalent to God) that he doesn't exist right to his face.
• Forced Transformation: Dudim has (willfully, mind you) turned into a multitude of objects over the comic's run. While it does technically render him immobile, he doesn't seem to mind very much.
• Fusion Dance: In what is a credited homage to Steven Universe, the characters have been shown to fuse with each other in stressful conflicts. So far, Miles/Dudim, Dustin/Langton, Friendly/Cruise, and Dustin/Kirby's Adventure have all been shown as being possible, with any combination implied to be equally possible.
• Game Show Appearance: An entire arc centered around the gang competing on Family Feud against the Charisminuses. The board, as one might expect from a Cloudcuckooland, was evidently sentient and reacted to their strange non-sequitur answers.
• Hulking Out: Dustin transforming into his Flesh Wall form, complete with a Shout-Out to The Avengers.
• Human Sacrifice: It seems that in updating the comic's quality from Stylistic Suck to something a little bit more tasteful, the gang decided Langton was no longer necessary.
• Large Ham: Basically everyone at some point, but special mention goes to Dudim (of the batshit insane variety), Cruise (in an Only Sane Man reactionary way), and Dustin (when he's flesh wall and angry).
• Lazily Gender-Flipped Name: Word of God invoked says the name for the female Dudim that appeared in the alternate universe conundrum during the end of the Time Travel arc was, amusingly enough, "Dudette".
• Limited Social Circle: The characters aren't shown hanging out with too many people apart from each other.
• Local Hangout: Kirby's Adventure's restaurant.
• Logo Joke: Of a sort - the strip's title is constantly changing/shifting at the mercy of the comic artist.
• Lost Food Grievance: Miles has been shown, on more than one occasion, to put a lot of importance in being able to eat his "emergency fries" (essentially, fries he cooks when he feels hungry).
• Medium Awareness: This comic pokes fun at its hand-drawn nature quite blatantly. This earlier comic has a similar gag.
• Mood Whiplash: The entirety of the comic's run has always been lighthearted, or at the very least whimsical and silly. With that said, two strips stand out as being unusually serious: this comic in the middle of Part 4 where Kirby's Adventure is implied to actually be all alone and cries while King Crimson's "Islands" echoes in the distance, and this comic partway through the aborted Samantha arc, depicting Cruise as a frustrated psychiatric patient who is portrayed as realistically very upset and hurt by the betrayal and confusion of having to lie to Samantha. Both comics were created as "experiments", with the former even meant to be a canonical ending to the comic.
• Mythology Gag: The character of Anti-Social Emperor, one of the "Charisminuses" created by Tim Rogers, has a character design lifted from a much earlier attempt at drawing Friendly Dictator at the very beginning of the comic's history.
• Reality Warper: Dudim, to the Nth degree. His powers follow the "Looney Tunes Principle".
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Dudim is given another chance by Littlelum to stop the Casual Chat Planet from crashing in the past.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Burger King Crown is hinted at coming back at the end of its arc, but as of this writing has failed to show up in any capacity.

---