Webcomic / Basic Instructions

Meyer demonstrates "How to Take Pleasure from the Little Things".

A cut-and-paste web-comic by Scott Meyer, which offers, well, basic instructions on modern living. And how to deal with moon invaders. Features cartoon/traced versions of Meyer, his wife, his friends and co-workers, random annoying strangers, moon invaders...

Falls somewhere between being a Slice of Life and Life Embellished comic. Strips appear frequently on Cracked. For a short time, Scott's best friend Rick had his own spinoff series, Asking the Wrong Guy, though lack of interest led to its cancellation.

In July 2015, after 10 years of comic creation, Scott announced his decision to conclude the comic, citing increasing difficulty in avoiding repetition as the primary reason, along with a desire to focus on writing full-length novels. The final strip was posted on August 24th, 2015 and the comic then began rerunning with creator commentary added. After the comic finished rerunning, Scott posted a new comic on March 30th, 2022 and announced on April 1st that he was resuming his comic.

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Contains (mostly one-shot) examples of the following:

• Abstract Scale: A ruler that measures disapproval in "milliscorns".
• Accidental Murder: It's less-than-subtly implied that Mr. Everywhere was killed by the Knifeketeer while he was training.
• The Ace: Mullet-Haired Boss and Jenkins... believe themselves to be this. Rocket Hat actually is.
• Acting Unnatural: "How to Maintain a Low Profile."
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: "Jack and the Beanstalk teaches kids the following: sell your parents' stuff for things you want. If a deal sounds too good to be true, take it. And worst of all, "fum" rhymes with "Englishman"."
• Art Evolution: The earlier comics are simple and have less stuff in each panel; modern strips are generally more complex in their art and word bubble placement. Additionally, Rick has changed his look twice, with "original" Rick having longer hair and just a shirt, "middle period" Rick having shorter hair and more clothing, and "revival" Rick having facial hair and a sweater.
• Assimilation Backfire: In "How to Behave When Involved in an Important Current Event", both Scott and Rick assume that Basic Instructions comics being used in datasets for the Midjourney image generation AI will make its output worse.
  Scott: My work ate up a bunch of Midjourney's time and gave them very little fresh input.
  Rick: And made it look like their AI just traces photos. All of the other artists should thank you!
  Scott: No thanks are needed. I'm happy just knowing that I was no help.
• Author Avatar: Scott shows up as himself in the comic, and is also "Omnipresent Man" for good measure. (And despite looking the same, Rocket Hat is explicitly a different person.) The real Scott considers his comic persona to be the closest thing the strip has to an overall villain, mostly because he's such a jerk.
• Badass Arm-Fold: Towards the end of the original run of the strip, Rocket Hat adapts this pose, after previously invariably appearing "on camera" in a far less heroic stance.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Scott tries to disguise his yawn by pointing away and asking, "Whatever can that be?" The person he wishes to distract does not look where he's pointing but says, "Whatever it is, it must not be very interesting."
• Bait-and-Switch: In "How to Behave when Involved in an Important Current Event", when Rick cracks that Midjourney was fed thousands of Scott's comics to get eight actual pictures, Meyer says that's an exaggeration...because it's only thousands of comics if you count reruns.
• Beard of Evil: The source of this trope gets referenced.
  Scott: But the way it works is that in one universe everyone's normal and in the other everyone's cruel and selfish.
  Alternate!Rick: And some people have goatees.
  Scott: Yeah! Oh...
• Blessed with Suck: Omnipresent Man. He's everywhere. EVERYWHERE ELSE.
• Born Unlucky: Rick.
• Bothering by the Book: Utilized here to sabotage Mullet Boss.
• Butt-Monkey: Almost bordering on Cosmic Plaything, the universe seems to have it in for Rick. Noteworthy example in this comic.
  • This is fully intentional, with the blessing of the source material himself. He (apparently) had felt envious of his fictional self.
  • The superhero and supervillain characters based on Rick, with the notable exception of Older-But-Wiser Man, don't exactly have a great time either - Mr Everywhere is basically the only significant character to canonically die and the Knifeketeer is so consistently treated like a walking punchline, even by his own teammates, that some strips refer to him as "the Human Joke". The Moon Emperor, admittedly, brings most of it on himself by continually picking fights with Rocket Hat.
  • Scott himself plays this role at work. Mullet Boss seems to take particular pleasure in making him work weekends or forcing him to interact with Jenkins.
• The Chew Toy: Again, Rick. Explained in this comic.
• Celebrity Endorsement: Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, was a great fan of this strip right from the beginning and his support and endorsement helped establish it and spread its popularity.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Rocket Hat. Not quite played straight, as while he needs the hat to fly to and from the Moon, he's perfectly capable of dealing out one-sided beatings without it.
• Comically Invincible Hero: Rocket Hat. And he does it without the audience ever seeing him move.
• Comically Missing the Point: Many examples (Mostly with Jenkins), though Scott himself decided to take away a different lesson from a bird documentary in ''How to face your fear. (Keeping in mind he has a fear of birds)
  TV: Hunting and deforestation have endangered many of these beautiful, irreplaceable creatures.
  Missy: They don't seem so scary now, do they?
  Scott: No, clearly we have the tools to defeat them!
• Conservation of Competence: At the one end you have Mullet Boss. At the other, Rocket Hat. Which end is which? Rocket Hat can beat the Moon Men handily, frequently, single-handedly, and silently (strangely). Mullet Boss... can kick a dog in its junk.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Pretty much any time Rocket Hat fights the Moon Men.
• Damned by Faint Praise: The tourism slogans in "How to Plan a Vacation", such as "Death Valley — It's Better Than It Sounds!" and the apparently-real-life "Missoula — We Like It Here!"
• Description Cut: Pretty much every panel of every strip, with the "instruction" text clashing with the depiction of events.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Jenkins tends to specialize in this.
• Dissimile
• Doesn't Like Guns: Parodied with the Knifeketeer- his sole power is stabbing, which has actually left all his nemeses dead. Rather than being praised, he is a laughing stock due to his lack of worthy foes. Well, that and his boxing glove knifes.
• Don't Explain the Joke: One of the two problems here, the other being Dude, Not Funny!.
• Droste Image: The infinitee.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Very early comics had Scott giving the advice as himself, rather than as a neutral third party, and then following it to the letter in the illustrations. The more modern versions start at around here.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Scott Oscar Meyer.
• Enemy Mine: How to Unite Against a Common Foe
  • Another strip had the Emperor trying to force this, only to find his enemies were already friends with each other.
• Epic Fail: In "How To Cheat at Videogames", Meyer spends 4 hours stuck on a boss everyone else says is easy. And then spends another 4 hours just trying to enter the Konami Code.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Discussed in-universe.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Parodied.
• Evil Twin: One or two strips involve them.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "How to Show Some Civic Pride
  Scott's Mother: Why not talk about the Christmas Lighted Farm Implement parade?
  Scott: There's not much to say. They put Christmas lights on farm implements and have a parade. It's all right there in the title.
• Faux-To Guide: The advice is generally good - or at least accurate - but the characters frequently follow it badly.
• Fleeting Demographic Rule: It only took three years to accidentally remake this comic.
• Flipping the Bird
• Freakier Than Fiction: According to "How to Defend an Artistic Decision", Comic Rick is less of a Butt-Monkey than Real Rick, because "people would never accept the grim reality of what it means to be you".
• Goldfish Poop Gang: The Moon Men. THE DETAILS ARE UNIMPORTANT!
• Good Angel, Bad Angel
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: How To Name Your Band.
• Good Is Not Nice / Affably Evil: That's why I suggest doing the right thing in the most evil manner possible.
• Gratuitous Ninja: One of Scott's coworkers was complaining about how her son wanted to be a ninja when he grew up. Scott spun it in the most positive light possible.
• Groin Attack: Discussed between Knifeketeer and his nemesis.
  Knifeketeer: Nah, Girl-illa won't talk to me after what I accidentally did to her sidekick.
  Macra-Mayhem How is Cojon-Ape?
  Knifeketeer: Still trying to come up with a new name.
• Helpless with Laughter: One strip features the enemy being left helpless with laughter at seeing the Moon Emperor being used as a human wrecking ball by Rocket Hat.
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Jenkins wrote a Star Trek Fan Fic in which "Admiral Jenkins" saves the day.
  • In another strip, Rick apparently replaced Harry Potter's name with his own in his first-edition books.
• Hypocritical Humor: In "How to Evaluate Another Person's Artistic Expression";
  Scott: By just making cat noises and calling it a guitar solo, you're claiming to do something without learning the skills to do it.
  Rick: Like a guy who traces over photos and calls himself a cartoonist.
  Scott: No, that's completely different.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: "How to X". There are also a handful of exceptions.
• I Like My X Like I Like My Y: Not actually in the comic (which is about Scott preferring coffee black rather than adulterated with other things) but the comments section to "How to Appreciate Something for What It Is" has a wonderful collection of "I like my coffee like..." jokes.
• I'm Standing Right Here: Said twice by Rick. Not that anyone cared.
• Incompetence, Inc.: Scott's workplace. Incompetent boss, apathetic employees, angry clients who keep inexplicably coming back for more. The corporate higher ups of the company send their worst employees there and deliberately provide them low funding.
• Insane Troll Logic: Jenkins. Sometimes 'insane' is the more operative part of the term, sometimes 'troll' is, but most times you can never be sure.
• Invisible Streaker: The Invisible Naked Man.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Trope Namer.
• Jerkass: Jenkins.
  Scott: Poor Jenkins. Everyone he talks to is always angry.
  Smitty: That's Jenkins' curse. He only deals with people who are, at that moment, dealing with Jenkins.
• Just Between You and Me
• Killed Off for Real: Mr. Everywhere, at the Knifeketeer's hands.
• Martial Arts and Crafts: "Macramayhem, master of the martial crafts!"
• Metaphorgotten: "There comes a time in every father's life when he has to fire one of his kids."
• Money, Dear Boy: In-Universe example in how to give constructive criticism:
  Scott: You shouldn't write a book for the title.
  Mullet Boss: I'm not. I'm writing it for the money.
  Scott: Oh. That's okay then.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: The Legion of Super Heroes, and the Knifeketeer, a collection of the world's mightiest crime-fighters. And the Knifeketeer.
  The Judger: We shall now be known as "The Judger presents the Legion of Super Heroes: featuring Rocket Hat and special guest: Omnipresent Man".
  Knifeketeer: Yeah, still feeling excluded.
  The Judger: I'm beginning to think your power is being unsatisfiable.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Stabby, who's something of a Robin to the Knifeketeer, except more dangerous.
• No Hero to His Valet: The Moon Emperor does a poor job of convincing his Moon Minions that he cares about them.
• No Indoor Voice: Al almost always talks in all caps.
• No Matter How Much I Beg: Used (and subverted) by the Moon Emperor here.
• Noodle Implements: Parodied; Rocket Hat gained his abilities in a conspicuously unexplained "accident involving model rockets, a hot glue gun and a plastic souvenir Viking helmet". Despite it being transparently obvious how such items would create a rocket-hat, it doesn't remotely explain how it turned him into a Badass Normal superhero.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Whatever "the unpleasantness" of Sunnyside was, it made national news. The commentary reveals that this isn't based on a specific incident, but there were a few drug stories that made national news.
  • We never learn the details of the Ouija board incident where Rick was called a "swine" by the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Scott likes to point out the similarities between him and Mr. Ryan, much to the latter's chagrin.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: We never see any of Rocket Hat's superheroism, just the awed after-the-fact recap by witnesses.
• The Omnipresent: Omnipresent Man and Mr Everywhere.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Conversations between Scott and Mullet Boss often involve this. Perhaps exemplified best here.
• Only Sane Employee: Scott and Athena share this duty, with Graham wavering in and out, in contrast to the "Earth Mother", Jenkins and Mullet Boss.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Missy plays this role to Scott and Rick, frequently popping up with a comment on the absurdity of their latest Seinfeldian Conversation.
  • Post-revival "gag superhero" comics tend to involve Older-But-Wiser Man interacting with a weird one like Sea-Gal or the Knifeketeer.
    Older-But-Wiser Man: I use hard-won wisdom, discretion and common sense to prevent problems before they start.
    The Knifeketeer: I fight crime with knives.
    Older-But-Wiser Man: I'm going to avoid you from now on.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: As the Knifeketeer laments on several occasions, the superheroes don't do a whole lot of actual superheroing, with even Rocket Hat mostly fighting in self-defence.
  The Knifeketeer: I'm the only one of us "heroes" who actually fights crime!
  The Judger: You stab criminals.
  The Knifeketeer: Are you denying that stabbing is a form of fighting?!
  The Judger: No, but it's also a form of crime, so it sort of balances out.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Scott's boss qualifies in every way. He even has a terrible hairstyle.
• Product Placement:
  • Parodied here and played with in the last panel.
  • Scott once suggested that superhero movie stingers could end with hero stopping the villain from stealing Hostess Fruit Pies.
• Pure Is Not Good: In the last panel of this comic.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Invoked in regards to fictional-Rick's luck.
  Scott: It just didn't seem plausible that you'd never ever win. Ever.
  Rick: So you're making me more believable by lying about me.
  Scott: More "distorting" than lying. Seeing you as you are would damage people's world-view. You're like a positivity eclipse.
• Reminiscing About Your Victims: This comic about how to fake a smile suggests, in its final panel, just thinking of a pleasant memory and letting your face do the job by itself. What was the memory in question?
  I remember the time I murdered that hobo and made a poncho out of his skin. Good times.
• Right-Hand Cat: Here.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: A frequent issue of Scott's - the comment pages typically have a number of corrections in them, and he fixes misspellings as they are pointed out to him. Lampshaded in this comic, which also serves as a Take That, Audience!.
• Self-Deprecation: A few comics break the fourth wall to mention Scott's drawing ability:
  Scott: I got sucked into a vortex this morning.
  Rick: What'd it look like?
  Scott: Like something only a skilled artist could draw.
  Rick: It's a shame I'll never see one.
• Shout-Out: Frequent.
• Stealth Insult: Scott is fond of these. The third panel of this comic is one example.
• Stockholm Syndrome: Scott explains the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast.
• Straw Loser: Rick.
• Streisand Effect: Invoked when relating a story he'd heard from someone involving their having removed the keys from a handicapped woman's scooter and thrown them as far away as they could. But as he puts it in the last panel...
  Scott: To the person who told me the story in panel one: I have not told anyone your name, nor have I drawn any likeness of you. You can never sue me, or even act offended without identifying yourself. I win.
  Rick: In the most cowardly way possible.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: The "Sexy Uncle Sam" costume (for women).
• Sword Cane: The only way to settle a dispute among gentlemen is to compare them - perish the thought of possibly damaging one's sword-cane!
• Summation Gathering
• Superhero Origin: Most of the alleged superheroes get a capsulized one, in an episode that explains How to Give a Character Superpowers.
  • The Judger is a Non-Human Hero exiled from a race of Space Elves for her judgements being "too vague and poorly-considered".
  • The Knifeketeer is a Badass Normal whose pacifist parents were "slapped to death by a hemophiliac, and I was powerless to save them."
  • Omnipresent Man won his powers in a game of contract bridge.
  • Rocket Hat got his "powers" in a Freak Lab Accident involving a hot glue gun, some bottle rockets and a plastic Viking helmet.
• Sustained Misunderstanding: Scott mishearing "back waxing" as "bag wag sing":
  Scott: I'm sorry, what was that?
  Mullet Boss: My bag.
  Scott: Yes.
  Mullet Boss: Wags.
  Scott: Uh, okay.
  Mullet Boss: WAG SING! WAG SING, MY BAG!
  Scott: I still don't know what you're talking about, but I'm begging you to stop explaining.
• Take Our Word for It: In every panel with Rocket Hat, he's in exactly the same pose^note He does eventually prove himself capable of assuming a more overtly heroic pose, for a grand total of two, facing the same direction. Anything he does is described after he's off panel.
• Take That!:
  • Meyer consistently portrays Sunnyside in Yakima County, Washington, his childhood home, as a Place Worse Than Death. Expect references to flies, feedlots, grit-wind and boredom.
  • In a couple of comics that aged rather badly over the course of 2016-2020, Scott described Donald Trump as "a good bipartisan scapegoat" and was actually happy that he became a Presidential candidate, because it would finally give Scott the chance to vote against him. His commentary on the rerun notes that while he stands by his opinions, 100% of his predictions related to Trump's political career were wrong.
  • Meyer is no more fond of Midjourney than most of the other artists whose work was used to train it without consent or remuneration, to the point of writing a comic expressing pride that his work likely wasted a bunch of Midjourney's time to either accomplish nothing or actively make its output worse.
  • Red Delicious apples, of all things, are the target of shared scorn from both Meyer and Missy.
    Scott: I hate Red Delicious apples, and it’s not just because many of my memories of them involve having them thrown at me (They’re so plentiful in Yakima that they are what you throw at someone when you don’t want to waste a good rock).
• Technical Pacifist: The Knifeketeer has several special knives for defeating a foe harmlessly, most prominently the "Fist-knife". It's actually very effective, as foes collapse from laughing too much.
• Terrible Artist: Scott has made no secret that he's much more of a writer than an artist, which is why the comic mostly uses repeated stock images traced from photographs instead of anything drawn from scratch, and routinely contains jokes at the expense of Scott's art.

  Mirror!Rick: What'd [the vortex] look like?
  Scott: Like something only a skilled artist could draw.
  Mirror!Rick: It's a shame I'll never see one.

• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • Once in a while, Rick gets the better of Scott, generally in a meaningless way. Ironically, it appears that the real Rick does not like those occasions, because then he envies his fictional self.
  • In the revival, Older-But-Wiser Man gives Rick an in-universe character who isn't a massive Butt-Monkey.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Parodied - the people in Scott's hometown of Sunnyside never discuss "The Unpleasantness", but everyone else in the state of Washington did.
  • Open Secret: It made the national news.
• Translation by Volume: Parodied in "How to Talk to Someone who Speaks a Foreign Language". To sum up, be patient and remember that people might stereotype. Read it here.
• Trick Arrow: The Knifeketeer uses a Boxing Glove Knife, being a parody of Green Arrow and other superheroes who have to rely on inventive stupidity to remain useful and nonlethal at the same time.
• The Un-Smile: A classic - "Your hide will make a fine poncho!"
  • Hypnotic Head: The same image returns here.
• Video Wills: Sort of a running gag in the strip.
• Villain Protagonist: The real-life Scott considers himself this in the world of the comics.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Scott and Rick spend half their time insulting each other... and they're each others' only friends in-comic.
• The Voiceless: The resident superhero Rocket Hat. Lampshaded within the comic as well. Sorta. And subverted in a guest strip.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: The Knifeketeer's schtick, in that he stabs many of his problems into submission. When the Knifeketeer comes under suspicion of attempted murder, his "defense" is that he always wants to stab everyone. Turns out he thinks that "defense" is a kind of stabbing in its own right. The other superheroes consider him something of a joke because it's hard to maintain a rogues gallery when all your enemies are dead.
• Win Your Freedom: Rocket Hat occasionally has to go through this.
• World of Snark
• Yet Another Christmas Carol: How to Learn The Error of Your Ways From Three Ghosts that Visit You On Christmas Eve.
• Your Answer to Everything: Getting kicked in the groin, apparently.

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