Started way back in '99, Dragon Tails
is a daily, 3D-rendered Web Comic that focuses on the lives of a group of eight young dragons, a pair of kung-fu squirrels, a cat, several malfunctioning robots and other assorted characters.
It updated daily for five years (only ever missing one update) and went on hiatus for about a year before coming back for about two years and then fading out again around March of '08. Dragon Tails went off hiatus in June '09 only for the weekly updates to stop in early 2010 again. The website has since become defunct.
There are about 2000 strips in all with a strong continuity and consistent humor.
Not to be confused with Dragon Tales, the kids' TV show with a similar name, although both coincidentally started in 1999 (funny enough, that show went off the air in 2010, the same year the webcomic ended).
This webcomic provides examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: The main characters, named Bluey, Goldy, Brainy, Enigma, Lemuel, Corlis, Abijar and Cornelius.
- Apocalyptic Log: Subverted.
- Art Evolution: After the RPG arc Art Shift, long-time readers would've been surprised to see the visual quality has improved a lot, such as that the author has seriously improved both the models and the characters' expressions, among other things.
- Art Shift: The entire superhero arc was hand-drawn.
- The RPG arc is another arc of this, the visual style was basically to look like a 3D RPG.
- The RPG arc
- But Thou Must!: Beaten to death in one strip of the RPG Mechanics 'Verse storyline.
- Chainsaw Good: Blueu's weapon in the RPG arc is a chainsaw-toaster.
- Chekhov's Gun: Abijar and Cornelius show up during the first Christmas storyline when they're actually in the artic looking for Santa. The reason? The later Time Travel arc.
- Cool, but Inefficient: Most of Bluey's inventions.
- Cousin Oliver:Barry: Any nearby sentient machines you've built that are still operational?Bluey: Well, there's Colin, Bios, and Jay the uncomfortably enthusiastic toaster.Jay: YIPPE KI-YAY! THIS BREAD BE SMOKIN'!Bluey: So as I was saying, Colin and Bios.
- Everybody Knew Already: Lemuel was under the impression his crush on Firewing was subtle. It was not.
- Fun with Acronyms: Subverted.Bluey: Behold, my Christmas Holographic Refracting Illusion System, or "Barry" for short.
- Gainax Ending: Spoofed. The dragons used the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion as the only thing that could confuse an omniscient being.
- Genius Ditz: Bluey is, technically, intelligent, but his short attention span and passion for explosions renders everything he makes a potential threat.
- Henway: Subverted here.
- And here too.
- And here
- I Know You Know I Know: Poor Norman...
- Loads and Loads of Loading: Played straight with an Ion Cannon here. Lampshaded in the last panel and here
- Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard: Colin can knit a nuclear warhead out of an old sack using his eyebrows.
- Meta Guy: Everyone in the RPG Mechanics 'Verse storyline, Enigma especially.
- Medium Awareness: Tim loves using this one.
- Noodle Incident: It's going to be The Easter Bunny Incident all over again...
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: What Bluey did with the robot he hi-jacked, afterwards it became a gag for the comic to rub how awesome it was in our faces.
- RPG Mechanics 'Verse: The most recent storyline drops the characters into one of these.
- Shout-Out:
- Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: The janitor robots of the future are inexplicably well-armed.
- Tank Goodness: Pulled off here.
- Talking Animal: Norman and Normeena are the main two.
- Played with here.
- Really played around with once Moppy shows up.
- And again with Luna, Colin's Pet Rock/Significant Other.
- Played with here
- Technical Pacifist: When not piloting robots of destruction Lemuel is a huge pushover.
- This Means War!!: A Verbose variation is done here.
- War for Fun and Profit: Bluey makes weapons for both Norman and Enigma. It doesn't help that he enjoys making this stuff...
- Weapons-Grade Vocabulary: Corlis typically make a cutting remark, witty retort or sarcasm in whatever events that's happened, but his attempt to use his jokes as this in this strip resulted in a failure, as robots simply removed their speech recognition modules.
