 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2007) |
| Lethargic Lad | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Greg Hyland |
| Website | http://www.lethargiclad.com/ |
| Current status/schedule | Weekly |
| Genre(s) | Parody, Superhero |
Lethargic Lad is a protagonist in the comic strip of the same name, created by Greg Hyland sometime in the late 1980s. The character is notable for being very slow and inactive. Lethargic Lad does not speak, though he sometimes mutters "Umm...".
Lethargic Lad is the name of both a comic and a comic book character created by Canadian artist Greg Hyland. Hyland created the character in high school as a doodle, and beginning in 1988, he featured the character in a photocopied anthology mini-comic called Lethargic Comics Weakly. This anthology, which was rounded out with contributions from fellow animation students (and one instructor) at Sheridan College, lampooned superhero comics, and was sold to local animation and comics fans.
In June 1991, Lethargic Comics Weakly restarted its continuity in an internationally distributed, professional format independent black and white comic, which ran for 12 issues until June 1993. This was followed by the spin-off Tales of Lethargy, which ran for three issues beginning in August 1993, and featured "Gun Guy, Ghost Guy, and Guy With Claws." Publishing began again in January 1994 under the new title Lethargic Comics, which ran for 15 issues through June 1996. In June 1996, a three issue mini-series was released that dropped the anthology style of the comic. In a testament to the character's intense cult following, the cover to issue #3 of this mini-series was painted by Alex Ross as a parody of the DC Comics Kingdom Come series, which Ross himself had illustrated.
Lethargic Lad Adventures launched in October 1997. This series lasted 13 issues, being renamed Lethargic Lad with the third issue. The series featured an innovation: the actual story in the comic began right on the cover.
In April 2000, Greg Hyland launched lethargiclad.com and moved from doing a print comic book to doing a weekly webcomic, with each month's collection of webcomics considered one "issue." Some of these webcomics have been reprinted in irregular "jumbo-sized annuals" put out by John Kovalic's Dork Storm (publisher of the gaming satire/humor comic Dork Tower). More recently, books collecting the online webcomics have been put out by Mr. Hyland himself.
Currently, Lethargic Lad is a weekly webcomic posted on Sunday.
Greg Hyland has occasionally taken off time for other projects, as well as for the birth of his daughter.
Other projects include providing production art for licensed LEGO brand product and doing storyboarding for their animated shorts. Greg has worked in the past for Nelvana on such cartoons as Beetlejuice (TV series). [1] He has also worked as an illustrator and colorist for Steve Jackson Games on card games including Munchkin Fu [2] and its expansion Munchkin Fu – Monky Business, [3] Ninja Burger, [4] and Burn In Hell. [5]
The Lethargic Lad universe has many supporting and recurring characters lampooning much of the Marvel and DC catalogues.
Lethargic Lad Timeline:
A Lethargic Lad backup comic, Lethargic Lad's Rogues Gallery, also appeared in Dork Tower from issues #16–36. These strips were collected in Lethargic Lad: Topics of Unclear Importance.
Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.
Kevin O'Neill was an English comic book illustrator best known as the co-creator of Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Dork Tower is an online comic created, written and drawn by John Kovalic. It chronicles the lives of a group of geeks living in the fictional town of Mud Bay, Wisconsin. Mud Bay's design is strongly influenced by the author's home town of Madison, Wisconsin. Topics have included role-playing games (RPGs), comic books, video games, and fandom in general. The comic strip began in January 1997 and has made appearances in publications like Dragon magazine, Shadis, and Comic Shop News. Starting in 2000, the strip began web publication roughly three times a week and is featured in Pyramid. The bimonthly comic book made its first appearance in 1998 and features continuing storylines. It has recently gone to full color with issue #32, and it is collected in trade paperback.
Webcomics are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books.
Sprite comics are webcomics that consist primarily of computer sprites from video games. Art assets are ripped from various classic games such as Mega Man and Sonic the Hedgehog, are edited and combined by amateur cartoonists, and are posted on the internet. Popularized by Bob and George in the early 2000s, the style is considered relatively easy for beginning cartoonists to get involved in, but sprite comics are generally looked down upon for being of low quality.
Philip Foglio is an American cartoonist and comic book artist known for his humorous science fiction and fantasy art.
Brian Clevinger is an American writer best known as the author of the webcomic 8-Bit Theater and the Eisner-nominated print comic Atomic Robo. He is also the author of the self-published novel Nuklear Age.
PvP, also known as Player vs Player, was a longrunning video game webcomic, written and drawn by Scott Kurtz. The webcomic follows the events at a fictional video game magazine company, featuring many running gags and references with a focus on nerd culture. Dylan Meconis was added as a co-writer in 2013.
Andy Lanning is an English comic book writer and inker, known for his work for Marvel Comics and DC Comics, and for his collaboration with Dan Abnett.
Gregory Rucka is an American writer known for the series of novels starring his character Atticus Kodiak, the creator-owned comic book series Whiteout, Queen & Country, Stumptown and Lazarus, as well as lengthy runs on such titles as Detective Comics, Wonder Woman and Gotham Central for DC Comics, and Elektra, Wolverine and The Punisher for Marvel. He has written a substantial amount of supplemental material for a number of DC Comics' line-wide and inter-title crossovers, including "No Man's Land", "Infinite Crisis" and "New Krypton". Rucka made his debut as a screenwriter with the screenplay for the 2020 film The Old Guard, based on his comic book series of the same name.
Scott R. Kurtz is an American webcomic artist. Known for creating the daily online comic-strip PvP, Kurtz is among the first professional webcomic creators.
Real Life is an American webcomic drawn and authored by Maelyn Dean. It began on November 15, 1999, and is still updated, after breaks from December 10, 2015 to September 10, 2018, and again from July 16, 2019 to June 15, 2020. The comic is loosely based around the lives of fictionalized versions of Dean and her friends, including verbatim conversations, as well as fictional aspects including time travel and mecha combat. Characters regularly break the fourth wall. Real Life focuses on humor related to video games and science fiction, and references internet memes.
Munchkin is a dedicated deck card game by Steve Jackson Games, written by Steve Jackson and illustrated by John Kovalic. It is a humorous take on role-playing games, based on the concept of munchkins.
John Kovalic is an American cartoonist, illustrator, and writer.
Aaron Kyle Williams is a cartoonist.
The Unspeakable Vault or Weird Tales from the Old Ones is a webcomic by François Launet, which chronicles the "daily" lives of the Great Old Ones, including Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sothoth, among others. It takes a lighthearted view of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos to inspire laughter rather than the more usual soul-blasting horror. The comic was used as the basis of the second expansion set to the Cthulhu Mythos themed version of Steve Jackson Games' card game Munchkin.
Kathryn Immonen is a Canadian comic book and webcomic writer. She has written a number of comic books for Marvel Comics since 2007, in collaboration with her husband Stuart.
Sluggy Freelance is a long-running webcomic written and drawn by Pete Abrams. Starting in 1997, it is one of the oldest successful webcomics, and as of 2012 had hundreds of thousands of readers. Abrams was one of the first comic artists successful enough to make a living from a webcomic.
Notable events of 2000 in webcomics.