Questionable Content

Questionable Content is a comedic slice-of-life web comic drawn by Jeph Jacques. The plot centers around Marten, who is your average frustrated 20-something music nerd, his anthropomorphic PC named Pintsize, and his somewhat mysterious roommate Faye. Lately Marten's friend Steve and Faye's boss Dora have come into the story a little more frequently, ensuring that things will remain complicated.

Everyone in QC (with the possible exception of Pintsize) is searching for something, whether it is a purpose in life, or someone to love, or $4 to buy another pint of Guinness. Of course, real life isn't this melodramatic all the time, so they spend an equal amount of time getting drunk, flirting with each other, and talking about obscure indie rock bands.

Questionable Content was first posted in 2003, and has scheduled updates every weekday. The site has an active, if small, community that take a strong interest in Jeph's life. In early 2004, Jeph's artistic ability refined and it saw a surge of new popularity, reaching 2^nd on BuzzComix.net's webcomic rankings in the month of April. At that time he converted the strip to the widepanel format that is growing in popularity and was accepted into the Dayfree Press. Offering an extra comic as incentive, and following a visual layout redesign, it later attained the first place rank on BuzzComix on June 2, 2004. It held that rank consistently until August 31, 2004, when they were given a place in the BuzzComix.net 'Hall of Fame'.

The comic is accompanied by blog-like entries which are often supportive of other comics and offer insight behind the strips. The creator is a self-described hipster and tries to keep the content focused on Indie style, including many references to bands, critique of Indie conformity, ridicule of emo, humour at Hot Topic's expense, and the "Theory of Hipster Relativity" (M = (BN²)^-1, "music equals the inverse of Band multiplied by band's Notoriety squared"). Many comical statements are written into the background, on t-shirts or barely legible signs including "Tip Me Or I Will Kill Again" where Faye waitresses and "Work Harder Or We Will Fly You Into The Sun!" on an inspirational poster at Marten's office.

Contents

1 Main characters 2 Secondary Characters 3 Comments on the blackboard 4 QC Time 5 See also 6 External link

Main characters

• Marten Reed - Marten is a mopey introvert with a surprising sense of humor when he's not feeling sorry for himself. Like any single male his age, he's concerned about his current lack of a girlfriend. His favorite band is Mogwai. He is a college graduate, but nonetheless is quite literally the Office Bitch; that's what it says on his business card.
• Pintsize - Pintsize is an AnthroPC (imagine a cross between HAL 9000 and a toddler and you get the idea). Pintsize is strangely addicted to cake mix, which led to a previous accident and in a round-about way, his elbows. This is just one of the ways Pintsize is stranger than you might expect a computer to be. Another is his impressive ability to come up with a punchline to almost any situation the human characters find themselves in. It is a point of some distress to Marten that his computer has a more active love life than himself, as Pintsize recently succesfully dated another AnthroPC, and achieved whatever the robot equivalent is of getting laid. Since then, Pintsize has discovered that his date's pink colour scheme was misleading, and that the anthroPC in question was, in fact, male.
• Faye Whitaker - Faye is a smartass with a vicious shoulder-punch that she is not afraid to use. She moved to the area (from Georgia) for reasons that have never been fully explained, has a mysterious past (including a scar above her right breast). She moved in with Marten after burning her apartment building down trying to make toast. Originally, Faye rarely used contractions, except when drunk, when both her contractions and original Southern accent emerge. More recently she has begun to loosen up and use contractions more liberally. Her favourite drink is a super-strong beverage known as "Midnight Hobo", which appears to be a kind of legal moonshine, brewed from pretty much anything that can be encouraged to ferment.
• Dora Bianchi - Dora is an ex-goth who runs "Coffee of Doom", the coffee shop where Faye works. She does graphic and web design in her spare time and is probably a lot nerdier than she initially lets on. She enjoys teasing Faye, particularly about Marten, whom Dora also appears to have a crush on. She recently went out with Marten as part of a double-date, but nothing happened, which she regretted immediately afterwards.

Secondary Characters

• Steve - Steve is Marten's drinking buddy and an all-around nice guy. Unlike Marten, he doesn't always suffer a brainfreeze around females. He has found a girlfriend in Ellen, a young waitress whom he recently went out with. His initial concerns about the age difference appear to have been overcome.
• Scott - Marten's boss. Takes a relaxed attitude towards the office dress code, keeps a bottle of bourbon (AKA the company therapist) in his desk, and is apparently gay.
• Sara - Sara was first introduced as a barista, coincidentally in the same coffee shop as Faye, who harbored a crush for Marten. She later rejected dating him following the epiphany that she was only attracted to him as a "Cute Indie Boy," not as a person. Sara briefly dated Steve, but the relationship ended due to awkwardness in the bedroom, which was likened to a cubist painting like Guernica. She has not been seen since, and is still at large. It has been suggested that Sara's extended hiatus from the strip was caused by her being eaten by an Allosaurus. Jeph, however, claims that he quit drawing her because she was "boring".
• Ellen - Ellen is a teenage marine biology major who works as a waitress and got into college early. She recently had a date with Steve, who was unaware of and slightly freaked out by their six year age difference. She has also recently befriended Dora and Faye, who seem committed to making sure she doesn't mess things up with Steve too badly. Although, when first encountered, Ellen was seventeen years old, it has been suggested (given the nature of her relationship with Steve) that she has since passed her eighteenth birthday.
• Alan Turing - Alan works as a Special Agent with the Robotics Defense Agency. He recently tried to confiscate Pintsize, whose chassis, complete with laser, was apparently government property, but was foiled by Dora. (Reference to famous British mathematician, Alan Turing.)
• Amanda Whitaker - Amanda is Faye's younger sister who recently announced that she was failing all of her college classes, switching majors, and a lesbian. This obviously caused some conflict with her mother, so Amanda used her mother's credit card to fly up to see Faye for some advice and consolation.
• Raven - A ex-goth friend of Dora, works as a junior employee with Dora and Faye. Her jobs include cleaning the "Cave of 40 Asses" (AKA the toilet) and greeting customers. Refers to herself as an "Emo cutie" and has 7 piercings. Has trouble differenciating between hair products and intimate lubricants. Her real name is Blodwyn.
• Natasha - Roommate of Ellen. Has many tatoos, favours black clothing and piercings, and believes that neglecting her personal hygeine is "way hardcore".
• Sven Bianchi - Recently introduced as Dora's older brother. Some claim he is powered by a black hole. Raven has a crush on him due to the fact he is the tallest character in the comic.

Comments on the blackboard

In a manner similar to Bart on The Simpsons, Questionable Content features an occasional blackboard gag, on the menu board behind the girls at "Coffee of Doom".

• We stab you so you can call in sick.
• Please do not poke the barristas.
• Starbucks is for assholes.
• We are surly because you suck!
• Zombie Monkey wants your coffee.
• Today is Free Beating Day - for more info, please annoy the nearest employee
• Tip us or we will kill again
• Appearing on the menu:
  • "Fuck you, bladder!" - 60 oz. coffee
  • Shot of espresso and a punch in the mouth
  • Emospresso
  • Vodkoffee!
  • Latte of DOOM
  • "Yum!" Triple Chocolate Mocha
  • "Eww!" Triple Pork Mocha
  • Spam, Spam, Coffee, Spam
  • We Prank-Call Your Boss

Currently there as also carictures of all of the "Coffee of Doom" employees, courtesy of Raven. Faye is not appreciative of hers. Lately, Sara's and Faye's have been removed to make room for a diagram showing the proper use of Astroglide.

QC Time

Although the comic updates daily, the demands of continuity and a plot mean that a sequence of events covering even a few hours may take several strips (and therefore days, weeks or months of real time) to play out. Although the exact length of time covered by the events in the strip has never been declared, it is commonly accepted to be "several months".

See also

• List of web comics

External link

• Questionable Content (http://www.questionablecontent.net/)
• IndieTits (http://www.indietits.com/)
• The AnthroPC Handbook (http://www.sionide.net/anthropc/)