Sluggy Freelance
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Sluggy Freelance is one of the longest running, best-known and most popular webcomics, with a new comic released daily since August 25, 1997. Written and drawn by Pete Abrams, Sluggy Freelance set many of the standards for web comics.
The characters constantly find themselves in strange and usually dangerous circumstances and surroundings. There is plenty of sexual innuendo and cartoon violence (one fan site keeps track of how many kills each character has accumulated) but no strong profanity or explicit nudity.
While the strip began as a gag-based series in which the three main protagonists (Torg, Riff and Zoë) would stumble from one brief, bizarre, parody-centric adventure to the next, the characters and plotlines have gradually developed to the point that the storylines are longer and more serious. However, even the more dramatic and soap operatic story arcs often conform to the established "one punchline per day" format.
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Characters
For a more complete, detailed list, see: Characters of Sluggy Freelance
- Torg - Light-hearted freelance web designer.
- Riff - Genius inventor and best friend of Torg.
- Zoë - Voice of reason, friend, housemate and occasional camel.
- Bun-Bun - Psychotic switchblade-wielding rabbit.
- Aylee - Shape-shifting alien.
- Gwynn - Housemate and practitioner of black magic.
- Kiki - Hyperactive pet ferret.
Storyline
1997
The early strips introduce us to the main characters. Torg buys a cute talking rabbit with attitude (Bun-Bun), Riff summons demons for beer, and Zoe is trampled by a "bikini-suicide-frisbee" match. Riff, with his Dimensional Flux Agitator (DFA), accidentally warps Torg and himself into a Star Trek parody. The man-eating alien Aylee comes back to Earth with them, and is eventually hired on as Torg's secretary.
Sam Sein is introduced as a wannabe ladies' man and host for many parties. Bun-Bun is captured by and escapes from an animal testing center; the other escapees (Kiki included) move into Sam's place. Dr. Lorna, a parody of Dr. Laura, is introduced as Riff's mom. Santa is introduced as having a rivalry with Bun-Bun. Gwynn is introduced as Zoe's coworker at Sam's New Year's party, and dates Riff on and off.
1998
Sam mysteriously disappears for a while and returns with a wife, Valerie. Valerie via Sam kicks out Kiki, who then moves into Riff's place, filled with shiny buttons that activate all sorts of weaponry. Bun-Bun hijacks Riff's giant robot in order to rob a bank.
Torg is accidentally sent to the Dimension of Pain by the DFA. Torg escapes the clutches of the (somewhat incompetent) demons and finds the Sacred Circle of Protection. Since the demons can't enter the circle, Torg hangs out there until he is rescued by Alt-Riff and Alt-Zoe of the Dimension of Lame; a pinhole of a portal is left behind in the Circle of Protection, and so the Demon King orders a super-evil mop of the heavens so he can get at the other dimension. Torg leaves for his own dimension with the help of Alt-Bun-Bun. Meanwhile, Riff and Zoe rescue an entirely different Torg, who happens to speak Portuguese. Eventually Portuguese-Torg is brought back to his own dimension by the Zoe of that dimension.
Zoe has college troubles, Bun-Bun is briefly marooned on a tropical island, Val comes on Torg to the point of having an affair with him, and Aylee goes through several transformations. Riff highly distrusts Aylee despite Torg's assurances that Aylee is innocent.
After an initial attack by a vampire, it is revealed that Sam and Valerie are both vampires of the Lysinda Circle, who then kidnap Torg and Zoe in order to turn them. However, Riff takes Bun-Bun, Kiki, and Aylee to storm their lair and destroy all the vampires inside except Sam, who had betrayed Lysinda in order to let Riff survive the initial attack.
The Halloween party marks the start of a tradition; The Dimension of Pain sends out a demon to capture and/or kill Torg every Halloween, beginning with the hilariously incompetent Reakk. Since Torg was covered in hair as the result of fueling a fog machine with Rogaine instead of propane, Reakk didn't recognize him and instead attacked Kiki's robotic Torg costume.
Riff and Torg later set out for an Egyptian pyramid in which they get trapped. Inside, they befriend an incredibly slow mummy, feast on the snakes in the snake-pit, and celebrate a "Sluggy Mummy Christmas." They escape with the help of a parody of Tomb Raider's Lara Croft. Meanwhile, Santa sends out the three ghosts of Christmas to (unsuccessfully) battle Bun-Bun.
1999
A guy from the future named Berk is introduced, and threatens Torg before being chased off by Aylee, but not before freezing Aylee in time first. Meanwhile, Gwynn gains magical powers from the Book of E-Ville. The demon K'z'k inhabits Gwynn's body, but, like Gwynn, is as blind as a bat without glasses. K'z'k is freed from Gwynn's body by Torg and sent back in time by Berk's time-freezing machine. However, Gwynn's soul is still with K'z'k, and so she falls into a coma.
Since the Easter bunny was squashed last Easter, Santa collaborates with the other Easter rabbits to build a mecha-Easter Bunny, in order to deliver Easter eggs, kill Bun-Bun, and destroy Tokyo. Bun-Bun tricks the mech into a steel mill and melts it. Afterwards, Bun-Bun goes to confront Santa and both disappear. Later, he shows up in the custody of some kids, with amnesia, but is shocked out of it by simultaneous exposure to telemarketers, a switchblade-comb, and Baywatch. Bun-Bun picks up the job of the Easter Bunny, since he killed the former Easter Bunnies.
Riff builds a time machine to see make sure the Y2K bug doesn't interrupt beer distribution. Zoe, in an effort to prove herself not boring, willingly comes along with Torg. However, the time machine isn't Y2K compatible, and sends Torg and Zoe far back in time. Riff, in an attempt to get Torg and Zoe back, find a man from the future named Dr. Schlock, who has an inflatable time machine.
Meanwhile, Torg and Zoe are separated in the far past: Torg is mistaken as the leader of the Mercians, and since the real leader, Torgamous, is incapacitated, Torg acts in his place. Also there are Valerie and Lysinda. Zoe, thanks to her shotgun, is believed to be the "Storm Breaker" and savior of the Trents. The Trents war with the Mercians, but K'z'k crashes the party with his own army of demons, and steals the Book of E-Ville from the king of the Trents. Torg and Zoe reunite and set out to find the Book of Güd. They travel to the Cave of Yffi, and thusly defeat K'Z'K. Gwenn reawakens in the present, and Riff goes back in time to bring back Torg and Zoe.
Torg, Bun-Bun, and Kiki take a road trip and get lost in the woods. They happen upon the Isle of Dr. Steve (in the middle of a forest), and Oasis, a gymnist assassin who was apparently brainwashed by Dr. Steve. Dr. Steve hints that Oasis is really a robot and instructs Oasis to fall in love with Torg before Kiki accidentally sets the place to self-destruct.
This Halloween, the ghost of Squeekybobo, an elf who used to work for Santa, attacks Torg. As part of Riff's scientific experiments, Kiki is given an ordinary Pixy stick and proceeds to move at supersonic speeds. Aylee is sent to cannibals anonymous and befriends a wooly mammoth named Percy. Torg goes off to meet the crew of User Friendly while A.J. from UF helps Riff battle a giant monster made of old coffee, oily hair, and Microsoft programmer parts. On Christmas, Mrs. Claus battles Bun-Bun.
2000
When the year 2000 hits, Torg, Riff, Zoe, Gwynn fall into a coma. The Dr. Schlock of the future recognizes Kiki as a subject of one Dr. Crabtree, who experimented with nanites that would spread like a virus. However, they weren't Y2k compliant, so they would eventually destroy their host. After some strong-arming from Bun-Bun and Sam, Dr. Schlock shuts down the nanites and the cast reawakens. The Dr. Schlock of the present later has his brain eaten by a nanite-enhanced Dr. Crabtree.
In the Dimension of Pain, Reakk awakens one of the three Dragons of Annoyia. The dragon then proceeds to decimate the countryside with its flowery breath. After several unsuccessful attempts to appease it, Reakk chases the dragon away by boinking it on the nose.
Gwynn, still dabbling in black magic, creates a love potion intended for Riff; chaos ensues and Torg becomes angry at Gwynn. In order to keep Torg silent about her magic, Gwynn curses Torg so that he brays like a donkey whenever he wants to say anything important. Oasis shows up and kidnaps Torg, intending to marry him. Torg, to get around the curse, writes down everything important to him. Oasis finds a note saying Torg loves Zoe and goes into a jealous rage. Gwynn shows up, and Oasis immediately assumes she's Zoe. The two battle, and Oasis apparently dies for a second time. The demon K'Z'K turns out to be attempting to gain full control of Gwynn's body, hence the black magic.
Aylee, after being in a cocoon for so long, reemerges and is able to fly after eating a lot of potatoes and emitting an ElectroMagnetic Pulse (EMP). Bun-Bun's Baywatch tapes are erased in the process; the rest of the cast flees from his wrath. Torg and Zoe take the opportunity to go on a retreat with several of Zoe's college friends, including Zoe's boyfriend Dex. However, the crew encounters The Evil, kittens which Satan spawned on a dare. Several minor characters die, including Dex. Torg and Zoe meet up with Riff and company in the Caribbean. Bun-Bun, in the meanwhile, hires on Santa's old black-op elves in Santa's absence to track down the crew.
Dr. Crabtree then moves to attack Kiki, to keep her project a secret. However, Aylee releases an EMP nearby, shutting down the nanites in Dr. Crabtree's body, liquifying her. Torg pacifies Bun-Bun by buying a new set of unlabeled Baywatch tapes, forcing Bun-Bun to rewatch them all.
In the Dimension of Pain, Lord Horribus finds the Spear Calmadar, which turns anyone hit by it into a demon. Torg hires the demon hunter Steve Uozin, a parody of Steve Irwin. Steve is stabbed with the spear and returns to the DoP to torment the denizens. Sasha is introduced as Riff's new girlfriend (whom he never talked about before).
Meanwhile, a group of Santa's old elves mount an expidition to the North Pole in response to a distress call. It turns out Santa picked up some alien DNA and is not himself. At the North Pole, they discover a doctor who has invented a gas that forces the weaker DNA out of a body; Santa, too far gone, turns into a monster. Bun-Bun, as the Easter Bunny, exposits that he was forced to hide eggs during Easter, and wants to find a way out.
For Christmas, Torg gives Zoe a very fancy necklace he found while in the mummy's tomb. The necklace turns out to be cursed, and turns Zoe into a camel.
2001
Riff is distracted from researching Zoe's curse by Torg's new, pre-ordered PlayStation 2. Sasha "hacks" into Riff's computer (with the password "beer") and discovers the word "Kwi" turns Zoe back to normal (albeit naked), while the word "Shupid" turns Zoe back into a camel. Several puns later, Zoe takes her revenge by destroying the PS2.
Gwynn is shown in some kind of dreamscape, along with the demon K'Z'K, who constantly tries to get Gwynn to look behind her. Riff, who sees the possessed Gwynn in his dreams, builds a giant robot with the firepower of a small army and an AI cribbed from an old See-'n-Say. Sasha, with Torg, searches out and converses with Oasis. Agents of Hereti-Corp show up and attack Oasis. Torg returns to an attacking Gwynn possessed by K'Z'K. Inside the dreamscape, Gwynn turns around and sees a vortex of oblivion, and throw's K'Z'K into it, completely freeing K'Z'K from her body.
Torg's web design business goes under, and Aylee starts her own. Torg and Gwynn then go to work for Aylee, although Torg is fired shortly after since Aylee doesn't need a receptionist. Aylee also goes to see a therapist who turns out to be Dr. Schlock, who is looking to clone Aylee into a weapon. Bun-Bun summons up the Groundhog's Shadow in order to find some information about getting rid of the Easter Bunny gig, but is interrupted by Torg.
Riff and Sasha rebuild the DFA, along with a remote that opens a portal home. Riff, Torg, and Bun-Bun go to another dimension, but are zapped by lasers before they can return. The dimension they travelled to is a sci-fi universe populated by multiple parodies, including the Voltron parody Gofotron, the Lobo parody Lodoze, and the Darth Vader parody Lord Grater. After a long time and the destruction of the universe, Torg, Riff, and Bun-Bun make their way back home.
The three come home to find that Aylee's company is very successful, but security is very tight and no one gets to see Aylee in person anymore. Zoe, whose college grades were suffering, moved back home to Nebraska to finish college. Since the apartment Torg and Riff used to live in was turned into Aylee's office space, the two set out to buy a new home. They settle on renting a haunted house before setting to work on getting to meet Aylee. After discovering Aylee has turned into the ultimate evil CEO, Torg invites Aylee to the Halloween party.
At the Halloween party, two demons attached to one body show up, known as Isp and Osp. They and Torg get trapped in the basement, while Isp and Osp are unconscious leaving Torg to converse with the main body. Torg asks the demon her name, and she scratches out the name "Mosp." Above, Aylee paralyzes everyone there as a warning to Riff.
Afterwards, the mystery of the haunted house is unravelled. However, one ghost is unable to leave for some reason. For Christmas, Bun-Bun invades the hideout of the Alien Santa and prevents an alien invasion.
2002
In Nebraska, Zoe is attacked by a raging Oasis, being guided by the Hereti-Corp agent Kusari. Still unsure of who or what she is, Oasis collapses and is eventually shipped to an insane asylum. Torg hears of the attack and rushes off to meet Zoe. Afterwards, he goes off to meet Oasis, and proposes to her in order to keep her from trying to hurt Zoe anymore.
Bun-Bun solicits Gwynn in order to get the Groundhog's shadow off of him, since the Book of E-Ville has Gwynn's name written in it as its owner. Elsewhere, something happened to Zoe: She graduated.
At work, Gwynn spots Aylee eating a coworker and flees from the company. It turns out Hereti-Corp has plans to clone Aylee and create the ultimate weapon. It also turns out Riff was unknowingly helping Heretic-Corp with the project, and blows up one of HC's labs in retaliation. Sasha, Gwynn, and Torg are then kidnapped by HC, and Riff and Bun-Bun set out to get them back, after a quick stop at Schlock's place for exposition. Riff's giant robot leads the attack, and is quickly disabled. However, inside is Oasis, who kills all HC employees on sight. Aylee knocks out Bun-Bun, Torg and Gwynn escape and Schlock rescues the other prisoners. Then the real Aylee, a fire-breathing dragon, shows up, states crab-Aylee is really a clone, and helps Torg finally kill crab-Aylee.
Afterwards, Sasha moves to Seattle and Zoe moves into the house, returning to the regular cast. For Halloween, Lord Horribus himself arrives and is made into a servant by Gwynn's magic. Torg, Riff, and Zoe are brought back to Wispydale to battle the Satanic kittens again. For Christmas, Bun-Bun discovers that if he kills Santa (whose new weakness is Nerf), he becomes the patron of Christmas.
2003
Ian McDonald of Bruno the Bandit takes over Saturdays, drawing a series called "Meanwhile in the Dimension of Pain." In it, Lord Horribus is sentenced to be the cameraman for Steve Uozin as punishment for not killing Torg. Reakk awakens another dragon of Annoyia, who doesn't breath flowers but is generally annoying to be around.
The haunted house turns out to be an elevator to hell, with ghosts in the gas tank. Sam shows up, having been unable to leave since the Halloween party, thanks to the house's soul-sucking power. They battle a giant monster before escaping.
Zoe gets a boyfriend, Leo, who works as a human cannonball. Torg briefly stalks Leo. Riff gets a job and is transferred to Alaska. Meanwhile in the Dimenension of Pain, an angel invades and chibifies all of the demons.
Bun-Bun kills the patron of Halloween, taking over the holiday, and puts Kiki in charge this year; the night revolves less around terror and more around sugar, poinging, and napping. At the Halloween party, a chibified Reakk shows up, steals a bowl of candy, and disappears, leaving the guests very angry at Torg. Bun-bun moves to take Thanksgiving and Christmas as well as finding the Deus Ex Ovum, which has the power to set the holidays straight. The year 2003 steals the Deus Ex Ovum, and Bun-Bun's shadow kills 2003, which ends in a very short time, forcing Bun-Bun to use the Deus Ex Ovum. Everyone Bun-Bun killed was brought back, and a normal Santa throws Bun-Bun outside of time.
2004
Sam and Torg encounter some vampires of a different circle. Riff returns to the house, and with Torg takes on some odd jobs for cash. Alt-Bun-Bun, from the Dimension of Lame, comes to Torg's dimension and reports the demons from the DoP have invaded the DoL. Alt-Bun-Bun takes Torg to the DoL, where he hides out from the demons. Lord Horribus becomes fanatical about finding Torg, and spends most of his time searching him out. Alt-Kiki (who has a bad attitude) and Alt-Riff are turned into demons.
Torg's sword, which he received during the Storm Breaker Saga, becomes able to talk when it is charged with innocent blood (which there is a lot of in the DoL). Torg rescues Zoe from the demons and meets with Alt-Gwynn, who is merged with the alternate Book of E-ville, the Book of Rothar-niece. They hide out in the sewers, which the demons won't enter since it smells like flowers. Torg falls in love with Alt-Zoe and spends several months hiding out with her. Lord Horribus doesn't have enough demons to search out Torg and take over the DoL at the same time, so he focuses on finding Torg.
Torg is forced to flee into the DoP with Alt-Zoe and Alt-Bun-Bun, and so he searches out the bag of goodness locked away in the bottom of the Demon King's fridge. Horribus hears of this and hunts Torg down and confronts him. Mosp betrays Lord Horribus to thank Torg for reminding Mosp of her name. Horribus, in a rage, kills Mosp and Alt-Zoe. Torg pushes Horribus into a chasm before going on to the Demon King's lair. When they arrive, the rescue Alt-Torg, who has magic arrows similar to Torg's sword. The two free the goddess inside the bag of goodness, who then takes them and flees to the DoL, forces the demons back to the DoP, and closes the portal between them.
It turns out the Torg and Kiki of the DoL had died in one of Alt-Riff's experiments; Alt-Riff then went to other dimensions and kidnapping those dimension's Torgs to make things "right." The Torg that was rescued (referred to as Alt-Alt-Torg) is not from the DoL, and is a quite a jerk, refusing to go to Alt-Zoe's funeral. Alt-Riff, still a demon, is forced to lead the other DoL residents who had been turned into demons. Lord Horribus is removed from nobility, and Psyk is given the title of Lord Psykosis. Torg is brought back to his home dimension by the goddess.
2005
When Torg disappeared, Riff used the DFA to try and get Torg back, but instead gets a Torg who has many tentacles (in his defense, he was under the influence of hypotropic drugs at the time). He also attempts to clone Torg from his toothbrush, and instead gets a very expensive clone of Torg's toothbrush, and the cloners come by and try to take the house as collateral. Meanwhile, Bun-Bun captains a pirate ship, the Bloody Bun, and sails through timeless space in search of a way back home.
Traditions
In an early 1998 plotline, one of Riff's inventions sent Torg to the "Dimension of Pain." Every Halloween since, a different demon is sent to Earth to try to bring him back, failing in amusing and unexpected ways. In 2004, Lord Horribus was deposed by Psykosis, and so it seems that this tradition has ended, since Psykosis does not share Horribus' obsession with Torg.
Bun-Bun and Santa Claus try to kill each other every Christmas, with continuously escalating violence; the fact that Bun-Bun became the Easter Bunny early on in the strip merely adds spice to the relationship. In 2004, Bun-Bun was trapped in the timeless void by St. Nick, and therefore unable to battle him. As the current plotline deals with Bun-Bun's attempts to escape the void, 2004 will probably remain a simple exception.
Also every Christmas/Hanukkah, Torg and Riff have attempted to continue their own, private tradition of giving each other "a beer every year." Every year, they never quite get it right, for a variety of reasons, including being trapped in a mummy's tomb, selling their shoulders for science, and other random occurrences.
Saturday Fillers
Meanwhile in the Dimension of *
Between January 18, 2003 and February 26, 2005, each Saturday's comic was written and drawn by guest artist Ian MacDonald of Bruno the Bandit. These strips chronicled the ongoing events in the Dimension of Pain, occasionally switching to the Dimension of Grief or Hell. Ian's work proved to be controversial among fans of the strip and led to a hostile climate towards guest artists. As the series went on, reactions towards most strips became negative and often rude. The conflict primarily stemmed from the fact that Ian and Pete have very different styles. There was also the general impression that Ian was adding canon material which included characters acting in uncharacteristic behavior. Another criticism against the series was Ian's tendency to rely on gags, sexual situations, parodies, and other low brow humor.
Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days
From March 5, 2005, Saturday duties passed to Clay Yount of Rob and Elliot.
Clay's strips take place in the early days of the comic and center around the main characters. The strips are named after an early storyline, The Bikini-Suicide-Frisbee Match, emphasizing the light-hearted characteristic of Sluggy's early years. While it still remains to be seen what the ultimate reaction will be to Clay's saturday comics, so far the results have been almost unanimously positive. Clay's filler strips have been officially declared "non-canon" in an effort to solve some of the problems with Ian's work and the climate it produced.
Other guest strips and crossovers
Abrams invites other well-known webcomic artists to do the strip for a week once or twice a year, while he goes on vacation. A frequent result is a hilarious parody of the strip itself, other webcomics, other creative works and/or artists, including Scooby Doo and Ayn Rand. Clay Yount of Rob and Elliot was guest artist several times prior to taking over Saturday duties.
Baen SF author John Ringo was profoundly affected by Sluggy while writing his Legacy of the Aldenata series; as a result, the crew of a massive mobile artillery platform that first appears in the third book of this series (When the Devil Dances) are depicted as die-hard Sluggy fanatics to great comedic effect (up to and including naming their vehicle after Bun-Bun and painting a giant picture of Bun-Bun (http://www.johnringo.com/bunpics.htm) on it). They are joined in the fourth book (Hell's Faire), by a character based on the late friend of Pete Abrams who was the inspiration for Riff. A section of original Sluggy comics set in the alternate future world of the novels appears in the end of Hell's Faire, and a sampler of Sluggy storylines is included on the CD-ROM bound into this book.
Also, the first two novels of Ringo's distant-future Council Wars series have appearances by an irascible, treacherous, switchblade-toting, telemarketer-hating AI in a rabbit-shaped body—created by a long-dead fan of an unnamed 20th-century webcomic.
Numerous other webcomics have referenced Sluggy Freelance, and various guest artists on Sluggy Freelance have included their own webcomics' characters in their guest strips, including User Friendly who swapped A.J. for Torg for a week.
External links
- Sluggy Freelance (http://www.sluggy.com/)
- New Viewers Guide (http://www.sluggy.com/nvg/nvg.htm)
- Sluggite Zone (fansite) (http://www.sluggy.net/)de:Sluggy Freelance