mezzacotta

mezzacotta (yes, all-lowercase) is a website launched by David Morgan-Mar and The Comic Irregulars (authors of Darths and Droids and Irregular Webcomic) to showcase "all the weird, crazy, half-baked ideas we come up with."

It contains the following webcomics:

• mezzacotta, a webcomic "with two people talking to each other. Mostly." Though it launched in October 10, 2008, its archive of daily strips extends significantly farther into the past. The archive contains strips for every day that has passed since the introduction of Darths and Droids, Irregular Webcomic, Sluggy Freelance, the World Wide Web, the year David Morgan-Mar was born, television broadcasts, radio, the steam engine, the printing press, the fall of Rome, and so on. The 'earliest' strip in its archive is supposedly 9,986,270 million years older than the presumed age of the Universe. One could, perhaps, think of it as the Webcomic of Babel... or maybe the Webcomic of Leaves. You can find the "first one" here.

• Lightning Made of Owls: a webcomic consisting entirely of user-submitted Guest Strips (much like the Guest Strip Project), launched on 15 November 2008. Its name is a deliberate Word Salad Title. It features the following stock characters:
  • Holly, an optimistic, lively young woman. Always depicted with clear round Nerd Glasses.
  • Ambrose, a learned, eccentric older man. Always depicted with a yardbrush moustache.
  • Samantha, a smart, vain, self-motivated young lady. Always depicted with large earrings.
  • Oliver, a bald man who is Always Lawful Good. Always depicted with an L-shaped scar.
  • Meridien, a long-haired spiritual woman. Always depicted with a cloth fashion accessory, typically a ribbon.
  • Delkin, a young technician, and the joker of the bunch. Always depicted with Hidden Eyes.

• Square Root of Minus Garfield: a user-submitted Remix Comic inspired by Garfield Minus Garfield. Each strip is a remixed Garfield strip, but remixed in an entirely different manner to the previous strips. Launched on 21 November 2008.

• Comments on a Postcard: Having finally completed their magnum opus, the phenomenally acclaimed genre-defying webcomic known as Postcard, the Comic Irregulars have started to re-run it from beginning to end. But there's a problem - all of the comic image files have mysteriously been deleted! Furthermore, nobody else seems to have ever heard of Postcard, or have any memory of ever reading it. But, unperturbed by this apparent glitch in the time stream, the Comic Irregulars are simply running the News Posts without the comic images, and hoping that the reader's imagination will suffice until they can find someone, somewhere, who has a backup copy of the files in their browser cache. Launched on 8 December 2008.
  • The above description is one of many random descriptions of the webcomic that load when the "About" page is viewed.

• Awkward Fumbles: Launched on April 14, 2009. A collaborative webcomic where mezzacotta readers send in comic strips with blank speech balloons, and the Comic Irregulars other readers insert dialogue and captions of their own making, to create a finished comic that isn't quite what either of the parties intended! (If this sounds like something that the Dinosaur Comics creator Ryan North already did a while back, that's because it is.)

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Awkward Fumbles contains examples of:

• Pixel Art Comic (Pixels)
• Schedule Slip - Although it doesn't have a schedule, it didn't update at all between May and August 2009, due to it being more work for the Irregulars than the other comics, where the readers do all the work. It changed with an overhaul, allowing readers to not only draw but also write the strip.
  • And then it slipped again. Currently, the latest strip was published on March 30, 2010.

Comments on a Postcard contains examples of:

• Celebrity Paradox / Recursive Canon: Here (a shout out to the other work by the Comic Irregulars)
• Fictional Document
• Fundamentally Funny Fruit (eggplants)
• Lampshade Hanging: One of the "About" pages: "How awesome would it be if someone produced a webcomic without the comic? Each day, they'd just post the author comments for the comic, and leave it up to the reader to imagine what they actually drew. Perhaps there could be a fictional backstory about the mysterious lost comic for which only the author's comments survive."
  • This was actually the original pitch, as posted on the Mezzacotta forums.
• News Post
• Noodle Incident
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes? — the artist really doesn't like cows.

Lightning Made of Owls contains examples of:

• Always Lawful Good
• Blinding Bangs
• Depending on the Artist
• Instant Awesome, Just Add Mecha
• Jenny Everywhere
• Lightning Can Do Anything - being made of owls helps
• Nerd Glasses
• Not the Fall That Kills You - parodied
• Scars Are Forever
• Word Salad Title
• Title Drop
• Universal Adaptor Cast

mezzacotta contains examples of:

• Cloudcuckoolander - Not the exception, but the norm.
• Cut and Paste Comic
• Dada Comics - Almost the entirety of the 'archive'.
• Deadpan Snarker
• Duck Season! Rabbit Season!: This strip.
• For Science! - This strip. Or this one. And this one is verging on Frankenstein's Monster.
• Fun with Foreign Languages
• Framing Device / Kayfabe: It's pretty clear that the Comic Irregulars haven't really been making comics since before the universe began, but that's the story.
  • Anachronism Stew: References to modern technology and concepts, and the use of modern vocabulary (like "dude"), pop up long before their invention.
  • Eternal English: Plenty of the comics are in nonsensical English, but English nevertheless, even though most of them were written before the English language came into being.
  • Non-Linear Character: A possible explanation for the anachronisms. Either that or the Comic Irregulars are time travellers.
  • Time Abyss: Did we mention "making comics since before the universe began"? Even if they are time travellers, there are literally trillions of comics, sloppily drawn and written though they may be. To create them all manually would require an absurd amount of time.
  • The Web Always Existed
• Heh, Heh, You Said "X": This strip.
• In Soviet Russia, Trope Mocks You
• Mad Scientist
• No Fourth Wall - the sheer number of strips make it impossible to say if fourth wall breaking happens constantly or not, but at least this strip is an example. And this.
  • So is the "very first" strip.
  • There seems to be a character behavior set dedicated to breaking the fourth wall.
    • Specifically Brian has two Fourth Wall-breaking quotes on the cast page and there's more.
  • This strip is even a Shout-Out to TV Tropes itself.
• Ruined FOREVER - the first line in the first comic is "I think this comic is going downhill." If so, it's been doing so since before the universe existed, so it must either be pretty horrible now or have been really good at some point before.
• Sturgeon's Law - mitigated by the inclusion of a Hall of Fame for top-rated comics.
  • Used in-comic.
• Tagline - quite a lot

The webcomic that uses the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The webcomic with two people talking to each other. Mostly. The webcomic that uses SVG. The most innovative webcomic for quite some time. By some measures. The website that went online before it was ready. The webcomic that reduces hair loss and increases virility. The website with The Hyperstig. The webcomic that could use more publicity. Post about us in your blog! From the people who brought you Darths & Droids. The webcomic that everyone is talking about. The longest running webcomic on the net. The webcomic with the rotating taglines. From the people who brought you Irregular Webcomic The webcomic that will revolutionise your web experience. The website with the International Phonetic Alphabet pronunciation. The Emil Zátopek of webcomics. The webcomic that broke TV Tropes. ... All we know is, he's called The Hyperstig. The webcomic that started on the other side of the shark. The proleptic webcomic. Dare to be stupid. Now totally sold out for the advertising bucks. The website with the non-rotating taglines on static pages. (a special one for on static pages)

• They Called Me Mad - Mild in this one, meaner in this one.
• Unsound Effect: The strip for 19 July, 6021 BC
• Webcomics Long Runners - by the page's criterion, the longest one. Possibly a subversion (or a sign that the criterion needs to be changed.)
• Word Schmord: This is one of "Character 1"'s standard ways of being a Jerkass, like in this strip.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Used in this strip from the late 18th century.

Square Root of Minus Garfield is so trope heavy that it gets its own page.