The Ongoing
Adventures of Rocket Llama[1] is a webcomic starring "a high-flying
llama, a sword-swinging cat, and a rocket as loyal as a cowboy hero's
horse."[2] Created by Alex Langley while he was a student at Henderson
State University, the comic first appeared in a comic book titled The
Workday Comic. For the Workday comics anthology, a spin-off of Scott
McCloud's 24-Hour Comics, comics creators each wrote and drew their
own eight-page stories in eight hours in April, 2007, on Friday the
13th.[3] Co-presenting with comics author and scholar Danny
Fingeroth (Dazzler, Spider-Man, Superman on the Couch), the creators
described the webcomic's evolution as members of a Comics Arts
Conference panel at 2008's Comic-Con International in San Diego,
California.[4][5] Debut The full title of Rocket Llama's debut
story in The Workday Comic #1 was "The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket
Llama #112: 'Trouble in Paradise'".[6] The story introduced the
taciturn hero Rocket Llama and his talkative sidekick, an
anthropomorphic cat named Bartholomew Meowsenhausen, who find
themselves stranded on an island after a battle with an enemy called
Jetpack Dog. Spherical islanders capture them and then challenge them
to combat. A villain named Böwser vön Überdog arrives with Jetpack Dog
and, in a sudden Star Wars parody, summons a giant robot known as the
Super Robot Dog Walker which blasts a volcano to bits. Before it can
fire a second blast, Rocket Llama destroys it by getting it to swallow
a pot of water and backfire. The story ends with Böwser tied up and
the heroes using the giant robot dog head as a boat to get themselves
home, with the promise of the next story to be titled, "Yuck!
Yukon!"[7][8] Whether despite the original story's childlike art or
because of it, the Rocket Llama story proved to be the most popular in
the 2007 anthology collection of the eight-hour comics.[9] After comic
artist Stephen R. Bissette, an instructor at the Center for Cartoon
Studies best known for his work on Swamp Thing with Alan Moore, read
all of the stories in the first volume of The Workday Comic, he
remarked, "That llama's gonna stick with me."[10] Webcomic Nick
Langley redrew the story with a less childlike drawing style in
webcomic form for online publication[11] as the flagship title for the
website rocketllama.com which grew into an affiliation of websites
featuring webcomics, art, entertainment reviews, and scholarly studies
of comics.[12] The online story featured a new cover[13] and omitted a
one-page gag, a preview for an unrelated Stealth Potato comic, which
had appeared as an intermission in the middle of the original
story.[14] The original story also appeared online as the comic's
"ashcan copy."[15] The authors present the Rocket Llama stories
metafictionally as the world's oldest comic book, established in 1916,
which they allegedly rediscovered and are adapting into webcomics.
"Deep underground, in an archaic vault we searched until we found the
fabled tales. As both the current production team behind The Ongoing
Adventures of Rocket Llama and appreciators of such groundbreaking
literature, we have taken it upon ourselves to restore these classic
issues to a glory more befitting a modern, digital age."[16]
Although every "issue" is presented with panels and screens in the
correct order for each story, the issues are presented out of order as
if readers were discovering old issues of a classic comic book in a
seemingly haphazard order, however they come to find them. After the
redrawn number 112's online publication came the serialized #136,
"Time Flies When You're on the Run, Part 1," appearing one page at a
time on weekdays.[17] References ^ Rocket Llama World
Headquarters ^ You are here. ^ Comic book club puts in a full
day's work. ^ Randy Duncan with Danny Fingeroth, panel moderators.
(2008, July). "Capes and Tights, Caps and Gown." Panel presented at
the Comics Arts Conference, Comic-Con International. San Diego,
California. ^ Recent and Upcoming Research Presentations ^ Page 1.
^ The Workday Comic #1. Spring, 2007.[1] ^ The Workday Comic -
online edition. ^ Club produces second annual workday comic. ^
Quoted in "The Workday Comic: Not Just One Third of a 24-Hour Comic."
Comics Arts Conference, Comic-Con International. San Diego,
California. July 27, 2008. ^ The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket Llama
#112: "Trouble in Paradise." Script: Alex Langley. Art: Nick Langley.
^ You are here. ^ #137-Cover. ^ Sneak Peak at Stealth Potato
#75. ^ Rocket Llama Ashcan Copy. ^ Who Is Rocket Llama? ^ "Time
Flies When You're on the Run, Part 1." Script: Alex Langley. Art: Nick
Langley. |
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