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️Mon Mar 28 2011

Lampshades hung in webcomics.

Concerned

Sirkowski, the creator of Miss Dynamite created and sold 22 Fan Service panels that always work! An homage to Wally Wood that features several Shout Outs to fanservice-related Tropes. Gems include Absolute Cleavage◊, Clothing Damage, Under Boob, Erotic Eating◊, and others.
8-Bit Theater does this on a regular basis, and even hung a lampshade on itself in May 2009 courtesy of Black Mage:
Black Mage: That's it, I've had enough. This whole goddamn adventure has been nothing but pointless build ups toward pay offs that never happen.
In Abe & Kroenen, Abe lampshades two of the comics' most common gags (characters pulling a stealth Batman-esque appearance and Kroenen's thick German accent) at the same time. To be fair, he was pretty pissed off at the time.
Abe: Are you people in a club or something?
Ansem Retort gives us this beauty.
Aerith: I feel like I'm in a bad TV show, which is ironic since I am in a bad TV show.
Awkward Zombie: A good portion of the comics hang lampshades on all aspects of games from mechanics to story points usually by following them through to their absurd conclusion.
Bittersweet Candy Bowl does it periodically, particularly regarding the anthropomorphic characters' lack of clothing on the rare occaisions that they do show up clothed.
Bob and George: "This ending sucks."
Checkerboard Nightmare hung a lampshade on hanging lampshades all the way back in 2002.
Often done in Chrono Redux in part to make fun of the comic itself, but also to make fun of the game Chrono Trigger when these sorts of things happens in the game. These are usually brought up by Chrono in internal monologues because he's mute.
Too many to count in Commander Kitty, but none stand out quite as much as Nin Wah lampshading how Mittens and Socks don't wear clothes.
...Which brings up another freaky thing about this ship!
Cuanta Vida:
Dark Legacy Comics asks, "What do you think this is, some kind of badly written melodrama?!"
T-rex of Dinosaur Comics discusses this trope in this comic.
The Dumbing of Age storyline "This Was Halloween" is filling in events that happened during a previous Time Skip, and includes a strip where Amber is standing on the roof remembering the events immediately after the last strip before the timeskip. In the next strip Walky appears and says he's just been doing make-up sessions for telecoms class: "Didja know that doin' flashbacks inside a' other flashbacks is considered sloppy writing?" The Alt Text says he also learned about lampshading!
El Goonish Shive:
"Merciless" is the best word to describe the manner in which Exterminatus Now applies this trope, usually while subverting or justifying the trope being lampshaded.
Fans!, among many good examples: "By cartoon rules, we would be attacked as soon as I said 'That's a cartoonish way of thinking,' just to prove me wrong." The joke is that the attack which (of course) immediately follows is only a distraction from the main plotline, though it foreshadows a later plotline.
Freefall did this recently in a meta way with a strip that involved convenient censorship .. with a lampshade involved.
- Done again recently lampshading (in a less literal sense) the amount of time it takes characters to get from point A to point B.◊
George the Dragon hangs a lampshade on the mysterious absence of the main character's wings.
In Girl Genius the Jägergenerals comment that crashing airships explode only "in dose cheap novels". A few strips later, General Khrizhan blows one up with a huge machine gun.
In Gunnerkrigg Court, it's a frequent plot point that creatures who look evil turn out to be actually nice. So when Blue summons a Gol-shogeg:
Antimony: You - you're trying to summon it? But it's very dangerous!
Student 1: Ah, don't worry!
Student 2: It prob'ly looks mean but turns out ta be a nice guy!
Student 3: Yeah, dat always hap-
[CRASH]
Homestuck is utterly rife with visual and verbal callbacks. Late in Act 5, Doc Scratch calls attention to the fact that these keep happening, and names the phenomenon "circumstantial simultaneity" (as opposed to mere temporal simultaneity). Then, in Act 6, Dirk Strider lampshades it again:
TT: I feel like you've said something like that before.
TT: Different statements, but in that exact syntax.
[...]
TT: That actually sounds familiar too.
TT: Are you sure you haven't said something like that before?
- Homestuck tends to hang lampshades a lot notably on its use of Ashes to Crashes and Overdrawn at the Blood Bank.
Irregular Webcomic!:
- David Morgan-Mar describes this trope and does it himself to the unfunniness of the comic, thus applying Lampshade Hanging to Lampshade Hanging itself.
- He does it again in the "Space" theme. Actually, he lampshades lampshading — and references us as well.
This and This one from an early It's Walky!.
I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space!!!: "It appears we're getting dangerously close to a plot hole. ...I mean black hole."
The Situation on Earth-N story line in Kaza's Mate Gwenna began in April 2016 and came to a cliffhanger ending December 2017. In the Epilogue story line Gwenna comments about how it felt like they spent years on Earth-N.
In The Last Adventure, Discord and Rainbow Dash point at the ridiculous amount of times something or someone took his powers.
Fluttershy: Discord, could you take care of them? (the timberwolves)
Discord: There is a small, tiny problem… I lost my magic… again…
Fluttershy: WHAT?
Rainbow Dash: Seriously? What time is it now? Fifth?
Discord: I don’t know! After the second time I lost count!
The Last Days of FOXHOUND does this a lot concerning the rather... Tenous... Grasp of genetics and biology found in the Metal Gear-verse. Mantis or Naomi are usually the Only Sane Man in this regard, but of course all these biologically impossible events keep on happening anyway.
Legio Arcana: The Legion are trying to take out an Asura in chapter 1. Unable to actually kill it, they decide to bind it to a Christmas cactus with the binding spell written in marker on the clay pot. Marianne suggests they take the price tag off of it first.
Beautifully done on multiple occasions in Let's Play:
- Ep. 44: Sam thinks about a guy she likes and blood spurts from her nose. Next panel:
  Sam: Oh my God! This is so pathetic and cliché! And not medically possible!
- Ep. 55: Link is trying to make Angela feel better:
  Link: ...I would never try to hurt you.
  Link is illuminated by a pure white light.
  Next panel, we see that there is a light fixture over his head
  Link: Hmm, I should probably look into why that light randomly keeps getting brighter like that. It may be a fire hazard.
  the light starts flickering
M9 Girls! lampshades a couple of superhero tropes:
- When Pato complains about the short, colorful costumes, Karla points that heroines must have cool costumes.
- When their mentor catches them in full costume, Clau mentions that they even got hero names.
Ménage à 3 isn't usually prone to such self-awareness, but slips occasionally:
- It lampshades Gary's Extreme Doormat status in strip #795 (September 24, 2013, marginally NSFW); "It's like he has no will of his own." For an added twist, this recognition also immediately reinforces Gary's Clueless Chick-Magnet status, as he becomes a target for seduction — by a rather scary dominatrix.
- The fact that almost the entire cast (including a lot of incidental minor characters) are bisexual is lampshaded at least twice.
  Zii: Why can't he be bi like the rest of us?
  Jane: You know everyone's bi in Montreaaaalll!!!
Ninja Burger: In this strip, Max ninja tell Steve ninja something every ninja already know about shadow clone technique. Steve ninja is understandably confused.
Nixvir has this line in chapter XIX, courtesy of one minotaur guard who isn't Dumb Muscle:
The Order of the Stick lampshades Tabletop Games tropes endlessly.
Used to subtly celebrate Out There passing 2000 strips.
In PepsiaPhobia: "Check it out, those guys are fortuitously discussing subject matter pertinent to our current task."
Real Life Comics lampshades lampshading here.
In Sheldon: Arthur, a talking duck, says to the non-talking animals that, in a piece of fiction, "If one animal talks, they all gotta talk. You gotta keep it consistent."
Silent Hill: Promise lampshades Smoking Is Cool as its protagonist lights up.
Turns up plenty in Sluggy Freelance. Just take a look at this strip:
Torg: Nothing Can Save Us Now!
Zoe: What was that about?
Torg: It's a classic cliché! In this type of situation, when someone says "Nothing can save us now," it's followed by someone showing up to save us.
Zoe: You mean like "It can't get any worse"?
K'z'k the Soul Collector: (suddenly appears) Hi kids!
- Or this strip:
Riff: A dynamic character with an ability to survive certain death, and a questionable death scene leaving no corpse? Face it, we'll never see her again!
Something*Positive hangs a lampshade on one of its longest-running elements in this strip:
Pee-Jee: How'd he get into your ice cream? That makes no sense.
Davan: He's a 30+ year old pudding cat who can travel through drains but this is where your ability to believe is gonna be taxed?
- And continued on:
Pee-Jee: Even so, there's a point where reality dictates—
Davan: How'd that woman at your job die again?
(fact: she was eaten by a ceiling alligator)
Pee-Jee: ... this ice cream could use sprinkles.
- And again:
Pee-Jee: Goddamnit! Why does everything revolve around sex around here?
Davan: ...bad writing...
Pee-Jee: Huh?
Davan: I'm sorry, I'm just reading John Grisham for the first time. This writing is awful.
Amazingly, the usually blisteringly straight-faced Sonichu has a brief bit where the title character asks Collosal Chris-Chan^* to hurry up after the latter delivers a particularly lengthy Wall of Text.
In Episode Two of Space Kid , Pizmo points out to Dr. Conquest the unnecessary complexity of his plot to destroy a city with a giant robot squid.
Spacetrawler: The narrative regularly juggles three or four subplots, often timing the transitions between subplots just in time for gratuitous cliffhangers. There's also a Framing Device that Nogg is telling the entire story to Mr. Zorilla—and Mr. Zorilla eventually gets just as ticked about these shifts as the readers do. On this page, just as a major mystery about spacetrawler construction is about to be cleared up...
Mr. Zorilla: You're going to change to another storyline aren't you.
Nogg: Meanwhile, back in Kppfing.
Mr. Zorilla: I hate you.
[On the next page, Mr. Zorilla has forced Nogg out of the car.]
Nogg: Okay okay! I'll continue telling you about how spacetrawlers are made.
Mr. Zorilla: Alright. You can get back in.
Taken up to eleven in Spinnerette, Colonel Glass mentions not only the trope Faceless Goons, but the fact that there is a TV Tropes page on it.
Pretty much any comic by S. Sakurai (Muertitos, Gorgeous Princess Creamy Beamy, Intragalactic) will be so crawling with lampshade hangings that choosing specific examples would be pretty hard.
In Trope Overdosed The Webcomic, Bob lampshades the fact that he lives in a Schizo Tech universe.
Twice Blessed hangs a lampshade on Cade Masters's description on the first page.
In Wondermark, partway through a lengthy sequence of strips built around increasingly tortured puns on the phrase "check out my sick elephant", this strip has a character comment that they're "practicing getting a lot of mileage out of very thin material".