Possibly one of the funnier things said in Jerkcity.
"Slurping and drooling and hurr."
The comic's unofficial motto
Jerkcity (renamed Bonequest
in 2018) is a long-running dadaist webcomic chronicling the bizarre discussions of several strange, loud-mouthed, hedonistic characters. The series centers around Pants, a well-meaning but naive "Christmas tree monster", Spigot, a gluttonous and musically-inclined beatnik, and Deuce, an opinionated, argumentative tiki-man. Alongside an extensive cast of side characters, the Jerkcity players Have a Gay Old Time in a world obsessed with boners, weed, junk food, and rampant nonsense.
Originally launched on August 17th, 1998, Jerkcity has published new strips on a daily basis for over 25 years. Unlike most webcomics, the series is not traditionally drawn or written – instead, dialogue is taken from a massive archive of the creators' private chatroom discussions, then paired with Jim Woodring's Microsoft Comic Chat avatars to create the strip's distinct visual style. Jerkcity's absurdist, line-crossing sense of humor, reckless use of Stylistic Suck, and total disregard for good taste have earned the comic a longtime cult following and various fan-made adaptations.
NOTE: This series is most definitely Not Safe for Work.
This webcomic provides examples of:
- The Alcoholic: Deuce, if the Drunk Deuce tag is any indication. The infrequently reoccurring Inebriated Crustacean likely also counts.
- Ambiguous Syntax: "Wanna Pounda Dope?" Spigot soon realizes he's the dope.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: Space Nuts appears to center around three all-new characters: "Sparky" the rabbit, the uncredited Korean man (known now as Private Jim), and a man simply called Captain.
- Beatnik: The way Spigot dresses, though nowhere near the way he acts. However, he does sometimes recite poems.
- Breakout Character: Spigot is Jerkcity's most recognizable character, and has been used as the strip's mascot in recent years.
- Broken Record: Home On The Range.
- CAPS LOCK: All dialogue in Jerkcity is written in uppercase. As noted by the strip's FAQ, though, this does not necessarily indicate that the characters are shouting at one another.
- Censor Box: More often used to redact dialogue as though the comic were a sensitive document, but sometimes used in the more traditional way, over a character's crotch. Sometimes in an upward diagonal. It has also been used to obscure characters' eyes, including Pants, whose nine eyes were individually covered.
- Dada Comic: The comic often has intentional production errors that make the dialogue illegible. It also has some pages that are not comics at all.
- Demoted to Extra: To the point of almost being a case of Ret-Gone. There was a fourth main character, Rands the alien, and he was almost entirely removed from the comic when it renamed to Bonequest. Trying to use the website's search function for Rands, in short, doesn't work. note Given that the real-life Rands and co-creator of the strip, Michael Lopp, is now Vice-President of Engineering at Slack, this might be some variety of Take That!.
- Easter Egg: The 0th strip is only accessible through its dedicated URL.
- Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: Yeah... pretty much every strip.
- Medium Awareness: Often the characters are aware that they are in a comic, excepting Pants, who has more trouble recognizing that he isn't real. Atandt attempts to point this out by reading his thoughts.
- No Fourth Wall: This strip has Atandt point out a real bug in OpenBSD to a real person.
- Noodle Incident: Nearly every comic is an In Medias Res situation with zero context.
- Only Sane Man: Hanford acts as the strip's stage manager, and frequently has to corral the other characters' tomfoolery. On more than one occasion, he's threatened to quit managing Jerkcity altogether.
- Orwellian Retcon:
- At some point in 2020, a number of strips were edited to change mentions of "Jerkcity" to "Bonequest", mainly in the very early archive, but also when the name of the comic is mentioned within the comic.
- Also edited in 2020 were strips featuring the Rands character, edits of which often, but not always, put Atandt in Rands's place. A few such strips were shortened by a few panels or replaced altogether with a completely different strip. This has resulted in some strange plot holes, such as a strip where a character asks Deuce to be his smooth buddy. In the original version of the strip, this character is Rands, but the new version has Pants say this instead, who in the strip immediately afterwards laments having missed Smooth Buddy Week.
- A much more minor retcon is Effigy's pool ball head. Formerly depicted as an 8 ball, old Effigy strips were redone to give him different pool balls for his head.
- Platonic Prostitution: Pants and Spigot get whores to do chores.
- Queer People Are Funny: The creators have said that the strip is a satire of this sort of humour.
- Refuge in Audacity: Very commonly used, especially early on.
- Running Gag: A character (originally Rands, later updated to Atandt) ponders aloud whether bong hits will fix their computer troubles.
- Shout-Out: This strip is a wholesale reference to the famous "shinebox" scene in GoodFellas.
- Show Within a Show: Spigot sits down to watch Space Nuts and the next few strips take place within the show. And then Pants & Deuce take over the show.
- Take That!: Frequently done towards other webcomics, especially Penny Arcade, xkcd, and User Friendly.
- The Unseen: Jean-Charles is often mentioned by other characters, but never actually appears in the strip himself.
- Those Two Guys: Pants and Deuce are the most common character pairing, and have had hundreds of misadventures all to themselves. Some strips even comment on how often the two are seen arguing.
- We Wait: Pants says this after seeking help from the dick cache god.
- We Want Our Jerk Back!: The obviously intended reader reaction to the Kinder Gentler Deuce storyline (starting here and featuring at least once every two strips).