Ashfield (webcomic)
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| Ashfield | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Aric McKeown |
| Website | http://www.ashfieldonline.com |
| Launch date | January 1999 |
Ashfield (Previously known as ? - the slightly demented anti-comic strip) is a webcomic by Aric McKeown, done both in Flash and as GIFs. The comic is single-panel with a very simple style, and is hosted on Keenspot.
Ashfield's only significant character is a young professor called Ashfield. Quite what he is a professor of hasn't been explained, but chemistry and physics seem likely. He appears in every single strip, always in the same position or some variation thereof, with the punchline in text at the bottom.
Professor Ashfield is famous for his eccentric ideas, twisted sense of humour and questionable ethics. He often appears in extremely strange situations, sometimes even involving metaphysics, either because of his own fault, or as a victim of circumstances. He always carries a small, oblong, white object in his hand. McKeown originally explained this as being a piece of chalk (for writing on a blackboard), but later inexplicably changed the explanation to it being a cigarette.
Flash was used to produce simple animation effects, or to display multiple punchline options. Sometimes, Ashfield uses Flash for strange visual effects in the background as part of the setting.
The author has also created Danny Washington and Educational Egg.
The initial run as ? (begun in January, 1999) ended in February 2003 with the thousandth comic, and a temporal loop back to the first comic. In September 2005, McKeown briefly revived the comic as Ashfield, but it has been on hiatus again since then.
