Wigu

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Wigu
Comic from December 13, 2003, in which Wigu is granted three wishes. This strip features Wigu, Topato and Sheriff Pony. NB: this image does not include the strapline gag that is included on the website, though not the print versions. (Provided by Jeff Rowland, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.)
Author(s)	Jeff Rowland
Website	http://www.jjrowland.com
Update schedule	Updates Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Launch date	January 7, 2002
Genre	Dreamworld Humour

Wigu is a webcomic (and later a print comic) created by Jeff Rowland. It was publicly launched on January 7, 2002. Wigu is the successor to Rowland's earlier web comic When I Grow Up and derives its name from the earlier strip's initials. There have been some guest appearances from When I Grow Up, but Wigu is otherwise a different comic with a new set of characters. Wigu was originally intended to end on December 31, 2004, but resumed on April 18, 2005. The webcomic ended again on December 31, 2005 so that Rowland could continue the title as a series of printed books. It was intended that there be a new book every month, but only one was ever published, and Wigu returned to its original online format on November 22, 2006. [1]

1 Story and characters
2 Magical Adventures in Space
3 Revival
4 Change to print format, and subsequent return
5 Bibliography
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Story and characters

The comic is centered on the adventures of a little boy named Wigu Tinkle and his family. Each chapter of the comic represents one day in Wigu's life. Wigu is an intelligent child with an active imagination who uses much of his free time to watch television and play video games, where he encounters the beings of Butter Dimension³, primarily the intergalactic heroes Topato (a flying potato whose catch phrase is "Spring into action!" and whose primary defense mechanism consists of being made entirely of poison) and Sheriff Pony (an eloquent Space Pony who, as the storyline reveals, excretes vanilla ice cream instead of fecal waste).

Wigu has a teenage sister, Paisley, who is the stereotypical goth girl, though insists her being a nihilist is entirely different. She actively seeks out depression and angst. Wigu's father Quincy makes money by composing music for porno movies. He is also a bodybuilder and tends to walk around without a shirt, which sometimes gets him into trouble. Quincy is highly protective of his family, even violently so. Wigu's mother Romy, on the other hand, is an emancipated, egocentric, successful businesswoman who shows little interest in her family. She is also an alcoholic.

The comic has elements of soap operas and sitcoms, but also features dark, sometimes violent themes -- at one point Wigu is thrown into a coma after being bitten by a giant roly-poly -- and very surreal ones (without breaking the fourth wall).

Over the course of the comic, Topato and Sheriff Pony have become more refined characters, to the point of frequently getting their own independent storylines. They have crossed into the real world and appear to be more than just elements of Wigu's imagination. They live in an empire which seems to be connected to the well-being of Wigu and his family. Both characters are highly popular among the readers. The lovable superhero Topato, upon closer investigation, turns out to be a power-hungry cynic kept in check by the morally pure Sheriff Pony.

Wigu, like many web comics, is also an online community, with contests and competitions (a Topato look-alike contest, music competitions etc.). Rowland has published three Wigu books and also uses the website to sell t-shirts.

[edit] Magical Adventures in Space

On January 17, 2005, Rowland started a new comic, Magical Adventures in Space, on the Wigu site. The title comes from the name of the television show that Wigu Tinkle watched in the previous comic. The first five strips featured an unrelated story, Science Cop, which ended unexpectedly with the title character's murder. This was followed on January 24 by another new story, American Platypus. This was a sequel to a 6-page American Platypus comic that appeared in print in Rowland's book I Was a Teenage Billionaire Psychopath (c. 2004), and ran for ten strips before ending on an unresolved cliffhanger. On February 6 the strip returned to the established M.A.I.S. universe (or at least a parallel one - Butter Dimension Quad rather than Butter Dimension³), with Sheriff Pony complaining about American Platypus's abrupt ending, revealing that it was a TV show he was watching.

[edit] Revival

In the April 8 strip, the M.A.I.S. characters sat down to watch a marathon of their favorite "reality television" show "The Tinkles". Rowland explained on his site that each universe appears on television in the other. Following a "commercial" featuring a parody of Super Mario Bros. the strip reverted to its original title and storyline on April 18. Rowland commented: "I thought I could leave them behind, honestly. I thought four months would distance myself from the Tinkles enough for me to be done with them completely, but the more time passed the more I missed them. So here goes nothing."

The revived Wigu took on a slightly more surreal feel than the original Wigu, which was mostly self-contained in its characters and stories, as bizarre as they were at times. Allowing his characters the freedom to interact in new ways with the different universes he has created, creator Jeffrey Rowland went so far as to have his characters visit a man named Jeffrey Rowland. In the storyline they discovered that, in fact, Jeffrey Rowland is the President of the evil TopatoCo corporation, a company which comic creator Jeffrey Rowland runs. At the end of that storyline the Rowland character killed Topato and Butter Dimension Quad ceased to exist. It was replaced in the strip by Butter Dimension 360, where Topato and his companions are alive and well and of course identical to their counterparts in every respect.

[edit] Change to print format, and subsequent return

In December 2005 Rowland decided on another change of format, announcing that the strip would continue as a series of short black-and-white print volumes. The first volume, Wigu: The Case of the Missile Crisis! was announced as "Coming Very Soon" in February 2006. In March Rowland began taking pre-orders , and after some delays the book, comprising 25 story pages interspersed with (mostly) spoof ads, was released in mid-April. The end of Missile Crisis specifies its successor as The Case of Atlantis! However, the production of The Case of Atlantis was plagued with long delays, and it was never actually published. The book has apparently been abandoned altogether, as, on November 14, 2006, Rowland announced via his blog comic, Overcompensating, that the original online version of Wigu would return one week later, on November 22nd. [2]