Weird for the sake of weird

Can't be bothered waiting for your favourite comic strip characters to enter the public domain? No problem! Just draw a comic strip about them anyway! It's all in good fun, and a homage, of course. Here's a round-up of some strips that I thought were great examples of taking a popular comic strip and putting their own spin on the characters. 

First up we have "D.I.L.B.E.R.T. 2147" by Rory Blank. He's taken Scott Adams' Dilbert and taken it to its grotesque future conclusion. 121 years from now, Dilbert, Wally and his fellow cubicle drones are still toiling away in productivity hell, as you always knew they would be. The game never ends and your life means nothing to the corporation.

Here's a weird one — an untitled strip by John Cullen featuring Charlie Brown from Charles Schulz's Peanuts. I was never into Peanuts, I found it annoying, repetitive and not all that funny. Perhaps I didn't really "get" it. But then again, who cares! This tribute to the existential boredom of terminal loser Charles Brown (you have to be wary of cartoonists who give their lead character the same name as themselves) is made more striking by the off-white vintage background colour, the limited palette and the zip-a-tone halftone dots. I'd read a whole compendium of these!

You must have known that Brussels' premier youth reporter would be included in this, and you'd be right. Just as Yves Rodier's completed fanart version of Tintin et l'Alph-Art gave us the closest look as to what Tintin might have looked like in the 1980s, the strip below gives us a 2020s Tintin and Captain Haddock, referencing the Louvre heist in October 2025. That guy in the third panel is 15 year old Pedro Delvaux, a tourist whose presence outside the museum in 1940s detective garb drew widespread attention.

I haven't been able to find out the name of the person who drew this, but they have a Tumblr page called Professor Calculus Stan Account.

This is my favourite: "Looking For A Friend" by Tom McHenry (I'm not sure if the site linked here is his official one). It's a whimsical yet sad look at those exciting early days of The Simpsons, when Bart would crank-call Moe's Tavern, and stuff would happen, and junk. 

 

The character of Moe has been the cause of much heartache and conjecture over the 114 years the show has been on the air. Is he a repulsive gargoyle who gets perverse pleasure from serving watered-down booze to sadsack losers in his crappy dive bar? Or is he an incurable romantic yearning for the soul mate who is never to come his way? Tom McHenry understands this perfectly and articulates it on the page as such.

 

Note: All artwork is copyright of their respective authors. As for the characters they're drawing, I don't wanna get into that! They drew it, not me. I'm not a lawyer, man!