Homestar Runner is a Flash animated Internet cartoon. It mixes surreal humor with references to 1970s, '80s, and '90s pop culture, notably video games, classic television, and popular music. Most of the site's traffic comes from the United States; events in the cartoon itself usually take place in the fictitious Free Country, USA.

The cartoons are nominally centered on title character Homestar Runner. However, the series titled Strong Bad Email or sbemail, in which another main character, Strong Bad, answers emails from viewers, is the most popular and prominent feature of the site. While Homestar and Strong Bad are the main characters, the site has grown to encompass dozens of other characters over the years.

The site is one of the most visited sites with collections of Flash cartoons on the Internet and is notable for its refusal to sell advertising space (the creators pay for everything through merchandise sales, which includes a line of T-shirts). It grew in popularity largely through word of mouth. The owners of the website have reportedly turned down two offers to make a television series.

History

Homestar Runner was brought to life in Atlanta in 1996 by two University of Georgia students, Mike Chapman and Craig Zobel, who were working summer jobs surrounding the 1996 Summer Olympics. On a day off, they visited a bookstore where they found that the state of children's books was dismal. Intending to parody this, they wrote the original story The Homestar Runner Enters the Strongest Man in the World Contest. This story featured Homestar Runner, Pom Pom, Strong Bad, The Cheat, and a few characters that are rarely seen in recent cartoons: The Robot, Mr. Bland, Señor, and the Grape Fairie. This hand-drawn book was the only incarnation of the characters for several years.

They later used Mario Paint, a Super Nintendo video game, to create the first cartoon of the series. By 1999, Mike and his younger brother Matt Chapman, who call themselves The Brothers Chaps, were learning Flash and looking for something on which to practice. Digging out the old children's book provided a solution. The site domain was registered on December 6, 1999, and around the start of the year 2000, homestarrunner.com was live. Matt provided the voices of the male characters, while Mike's girlfriend (now wife) Missy Palmer provided Marzipan's voice.

Regarding the origin of the name "Homestar Runner", Matt had this to say, from an interview with Kevin Scott:

The friend mentioned is James Huggins (band member of Of Montreal), who was a childhood friend of the Chapman brothers while growing up in Atlanta, Georgia (Dunwoody).

The site grew slowly at first, but by mid-2001 it began to take off with the first Strong Bad Email. The number of visitors to the site grew, and by March 2003 the site had outgrown its original web host, Yahoo!. Merchandise sales paid for all of the costs of running the website as well as living costs of the creators, whose retired parents managed many of the business aspects.

On January 30, 2006, Podstar Runner was launched, allowing people to download select Strong Bad Emails and other toon episodes to a video-enabled portable media player (such as an iPod). Once made available through iTunes' podcast directory, it very quickly took the #1 slot on Apple's "Most Popular" podcast list. Podstar Runner was taken down on September 21, 2007, for reasons unknown. A new version was introduced on Thursday, January 10, 2008, but it is no longer available at the iTunes Store or Zune Marketplace.

Collaborations with other artists

The Brothers Chaps on occasion have partnered up with rock band They Might Be Giants and supplied animation for a music video of their song "Experimental Film." The creators of Homestar Runner spent a day with the band, and those songs have found their way onto the website in the form of "Puppet Jam," a subset of "Puppet Stuff," where Puppet Homestar rocks out with TMBG. TMBG also wrote the music for Strong Bad Email #99, "Different Town." Also, on the 200th strong bad email, They Might Be Giants wrote and vocalized the beginning song.

Another group, The Skate Party, helped The Brothers Chaps create "The Cheat Theme Song." The band Y-O-U helped with the Strong Bad Sings and Other Type Hits CD, as well as on the strongbad_email.exe DVDs.

The Brothers Chaps also employed the services of the erstwhile a cappella band DaVinci's Notebook to create a theme song for the old-timey version of The Cheat, called "Ballad of The Sneak".

Discussing how he and his sibling decide which projects to work on, Mike Chapman said, "We learned how to politely say no to things that were going to affect our lives negatively. If it’s going to be fun, if we’re going to enjoy doing it, and if the end project is going to be something we want to have happen, we say yes."

Reception

The site receives several million hits a month, and almost a thousand emails a day. According to Matt Chapman, the site did no real advertising, but grew on word of mouth and endorsements: "Certain bands, like fairly popular bands and stuff would link us on their site and, you know we were Shockwave site of the day a couple of times over the years." Homestar Runner's popularity, coupled with its positive critical response, has led to the website receiving widespread coverage. Homestar Runner has been featured in Wired, National Review, Entertainment Weekly, Total Gamer, G4, and NPR's All Things Considered.

A review published in National Review characterized the site's humor as having"the innocence of slapstick with sharp satire of American popular culture"—humor that "tends to be cultural, not political."

Music

The Homestar Runner site frequently features songs and videos within their animated shorts or as stand-alone entities, which serve as parodies of hair metal, death metal, college rock and hip hop. These are primarily sung and performed either by the characters or by fictitious rock bands with names such as “Limozeen”, “Peacey P”, “sloshy”, "Brainkrieg" and “Taranchula.” Real-life musicians They Might be Giants have also appeared semi-regularly, performing with a Homestar puppet or allowing the characters to perform a video to their song Experimental Film.

The site-generated music has enjoyed surprising popularity, such that commercial CDs are now sold and two songs, "Trogdor" by the character Strong Bad and "Because, It's Midnite" by Limozeen, have been included in the successful Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s video games, respectively. Their inclusion in the games is reportedly because Harmonix founder Alex Rigopulos is a professed fan of Homestar Runner.

The first music included in the site's content was humorously absurd hip hop created by the character Coach Z, who often makes references to hip hop and rap music in conversation. Another character, Strong Bad, sings short intros in weekly cartoons in which he checks his email and provides humorous responses and commentary. In an email titled “dragon”, he draws a bizarre one-armed dragon called “TROGDOR, THE BURNiNATOR,” and performs its theme song. By far, it became the site’s most popular joke, yielding merchandise such as T-shirts, CDs, messenger bags, etc. all featuring the title character. Its theme song was included as a bonus track in Guitar Hero II.

A faux hair metal band, Limozeen, was introduced as a parody in the style of '80s metal bands like Skid Row, White Lion and Poison; their songs included "Because, It's Midnite," "Nite Mamas," "Feed the Childrens" and "Brain Sister". Recently, Limozeen (actually the Atlanta indie band Y-O-U along with Matt Chapman on vocals) performed a live show in Atlanta, Georgia on March 17, 2008. They performed live again on November 8, 2008, opening for indie pop band Of Montreal. A few years later, the death metal parody Taranchula was created. Billed as Scandinavian, their songs, done in the style of Sepultura, include "Decoupage", "Trudgemank", and "Moving Very Slowly". The creators later introduced a shoegazer band called “sloshy” (always spelled in lower case and rotated 180 degrees), which featured songs in the musical vein of Pavement such as "We Don't Really Even Care About You," "OK Fine," and "Unripe,” as well as a cover of Limozeen's "Because, It's Midnite." Recently, the site has also touched on rap music via the character Peacy P, a rapper who mainly appears as a guest star on various albums, even his own. His singing style resembles that of Snoop Dog. Another new addition to the site's musical roster is the self-absorbed R&B artist Tenerence Love. Taranchula was later revisited and released a song called "Trudgemank" featuring Peacey P, a la "the early '90s."

Characters

Cartoons

Homestar Runner features several "sub-cartoons" and spin-offs. Some of these cartoons take place outside the normal Homestar Runner universe, and the main characters of the normal cartoons do not necessarily appear in them. When they do, it is often not in the same way they appear in the main Homestar Runner world—most of the main characters also have alter-egos that appear occasionally.

Old-Timey (1936)

These cartoons take place in an old-time setting, with most of the Homestar Runner characters having direct counterparts in the Old-Timey cartoons. These cartoons are in black and white with a film grain effect added and scratchy audio quality. They parody the distinctive style of animated cartoons during the 1920s and 1930s (a la Steamboat Willie), and can be seen as perhaps deliberately unfunny, to make a slanted joke about such old-style cartoons.

Powered By The Cheat

"Powered by The Cheat" are cartoons created by the character The Cheat, hence the name. They feature main characters, but have an amateurish style of animation, nonsensical plots and bad voice acting. They parody poorly-made internet cartoons.

20X6

Another series of cartoons, Stinkoman 20X6 (abbreviated to 20X6; pronounced "Twenty Exty-Six"), originated from a response to an email asking Strong Bad what he would look like if he was a Japanese cartoon. The main character, Stinkoman, is a Japanese animation version of Strong Bad with blue hair, a shiny body and robot boots. He is always looking for a fight, asking various characters he interacts with to engage him in a "challenge" ("Are you asking for a challenge?"). The characters in 20X6 cartoons each have a counterpart in the Homestar Runner universe and their features are based on common anime and Japanese video game stereotypes. The game was heavily based on the Mega Man series, particularly the first 6 entries.

Limozeen: But They're In Space!

Limozeen, an '80s glam metal style band was depicted in a cartoon that described a short-lived Saturday morning cartoon entitled Limozeen: But They're in Space!. The idea appears to resemble Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. In the pilot episode, which was canceled during the episode itself, Limozeen is "knocked off the charts by an alternative rock band". Fictional shoegazer band Sloshy would appear in an episode of this cartoon, having their tour van destroyed by some "hot lixx".

Sweet Cuppin' Cakes

Sweet Cuppin' Cakes is a surreal children's cartoon-within-a-cartoon also introduced in a Strong Bad Email, featuring characters like "Eh! Steve!" and "The Worm." A character named Sherlock that is described as a mixture of "a cow and a helicopter" is always attempting to get the worm out of a hole, but is always unsuccessful. "The Wheelchair", voiced by Bubs within the cartoon, is always trying to catch Eh! Steve. Eh! Steve uses his name as a catchphrase. Strong Bad himself also appears, but with a Casio keyboard in place of his head. There was a single Christmas episode entitled "Cactus Coffee and the No-Tell Motel". The cartoon also spawned its own miniature golf course, which is as bizarre as the cartoon.

Cheat Commandos

The Cheat Commandos is a parody of G.I. Joe that created a cast of characters that are the same species as The Cheat. Each character is based directly off a G.I. Joe character. For example, the character Crackotage is based on Roadblock, but with a voice more like Scatman Crothers. The enemy of the Commandos is Blue Laser, a direct parody of Cobra, who have their equivalent of Cobra Commander, known as Blue Laser Commander. The cartoon is constantly advertising its products in the cartoons by such methods as referring to the areas they are in as "playsets", a convoy truck as an "action figure storage vehicle", and by ending each cartoon with the phrase (sung in a patriotic way), "Buy all our playsets and toys!"

Strong Bad Email

Strong Bad Emails (also known as "sbemails") have traditionally been among the most popular features on Homestar Runner. The emails were initially brief, but grew to establish numerous spinoffs and inside jokes on the site. The format, though, has remained essentially unchanged since its inception (with the exception of updated computers): Strong Bad receives an email from a fan or viewer, and starts typing his response. Strong Bad generally mocks the sender, criticizing names, hometowns, spelling and grammar. Most of the time a cut-away sequence is used that gets away from typing the e-mail. Once the events of the email finish unfolding, Strong Bad wraps up the email, and then "The Paper", the "New Paper", the "Envelope Paper", or the "Compe-per" comes down with a link to email Strong Bad. Often, hidden animations (Easter Eggs) are displayed when the user clicks on a word or picture either during the email or after it has concluded. Depending on your browser, it may be possible to hold the TAB key, or hold the CTRL key along with the TAB key, and highlight any clickable hidden feature in the animation. As of October 6, 2009, there are 211 sbemails (including the 6 bonus episodes found on the sbemail DVDs exclusively distributed by Microcinema DVD).

Teen Girl Squad

Teen Girl Squad is a crudely drawn comic strip narrated by Strong Bad, using a falsetto voice. It began after Strong Bad received an email asking him to make a comic strip of a girl and her friends. The comic features four archetypal teenage girls, with heavy parody evident in the characters' nondescript names: "Cheerleader", "So-And-So", "What's-Her-Face" and "The Ugly One". The comic strip is about their lives (and frequently violent, but funny, deaths devised by Strong Bad). The comic also seems to be a commentary on teen culture in the United States.

Holiday Specials

Several episodes have been dedicated to special days of the year. For example, every Halloween, a cartoon is released that features all the characters in costumes celebrating some traditional aspect of Halloween (such as ghost stories, trick-or-treating or pumpkin carving). The characters' costumes are often famously esoteric, full of obscure pop culture references or characters from movies and television shows made in the '70s, '80s and '90s; for example: Flavor Flav, Angus Young, Jambi the Genie, Gizmo, Prince, and Sam Kinison. April Fool's Day features various gags, such as turning the site into a "PAY PLUS!" offer site or flipping it upside down. The characters also celebrate an annual holiday called "Decemberween", a parody of Christmas that features gift-giving, carol-singing and decorated trees. The fact that it takes place on December 25, the same day as Christmas, has been presented as just a coincidence, and it has been stated that Decemberween traditionally takes place "55 days after Halloween".

Other holidays celebrated include New Year's Day, "The Big Game" (around the time of the Super Bowl), St. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, "Senorial Day" (a combination of a lesser character named Senor Cardgage and Memorial Day), Flag Day, Independence Day (also known as "Happy Fireworks" by Homestar), Labor Day (occasionally referred to as "Labor Dabor"), Thanksgiving and, most recently, Easter.

Marzipan's Answering Machine

Marzipan's Answering Machine has limited animation and consists of a series of phone messages left on Marzipan's answering machine. These cartoons often include attempts by Strong Bad to prank call Marzipan or run some sort of scam. Homestar Runner leaves frequent messages, as does Coach Z, who was revealed to have a crush on Marzipan through a drunk dial in episode "5.0" of this feature. In addition, less frequently featured characters appear, such as Crack Stuntman, Stinkoman and Vector Strong Bad.

Puppet Stuff

Homestar Runner.com also features a segment in which the regular cartoons are replaced by puppets that may do skits that can vary from performing in music videos with They Might Be Giants, holiday videos, or Homestar and Strong Bad interacting with a little girl.

Homestar Email

Following a similar format to Strong Bad's e-mail, hremails feature Homestar answering e-mails from fans. hremails are notably zanier than sbemails, reflecting the differences in the two characters' personalities. While Strong Bad often focuses his responses on mocking the sender or element of their question (such as Web comics), Homestar provides surreal advice in a friendly manner. Eventually, Strong Bad "couldn't take it anymore", and took back his old show.

Video games

Web games

Homestar Runner offers a variety of online games that feature one or more of their characters. The first games were simple in nature and are now found under Super Old Games-n-Such. Among them are the "Homestar Talker", a Soundboard starring Homestar, and "Astro-Lite 2600", a game similar to Lite-Brite. More recent games have been released as products of "Videlectrix", a side project of the brothers. These games are far more complex, spoofing many popular 80s videogames. "Where's an Egg?" is a good example of their parody games. It is a web-based Flash game that is portrayed as a real, but extremely obscure game with all captions in broken Russian and clunky graphics reminiscent of the early days of computer gaming. The game takes place in Soviet Russia with references to Lenin's Tomb, Sputnik and Siberia. You play as an unnamed detective in search of an egg. Videlectrix claims on its homepage that it purchased the game overseas "some years ago." However, no one at the company could figure out how the game worked until they found a page from the original instruction booklet (in Russian, along with strained translations into English from the seller) for sale on an online auction site.

Arguably their most famous game, "Peasant's Quest", is an adventure game featuring Rather Dashing, a young peasant in short pants. After he comes home from a vacation he finds his cottage burned to the ground. He vows to kill the destroyer of his cottage: Trogdor the Burninator, a dragon with one human arm, created as a result of a sbemail. The game uses a system that is a near replica of Sierra Entertainment's Adventure Game Interpreter, used in King's Quest, Space Quest and several other early Sierra titles. Recently, the website has produced Wii versions of some of the games on the site, for the Wii browser. When played on the computer, these use the mouse only.

Thy Dungeonman is a parody of text adventure games. A running gag in the game is that "you cannot get ye flask" from sbemail "video games", (one of the first items mentioned in the first game), as mentioned in the Strong Bad Email "video games". At the end of the third game, you manage to actually get Ye Flask. Though intended to be medieval, the text is actually rendered in mock Shakespearean English. Thy Dungeonman has two sequels: Thy Dungeonman II and Thy Dungeonman III, the latter of which is on the Homestar Runner website, the former on the Videlectrix site. Thy Dungeonman III has graphics, though Sbemail "video games" states that such games had no graphics ("Graphics schmaphics").Ye Flask and "Ye can't get ye flask" have become catch-phrases in the Homestar Runner universe, eventually spawning a T-shirt in the Homestar Runner store.

Strong Bad Zone is a parody of vector graphics games such as Battlezone. The idea of the game is to block the items that are fired at you, but in a way that they hit Strong Bad's floating head, breaking off a piece. When all pieces are destroyed, the game resumes. In the Wii version, once Strong Bad is destroyed, the screen will become covered with lipstick kisses and vector Strong Bad will say "Back Off Baby", from the sbemail "video games". The Wii version also adds music. A gag in the game occurs when you die, where vector Strong Bad will say "Your head a-splode", a "bad translation" as described in the sbemail.

Other games include 50k Racewalker, a game based on track and field video games, apparently involving race walking (although the character moves significantly slower); Hallrunner, a vector game where various encounters must either be "spoken to, jumped over, or fought" before the object is known, while avoiding obstacles; and Pigs on Head, a Game & Watch based game.

Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People (SBCG4AP)

On April 10, 2008, a new episodic game called Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People was announced for the Wii's WiiWare service and Microsoft Windows, developed by Telltale Games in partnership with Videlectrix. The first episode Homestar Ruiner premiered on August 11, 2008 worldwide for Windows on Telltale Game's website and in North America on Nintendo's WiiWare service on August 11, 2008. It was also released in Europe and Australia the following Friday (August 15, 2008). The second episode, Strong Badia the Free, was released on September 15 on the Telltale Game's website and on the WiiWare service in North America, and in the PAL region on October 3. Episode three, titled Baddest of the Bands, was released on Telltale Games' website and the WiiWare service in North America on October 27, and to the PAL region on November 21. The fourth episode, Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective, was released on Telltale Games' website and WiiWare in North America on November 17, and in the PAL region on December 5. The fifth and final episode, 8-Bit Is Enough, was released to North America on December 15 and in the PAL region on January 2, 2009.

References

1. Videlectrix releases another game parody: Where's an Egg? - Joystiq
2. Where's An Egg?, a review at the Flak Magazine
3. A mock auction bid for the missing page #13 from the "instruktor book for very very foreign videomachine game 'WHERE AT DID YOU THE EGG PUT?!"
4. Announcing Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People for WiiWare

External links

• Official website
• Videlectrix Webpage
• Homestar Runner at Homestar Runner Wiki