Homestar Runner Breaks from the Pack
By James Norton

In 1978, the embryonic world of video games got rocked. "Adventure," a cartridge for the Atari 2600 game system, redefined the potential for home videogaming and sold a million copies in the process. A swords-and-sorcery quest starring a little blocky dot, "Adventure" sent players on a quest through mazes and castles to find a missing chalice. It's the great grand-daddy of the action-adventure genre (think of "Legend of Zelda" and its sprawling brood). It also featured the first "Easter egg," a secret bonus not required to win any given game, but typically one of the most amusing and compelling parts of a game's universe.

Fast forward more than 20 years.

Homestarrunner.com, an independent website powered by smooth Flash animation and crisp writing, has become an example of the medium's grassroots potential. It's got an exploding fan base. And its clean-cut and crisply animated cartoon characters seem ripe for being farmed out into graphic novels, television, or even movies.

But the site's heart can be found back in a stylistic flourish that "Adventure" pioneered. Homestarrunner.com's many surprises — the Easter eggs that lurk within its virtual nooks and crannies — give it much of its character. Cartoons lurk within cartoons. Secret buttons trigger surprising melodies. And metacomic twists spring forth from already humorous situations.

'We've got about 20,000 unread messages'

From a 1996 self-published children's book with a print run of "about 10," the Homestar Runner universe has grown into a self-contained Web kingdom that gets nearly 50,000 visitors a day. One of its most popular characters, Strong Bad, answers e-mails on a regular basis. He now gets about 1,000 messages a day.

"From October alone, we've got about 20,000 unread messages," says Mike Chapman, one of the two brothers who write and animate the site. The site's surge in popularity is a relatively recent event. Founded in January of 2000, it just started to hit its stride this year.

"Things started to pick up in March," says Mike, "and Matt quit his job in August or September. It's good that he did, because if he were still working right now, we wouldn't have been able to do the new Halloween cartoon, or the Parsnips-A-Plenty thing we did last month."

The brothers are in their late 20s and live in Atlanta. They make their living from freelance graphic and Web design, but the site has increasingly begun to pay its own way.

"We couldn't support ourselves on [the merchandise] entirely, but we sell a couple dozen shirts a day," says Mike.

'Most of what was out there was pure shit'

Cartoons litter the Web. Many (if not most) bank on cheap gags; gross-out humor and cute characters with filthed-out vocabularies are a dime a dozen. While Homestar Runner isn't the only animated Flash action on the market, it occupies a tight niche. Lil' Pimp has teamed up with Sony and gone corporate. Cooking With Bigfoot has floundered, experimenting with different commercial models and sexed-up but ultimately flaccid humor. The cartoons of Lore Sjöberg often have great comedic impact, but they're one-offs that don't build an interconnected world of characters. Homestarrunner.com was founded in reaction — and opposition — to online cartooning's origins.

"It was in the early days of Joe Cartoon and stuff like that. Not to sound all high and mighty, but most of what was out there was pure shit," says Matt Chapman, who does all the site's male voices. "Everything that was out there in late '99 was all South Park rip-offs or Star Wars parodies, and we were just like 'What a waste!'

Homestar Runner and his crew.

"We thought, 'We could make some stupid thing with the Budweiser Guys, but they're in Star Wars outfits! And they're Transformers!' and everyone would go to it. But we wanted to make something that was not at all like anything else out there."

They succeeded, creating a site with its own brand of mojo. The characters exist in a sort of 8th-grade cartoon special universe — humorous quests and contests propel much of the action, and the site is well-stocked with holiday specials. Characters tend to have general goals (Strong Bad, Strong Mad and The Cheat are basically around to mess up Homestar Runner's plans; Homestar Runner is generally out to bumblingly solve a problem of some sort; his girlfriend Marzipan is alternately supportive and demanding) and secondary attributes (Strong Bad's witty sarcasm or Homestar Runner's unintentional mean streak, for example.)

But beyond its "Garfield and Friends" structure and facade, the site's sarcastic banter, spare but effective referential humor and absurdist wit greatly broaden its audience. The material is clean — but edgy.

"It was the kind of thing that Ren and Stimpy had," says Matt. "They kind of walked that really creepy line, which was great, but it was on Nickelodeon, so it wasn't dirty. It makes it a nice challenge to try and be funny without resorting to being dirty. And then any time we approach that line, it makes it extra funny if the characters are a little obscene or profane."

Which isn't to say, of course, that the two don't get tempted.

"Of course, there are times when we think, why can't Strong Sad just say: 'Fuck! I hate this bullshit!' There are countless outtakes of that kind of stuff. We were thinking of making The Swear Episode, where they just cut loose after all this time."

Fighting the good fight of clean humor has its own odd benefits. Much of the site's original fanbase was comprised of students from Christian colleges. "We were huge with these kids," says Matt, "and hopefully they just liked it, but at the same time, it's because it's a little clean, so it's okay to show this to mom, even. You wouldn't want to go to the South Park movie with your mom."

These days, however, the site's biggest referrer is the weblog of the weird, Fark.com.

"It's been great — every Monday, they link to us," says Mike. "I know a lot of people see it there for weeks and weeks, and they don't click on it. Then eventually they click on it, but they don't get it. But they come back next week, and they watch 10 of them, and they get it."

'Whoever gets it, gets it'

The enthusiasm of the site's fans, both rookie and veteran, is key to keeping the enterprise on its feet and moving forward.

"It's great just getting the e-mails that say, 'Hey your site's great!' " says Mike. "It makes it all worthwhile just to get the e-mails and see how many people are in tune and appreciate it. And the small details — if we throw a little secret in a cartoon, and someone gets it, they're like 'Oh yeah! I used to watch that too!' "

Though the site isn't pop-culture dependent, Homestar Runner cartoons aren't afraid to drop the occasional Kid-n-Play or Ghost Dog reference into the mix.

"Did you ever watch 'Mystery Science Theater?' " asks Matt. "It's just like that thing when they would throw those jokes out there, and there's literally a dozen people who would get them. 'This'll be for those 10 guys who saw that movie.' Whoever gets it, gets it, and it's hilarious. That's kind of how we started."

'The website will still remain the core'

As their numbers shoot through the roof and their parents (retired, but put to work handling the site's merchandising) stuff envelopes at an increasingly frantic pace, the two brothers have been mulling over future plans.

"In terms of dreams... We look at something like 'Peanuts,'" says Matt. "They're going to show the Peanuts Christmas special until the end of time, and that just rules. And it's always going to make kids... I dunno, I almost cry every time when I watch Linus tell Charlie Brown the true meaning of Christmas.

"If we could do that, and maybe even avoid putting it on TV, that would be even cooler. It would be neat if we were kind of riding the crest of some Internet thing. Hopefully, the Internet will turn into something good like that. It seemed like it was going to for a while and then it disappeared. It'd be pretty cool to be something of a pioneer in that type of thing."

Mike also sees a long, productive road ahead.

"We'd like to do this for a long time," he says. "The analogy of the invisible dot [Easter egg] in 'Adventure' is something you wouldn't get on TV. It seems like the website will remain, whether or not it goes into graphic novels, or selling DVDs, or a TV show or whatever... the website will still remain the core, because there's so much cool stuff you wouldn't get in other media."