As If!
As If! is a contemporary web comic about growing up in the 1980s.
The strip centers around the various adventures of two teenage girls. Angela, the blonde one, is an extremely talented artist, rather unorthodox cook (Dr. Pepper S'mores, for example) and generally bright, sunny, wholesome person. Hunter, the redhead (although she contends that it is auburn), is cynical and much more private, characterized by cutting sarcasm and a willingness (only sometimes bluster) to punctuate matters with her fist. Both are somewhat misfits from the high school world and share an unabashed love for dogs.
The two are accompanied in their various adventures by Peter, a cheerful and upbeat dork who enjoys teasing Hunter, despite the number of times she has stuffed him into a trashcan in revenge; Tony, a more stereotypically masculine fellow whose interests include cars, video games, girls in general, and one girl in particular: Sandy, Hunter's former best friend before she was bitten by the Popularity and Fashion bugs. Both Angela's and Hunter's mothers appear relatively frequently; the strip's only real antagonist is Angela's younger sister Rosie, a disturbing seven-year-old who wins beauty pageants by sabotage and foul play and seems to be far superior to Angela in every way... Except for how she's not blonde. The strip also occasionally features Angela's and Hunter's dogs, Sally and Uly (short for the Ulysses made famous by Homer), mostly the latter.
Invented by co-creators Jet Wolf and Mimi as the story of what life would have been like if they had known each other during their teen years (instead of meeting over the Internet), it was also an outgrowth of their love for all things 80s; the strip features such cultural icons as Jem, Transformers: The Movie, Care Bears and the era's truly distinct fashions. Jet Wolf, who provides the writing and dialogue, is the inspiration for Hunter; Mimi, formerly an artist for The Walt Disney Company whose handiwork can be seen on The Little Mermaid, among others, provides the illustration and the personality template for Angela. Likewise many of the characters are parallel to people the two creators know in real life, including friends, parents, spouses and, of course, canine companions.
Though originally a one-shot-gag strip, As If! has slowly moved towards a more extended line of storytelling, even abandoning its traditional four-panel, one-joke-a-day format for one particularly intense storyline. As of 2004 February 24, Jet Wolf has left the strip, leaving it solely under Mimi's control, though she continues to host and frequent the strip's web forums. The strip has not declined appreciably in quality as a result. Finally, as of 2005 March 11, the strip has moved into indefinite hiatus for reasons of general overwork.
External links
Categories: Web comics