Gunshow is a web comic made by KC Green. Starting off as a small gag a day strip, the jokes became more complicated over time. Over time it has developed a spanning continuity, with some recurring characters such as the Anime Club (who now have their own page!), The Rabbits and The Hairy Criminal. There is also Graveyard Quest, a story arc that has its own page. However it still remains a largely a gag a day comic, with the continuity being mostly composed of Mythology Gags.
The comic was discontinued Christmas of 2014. Two years later, ten strips were animated in the form of station idents on [adult swim]. KC would go on to write BACK, write and draw He Is a Good Boy, and draw an adaptation of The Adventures of Pinocchio.
But let's be honest. You're probably here for the "This is fine" dog, aren't you? Naturally, his strip was one of the aforementioned station idents, voiced by none other than Dana Snyder.
Many of the characters would be brought back for Green's later comic Funny Online Animals.
This webcomic provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: Between KC's Twitter page and Midnite Surprise blog sketches, he'll drop little tidbits about the cast; such as revealing The Rabbits' names as Tom and Paul.
- Alternative Rock: If you're not sure, then it's alternative.
- Always Someone Better: Great Frog is this to Cool Frog.
- Animated Adaptation: 10 strips were made into [adult swim] idents.
- Art Evolution: A couple years will do that.
- Affectionate Parody: Skylar Popcollar, and the Hairy Criminal's Tales From The Creep.
- Author Appeal: Mocked in "Piss World", where the GM of a tabletop RPG with a urination fetish keeps inserting piss-related nonsense into his game, much to the annoyance of the other two.
- Big Red Devil: Satan, and later, Ima.
- Black Comedy
- Combined with Sadist Show and Diabolus ex Machina/Deus Angst Machina in Two Friends. GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP
- Bland-Name Product: Googos Maps.
- Breakout Character: The Anime Club started as a one-off joke and grew into a rather large story and one of the more visible cast members in the entire lineup.
- Brick Joke: Comic 319 explains why the rabbit got killed in 111
- Body Horror:
- Sad Worms.
- Ima combines with Satan after she ate him as a wolf during a worldwide wolf invasion.
- The Turkey's Hole
- Question Hound in "On Fire" and the final strip. When he first gets burned alive, his body is melting badly and his eyeballs are coming out of his eye sockets. By the time of the final strip, his eyes are shrunken in, the meat and skin of his forearm has come off the bone, and he's looking like a melted monster of his former self.
- Book Ends: The first comic strip was about Question Hound. In the last comic, the two youths do not find the fortune, just Question Hound.
- Call-Back: This Question Hound strip, which became a meme, is echoed by the last comic, in which QH says all of the former strip's dialogue in reverse order (ending at "it'll all be fine") as the house burns down.
- Cast of Snowflakes
- Celestial Bureaucracy
- Cloudcuckoolander: Ima. Actually, lots of people, but she stands out since she's a recurring character.
- Continuity Creep: More recent comics usually build on past comics, rather then the one off jokes the comic started with. The biggest example is the office arc, where all the office characters (Ima, Satan, etc...) and almost all the other characters (minus the Anime Club) work in the office owned by one of the rabbits, who funded the company with the bag of carrots the other rabbit's been trying to steal from him.
- Cool Shades: Cool Frog and Dave, from the Anime Club.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Literally. With a stapler.
- Cyanide Pill: Roger from the Suicide Club decides to use cyanide pills, until he discovers he confused them with his father's viagra.
- Dastardly Whiplash: The Villain
- Deal with the Devil: parodied.
- Dissonant Serenity: The dog in On Fire. He tries to assure himself that "this is fine" and that "things are going to be okay"...while the room is on fire...and his body melts.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Where Mom is.
- Easy Amnesia: The Ol' Peanut Can Full of Snakes Gag
- Easy Road to Hell: Apparently you can go to hell just for being a jerk or a creep.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: An Unfunny Taco Named Jeff
- Facial Dialogue: The fox.
- False Reassurance: Just as Question Hound once assured himself like this, he tells the Youths that "everything will be fine" once they accept that they're going to die in the attic.
- Fat and Skinny: The short and tall rabbits.
- Big, Thin, Short Trio: The short rabbit (big), the tall rabbit (thin) and the fox (short).
- Fire and Brimstone Hell
- Funny Animal: Question Hound
- Gentleman Adventurer: Edwidge Inkerton.
- The Gods Must Be Lazy: God is always showed either slacking off or playing his videogame, and when something like hell closing and all the dead sinners going to earth happens, he does nothing about it.
- Hellevator: In this strip.
- Hell on Earth: When hell is temporary closed.
- Here We Go Again!: The Farm House ends with the wife bringing a new husband to the house.
- Informed Flaw: The Question Hound is a massive tool.
- Intellectual Animal: Played with in Dog Problems, where the dog switches between somewhat intelligent and a regular dog.
- Literally Shattered Lives: Happens to a dog named Glassie.
- Marijuana Is LSD: This Shrek comic.
- Mind Screw: The Farm House.
- Misfortune Cookie: Here.
- Mummy: Cummy Mummy.
- Non-Indicative Name: The Hairy Criminal isn't hairy at all.
- Obviously Not Fine: It has the comic "On Fire", with the Funny Animal Question Hound calmly drinking coffee as his house burns down around him. He insists "This is fine," even as he catches on fire himself and his face melts off his skull.
- After that specific comic blew up as an internet meme, the original creator KC Green made a followup on The Nib: "This Is Not Fine". This time, Question Hound starts to say everything is fine, but suddenly comes to his senses and screams about the fire while scrambling to put out the flames.
- Perma-Stubble: The Hairy Criminal.
- Pointy-Haired Boss: The Boss in the office strips.
- Rascally Rabbit: The rabbits constantly play tricks on each other.
- Rain of Blood: The Blood Cloud
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Inverted. Snakes tend to be overly kind. Or at the very least, polite about their transgressions.
- Rescued from the Underworld: When the tall rabbit goes to hell for the soul of the short rabbit.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Fox.
- Savage Wolves: The Wolf Apocalypse.
- Shout-Out:
- To The Far Side in this comic.
- A more subtle one: these two characters from this comic resemble John Egbert and his dad.
- Likewise there are two brief arcs about dogs with improbable god powers and immortality respectively.
- He also refers to Andrew Hussie in the comments and apologizes for taking character designs.
- The alt text for "Two Friends" is A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible.
- What's Jughead Building in There?
- The alt text for this comic is a reference to Cave Story.
- The character of God is based off of Sir Ron Lionheart.
- The alt text here: it keeps happening...
- Based on the sound it makes, this creature may very well have come from the Amigara Fault.
Drr, drrr...- One of the coworkers in the chain of information was Dilbert, who quickly offed himself afterwards.
- Stock Animal Diet: The rabbits are obsessed with carrots.
- Suicide as Comedy: A recurring theme.
- Suicide by Sea: In an April Fools comic for Gunshow the Anime Club plans to drive their car into the lake and all drown together.
- Suicide Pact: The suicide club.
- Talking Animal: The rabbits
- Those Two Guys: Rich and Steve.
- To Hell and Back: The tall rabbit goes on a quest to rescue the short rabbit from hell.
- Totally Radical: Cool Frog.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: The two rabbits doesn't seem to like each other at all.
- The Voiceless: Fox.
- Waddling Head: The skull with sunglasses and sneakers.
- Whole Costume Reference: The designs of the four Suicide Club members are one to the main cast of The Young Ones.
- Wicked Witch: Baba Yaga Jr.
- With Friends Like These...: The rabbits have tried (and succeeded) to kill each other more than one time.
- Woodland Creatures: The strips featuring the rabbits, fox, cool frog and various other critters.
- Work Com: Again, the office segments.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: "Do you even know what 'embezzle' means?"
- You Kill It, You Bought It: The way Ima becomes the devil.