Absurd Notions is a slice-of-life webcomic drawn by Kevin Pease. The main characters are a group of roommates with varying lives and jobs who all share a love of fantasy roleplaying games. While the plot varies far and wide in its focus (there is no single unifying story line to speak of), it often returns to the weekly gaming sessions and features the exploits of the protagonists' alter egos.

Main characters

Warren Wright

Occupation: System administrator

Warren is the group's gamemaster, and relishes the opportunity to exhibit some amount of control over the chaos that normally characterizes his group of friends. Like many real-life sysadmins, Warren is a highly-intelligent control freak of the highest level with a bone-dry sense of humor who has a hard time dealing with disorder; the strips that feature his adventures in the corporate world make fun of the incompetence of technology management and Warren's ability to put people in their place by threatening to take away that which they most love: unfettered web access and the ability to read email. Warren plays straight man to the rest of the cast a little more often than he might like, but also has his moments of revenge (see the Fool's Wager storyline).

Biff Bergendey

Occupation: Varies (Telemarketer, Fast food clerk, etc.)

Biff fills the role of the "dumb guy", although he knows it and occasionally takes advantage of the fact that all his friends see him that way. He often stumbles upon moments of real insight and creativity, before getting sidetracked by one of Jay's practical jokes or Issac's unfailing realism. With little direction in life, Biff finds himself in a variety of part-time jobs which pay the bills but often try his patience.

Jay Raven

Occupation: Visual artist

Jay is everything that Warren is not: carefree, quixotic, quick to inject humor into everything, devoted to entropy, and often lacking in significant employment or income. He takes his art seriously, but his friends often find it hard to do the same. Jay is also the practical joker of the crowd, and anytime something unexpected happens out of nowhere, Jay can't be far behind.

Isaac Jones

Occupation: Self-employed software developer

Where Warren plays the robotic techie who demands order in all things, Isaac represents the creativity of software writers who are always inventing new ways to put old ideas together to form interesting programs. Where Jay is the lawless ne'er-do-well who plays by his own rules, Isaac understands the need for structure in his code and the realistic limitations of his craft. When Biff has his brainless moments, Isaac strikes a blow for intellectuals. Caught between all three of his roommates, Isaac plays both foil and setup man for all of them... at least, when he's not sequestered in his private office working on the operating system that will take over the world.

Supporting Characters

Jennifer A. Green (aka Jag)

Jay's girlfriend ever since they were stuck in an elevator together in college, Jag spends a lot of time in the main characters' apartment and plays in their roleplaying games as well. Her willingness to stay grounded in reality most of the time provides a stable anchor for Jay's off-the-wall nature.

Jennifer Y. Green (aka Jyg)

Jyg and Jag were roommates in college, which quickly led to the nicknames. Jyg dislikes her nickname, though, prefers to be called Jennifer, and as such has mostly distanced herself from the main characters. She continues to plague Warren's life due to her occupation as a secretary at NitNet, Warren's place of work.

Dr. Emil Umlaut

Tenured professor at the university which the characters attended, now landlord to the main foursome. Apathetic to the bone, which makes it difficult to describe him as an antagonist, he still manages to find himself in the way of our heroes' desires, such as stable housing.

Björn Jensen

Übergeek extrordinare and occasional long-distance advisor to Warren. Features prominently in the GPF crossover storyline, Intervention.

Warren's coworkers

Includes Colin, the clueless coworker and bane of every IT techie; a stream of bosses whose names all end in "arry", some of whom have never actually been pictured in-frame; and Del, the extremely generic no-personality guy.

Publishing History

Absurd Notions the comic strip begin in 1989, and was featured in the Signal, the school newspaper of Trenton State College. The strip enjoyed a four-year run in that paper, though the author stayed through a ninth semester to finish his degree. The initial incarnation of the strip featured many of the same characters that are currently around, including all four of the main characters, Jyg, Jag, and Dr. Umlaut. These original strips, as well as author's commentary on the setting in which they were drawn, are available on the website under Ancient History.

In 1999 the author created the website which currently houses Absurd Notions. In 2002, the online magazine D20 Weekly published a parallel series of Absurd Notions strips, which ran from July 3 to September. An autobiographical companion strip, Why The Long Face, has also appeared on the AN website since 2003 and often serves to enlighten AN readers about the creative process.

Always publishing irregularly, updates have become extremely scarce of late; fourteen strips were produced throughout 2004 and even fewer in 2005.

External links

Absurd Notions

Absurd Notions Book - strips from June 1999 through June 2002