About

Arthur Comic Creator is an online comic series based on the educational children's television cartoon Arthur^[1] made via a generator^[2] hosted by PBS Kids. Similar to Law For Kids PSA Parodies and Stop Bullying Comics, internet users began using the comic generator application to create humorous parodies with inappropriate messages.

Origin

The Arthur Comic Creator was launched by PBS Kids in October 2010. On October 30th, 4chan users on /v/ (video games) started a thread^[5] discussing another game on the PBS Kids site, Binky's Facts and Opinions.^[3] As the thread progressed, people began exploring other games available on the site and the first instance of the Arthur parody comic was used to tell a GameStop story about D.W. asking the store clerk for a copy of the western action adventure game Red Dead before turning into a teddy bear.

Spread

In the original thread, several other users followed up with their own comics. The next day, a thread dedicated specifically to the comic generator was shared on the Newgrounds forum^[4], resulting in two pages of user-submitted comics. The following month, another Arthur parody comic strip was uploaded via deviantArt^[6] and three pages worth of Arthur parody comics were posted on the Sputnik Music forums.^[7]

On May 16th, 2011, the first single topic Tumblr^[8] dedicated to Arthur parody comics was launched, reblogging 31 comics from the "arthur comics" tag^[20] on the first day. In July 2011, a thread was started on 4chan's /mu/ (music) board^[9] where users used the comic creator to reinterpret famous album covers was archived. Two months later, an Arthur comic was submitted to Reddit.^[10] That September, another /mu/ thread^[11] and a /b/ (random) thread^[12] were archived, as well as threads on the BodyBuilding forums^[13] and the Encyclopedia Dramatica forums.^[14] In 2012, additional Arthur comics appeared on FunnyJunk^[15], the Canterlot forums^[16] and the ComicVine forums.^[17] That August, a second Tumblr blog titled Arthur's Shitty Comics^[18] was launched.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References