Cartoonists behind April Fools’ Day ‘copied’ comic gag come clean
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Published Saturday 2 April 2016 at 6:54am
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A drunken (allegedly) evening after a fan convention led to the conception of this year’s “copied” comic April Fools’ Day prank, which saw seemingly every webcomic artist create the exact same cartoon and then claim ownership.

Rock, Paper, Cynic creator Peter Chiylowski outed himself and two other artists as the joke’s masterminds in a post on his blog:

“No one stole my comic! A huge group of webcomic artists started planning this 2-3 weeks ago. Actually, at Fan Expo last year I am ARG and I found out we’d both been independently scheming to do something like this for years. The plan came together when Dorris McComics suggested the idea to a webcomics group and pitched this script, which was just PERFECT for the prank.

“To those who genuinely stood up for me: thank you, and I’m sorry that I abused trust for this joke. You are kind and supportive and the world needs more of you.”

Those supporters would have had a very hard time – you can find an enormous list of just some of the webcomic “copies” here.

Adding to the story, someone claiming to be ARG! creator Andrew Gregoire’s wife left this comment at willpjk.com:

“Having been in attendance at the drunken evening where my husband, creator of Arg! and Peter of Rock Paper Cynic planned this prank, I can confirm the origin.”

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Here is Dorris McComics’ original sketch:

OR MAYBE YOU ARE

Posted by Dorris McComics on Thursday, 31 March 2016

Exactly how many people were in on the joke is still yet to be unveiled, and the chief schemers are keeping mum on Twitter:

This post will be updated if I get a reply to that. Be sure to subscribe via Facebook or Twitter.

Image: the Twitter profile pictures of Rock, Paper, Cynic, Dorris McComics, and ARG!

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Tags: april fools' day cartoon dorris mccomics i am arg joke rock paper cynic webcomics

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