The Optimist: The Only Comic On The Internet.
— Page Title
The Optimist
is a weekly black & white comic strip of dumb gags, little complainy rants, parodies, designery crap, infographics, fake ads, and bad writing by Tom Pappalardo. The comic was named Whiskey! Tango! Foxtrot! from 2007-2008 (also archived on the site) before a new layout and name change in 2010. Pappalardo is also the author of Broken Lines, an illustrated story/graphic novel. The Optimist runs in The Valley Advocate weekly paper.
This comic provides examples of:
- Beat Panel - Often used to represent listening, waiting, pausing to consider, watching TV, drawing, consideration & reconsideration, boiling with rage, waiting for acknowledgement, disbelief, and scowling.
- Bland-Name Product - Stabbucks and Monsanta.
- Character Overlap - The two kids from W!T!F! carried over into The Optimist
- Eyes Always Shut - The grumpy kid scowled for almost the first two years of the strip.
- Lazy Artist - A single drawing is often reused over several panels w/ slight adjustments, as seen here and here.
- Rubber-Hose Limbs - This guy has elbow issues here and here.
- Strip Buffer - Most strips are drawn well in advance of publication, but occasionally semi-topical material is included.
- Unsound Effect - EXPIRE, THROW, GOUGE, FLEX & SWELL, REND & MASTICATE, SUBMIT & REFRESH, FOLD, and this comic and this comic have multiple examples. This comic has a very large unsound effect as a punchline.
- Unwanted Glasses Plot- The fat kid gets a wrong prescription
