Webcomic / He Is a Good Boy

pictured: Crange, not actually a good boy at all

Somewhere in an anthropomorphic society of insects, rocks and other creatures known as Bugworld lives Crange, an acorn with a drinking problem, a lack of morals, and no interest in moving forward with his life. After losing the tree that served as his parental figure and home, Crange’s life takes a turn for the weird, getting into situations ranging from run-ins with bug werewolves and murderous “artists” to kidnappings by thieves and making deals with the Devil — and as it turns out, there's more to those isolated incidents (and Crange himself) than it seems.

He Is A Good Boy is a webcomic by KC Green (who previously created Gunshow and concurrently wrote BACK with fellow artist Anthony Clark). Running from 2015 until 2019, HIAGB can be found here. Be warned: the copious gore and some of the humor regularly makes it Not Safe for Work.

Green ran a Kickstarter campaign to release the collected comic as a graphic novel in 2020.

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This comic provides examples of:

• Alternate Self: Crange and Emerson both have dozens if not hundreds of these through forked paths in a Stable Time Loop. A majority of them are implied to eventually end up arriving at the Wristchapel, which serves as a kind of nexus point for them all.
• Alt Text: Continuing a Green tradition held since Gunshow.
• Arc Symbol: Circles, spirals and cycles are a recurring motif. Circles represent time itself, and spirals are branching paths that individual people make with their choices.
• Art Evolution: Since the start the scales on Crange's cupule have effectively disappeared, and the style of the comic itself, while still very similar to its initial incarnation, has gotten looser and more cartoony with time. Compare this early strip to the comic about a year later.
  • Another good example is comparing the very first page of the comic to a much later page that harkens back to it.
  • Emerson's design changes drastically, their head becoming less realistically drawn within the first few chapters. Compare their first appearance in the prologue to 43 pages later. Hell, their head completely narrows out within the span of a page in Crange Gets Shot Into Space.
• Black Comedy
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: When a lumberjack slices Crange's tree down to the stump, the resulting bloodshed completely drenches him. Poor kid.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When Crange confronts the lumberjack who chopped down his tree in "Crange Gets A Drink," the lumberjack (at first) says only "which one."
• Character Development: Initially it seems like Crange has no interest in 'planting himself' and moving forward with his life, but the conversation he has with the monster in 'Crange Falls Down A Well' suggests otherwise. Similarly, he doesn't really seem to care about his tree beyond the material benefits it provided him at first, but during and after his run-in with the lumberjack that killed said tree in 'Crange Gets A Drink,' it starts to hit home that he wasn't the best son.
• Clone Army: "Crange Takes Himself Out" reveals that each of the praying mantises in the series are different iterations of the same person.
• Commonality Connection: Crange and the lumberjack. Both were traumatized by seeing the death of a parental figure; despite having cold responses to each other at first, they end up bonding as a result of their experiences over whiskey.
• Creepy Good: While we don't know much about them, the praying mantis seems to be this, serving as a guardian of sorts for Crange. This particularly shows up in "Crange Can't Go Home," in which they murder the bartender and pretends to be the owner of the bar in order to let the homeless Crange stay there, and in "Crange Takes A Shit," where they throw the dead bar patrons' remains in the dumpster in order to keep Crange from seeing them after coming to, telling their dead predecessor, "For the good of Crange...".
  • Of course, this depends on what you think is best for Crange. The mantis's goal may well to be to provide comfort, to keep Crange from having to change his situation. Compared to change, misery is downright comfortable.
  • It turns out the Mantis has been doing a helluvalot more for Crange than we thought.
  • Aaaaaand it turns out Crange's second Mantis is the only one who gives a damn. Might be time for them to turn in the 'good' part...
• Deal with the Devil: Crange, using the single dollar he has to his name to buy a tome, makes one to get money for a $1 bottle of water for his tree.
• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: This ends up being the case with the main Crange and the second Emerson we follow for most of the comic’s plot. The first Emerson dies and gets replaced by another version of them from a different time loop, who fell in love with and lost their Crange before being reassigned.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Crange's primary means of coping with his depression.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The creepy praying mantis who murders the bartender in “Crange Can’t Go Home” shows up in “Crange Donates His Money,” with the alt text hinting at her later importance (“she watches…”)
  • The Sniper Crange from "Crange Takes Himself Out" first appeared in "Crange and the Bartender" as a potential hazard.
• Embarrassing First Name: Crange goes by his middle name. His first name is Faustus...
• Embarrassing Last Name: ...and his last name is Horselady.
• Establishing Series Moment: Crange mimes shooting himself in his bathroom with a finger gun in the second strip, and the resulting thought is shown in all its brutal detail only for the situation to return to normal immediately afterward. KC lampshades this in the accompanying blog post.
• Eye Scream: In "Crange and the Bartender" one of the ways the bartender imagines Crange getting maimed by the traps in the underground passage is by stepping on a tile that triggers a belt-fed mounted crossbow that fills his eyes with a mass amount of bolts.
• The Faceless: The faces of humans are never seen clearly ( except for the lumberjack for a single panel).
  • This has since been thrown completely out the window.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: How the pod people 'get inna them fancy drug clubs' on Earth. Apparently, it's a pretty fun planet.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: The short 'Orientation' interlude, which acts as a short exposition bit about Bugworld told through the lens of a KFC training video instead of being about Crange (though he does still appear, as a "happy customer.")
• Funny Animal Anatomy: Animals, rocks and plants are portrayed with humanlike body parts on multiple occasions, to the degree where Crange, an acorn, is capable of pleasuring himself.
• Fur Against Fang: The former-werewolf-now-vampire in "Crange and the Vampires" claims that this is the case.
• Gorn: Most of the storylines involve graphic dismemberment in some fashion, with the characters (most of whom are bugs, rocks or other creatures around the size) being given human-like internal organs for greater effect.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Crange‘s Character Development sees him shift into this role over the course of the comic. For all of his faults (and there are many), he has a couple of moments of genuine kindness and compassion that have the effect of keeping us in his corner despite his basest behaviors.
  • After talking to the lumberjack that killed his tree and realizing he was kind of a terrible person to his de facto parental figure, Crange has a full-on emotional breakdown in “Crange Stops a Robbery.”
  • When he meets the ghost responsible for turning his wank session into a nightmare in “Crange Is Horny,” after the initial shock of the situation wears off, Crange gives a solid go at talking it out with his attacker, though the ghost is even more embarrassed by the idea of speaking about his repressed urges than Crange is.
  • Toward the end of the comic, once he finds out about the Emersons’ plan to use the Crange we’ve been following throughout to start another cycle, Crange tells his bartender that he’s the only version of Emerson that he’ll forgive, since they were the only one that actually cared about him.
• Literal Split Personality: Crange's consciousness is split into two beings When the Planets Align.
• Mad Artist: The spider in "Crange Goes to the Hospital" that holds Crange hostage, who uses the innards of his victims as a medium. Despite this, he isn't the one that attacked Crange, with that honor going to the artist's protege/ex-boyfriend.
• Major Injury Underreaction:
  • The old lady in "Crange Robs A Liquor Store" takes a shotgun shell to the face in one strip... and continues firing at the robber gang with a hole in her head. By the end of the gunfight half of her face is down to the bone and she isn't so much as fazed by it.
  • For someone who got his guts forcibly removed in "Crange Goes To The Hospital," Crange doesn't seem terribly affected by it, even briefly forgetting his injury whilst admiring his makeshift bandages.
• Nameless Narrative: Crange is the only character given a name up until the introduction of Hole the hand in "Crange Is Horny."
  • The mantis' name is revealed to be Emerson in a note she left for Crange in the spaceship. Even Crange is confused because, apparently, she never told him her name before.
• NEET: Crange is set up as one of these, being the last acorn to leave the tree (and only doing so out of necessity after its brutal death at the hands of a lumberjack).
• Never Mess with Granny: In “Crange Robs a Liquor Store,” the aforementioned liquor store is run by an elderly, sniper rifle-wielding ladybug that completely obliterates the band of thieves that roped Crange into their heist.
• Never Trust a Title: For reference, over the course of two chapters Crange donates a million dollars (that he gained from a Deal with the Devil) to an orphanage but promptly steals it back when he racks up a heady bill at the local bar.
• Organ Theft: "Crange Goes to the Hospital" starts off with an extreme case of this.
• Our Gods Are Different: Both the Devil and God are portrayed as acorn-sized pyramidal beings.
  • They also work for a Celestial Bureaucracy, which is still below even higher planes of existence and beings who "on the grand cosmic scale of live, thinks of [God and co.] as little as [they] do a dog's dirty butthole."
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Crange's slacker side doesn't take kindly to his intellectual side knocking his "Beer King" crown off his head, leading to this:
  Slacker!Crange: That was... my crown... (pointing to his crown) My crown. Is on. The ground. How will people know. Who the beer king is now.
• Pronoun Trouble: A meta example. The Alt Text that initially mentions the mantis uses "she", but in all subsequent appearances the character is referred to with the gender-neutral "they". Of course, "they" isn't used until after the mantis is killed and replaced by another, so it's possible that the first mantis was female.
• Recursive Reality: The spirals of time make up the flooring of a man's home in a higher plane of reality.
• Rule of Symbolism: The shadows cast around the lumberjack's face disappear temporarily when Crange starts to empathize with him, as they have both lost a parent to tragic circumstances.
• Running Gag:
  • Characters (mostly Crange) using the bar bathroom as a means of getting out of awkward situations.
  • Crange's weird obsession with werewolf dicks, which pops up multiple times in "Crange & The Werewolf" and occasionally afterward.
• Sarcastic Title: Our protagonist is an binge-drinking, freeloading, Devil-summoning, money-thieving acorn. A good boy indeed.
• Screw Yourself: The Wristchapel has an entire room dedicated to this for the Cranges, which Chill Crange points out to the main Crange when he asks if they do this all day.
• Sdrawkcab Name: The vampires Nelluc, Edalb, Alukcud, and Utarefson.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Crange is sent back in space and time, his seed crashing down to Earth and sprouting. He eventually becomes the very tree he grew up in. Although he kills his alternate self when he realizes that his grim story is repeating itself, he still is ultimately killed by the lumberjack.
• Shout-Out: A few.
  • The alt text for one strip in "Crange Leaves Himself" tells the reader to 'think of Arin from Game Grumps' in reference to the joyful "yyee-aaaahhh" let out by Ghost!Crange.
  • The entirety of the "Crange Is A Good Ol' Boy Who Is Here And Back" chapter sees our hero replaced by a suspicious creature (referred to in the intertitle as a "pod person") with the facial structure and mannerisms of Homer Simpson. Other pod people appear in "Crange Gets High With The Pod People" under the guise of Garfield and SpongeBob SquarePants.
    • The other Crange clones that show up in the Wristchapel are Peter Griffin, Popeye, Hello Kitty, Finn, Jake, Buttercup, Jughead, one of the Warner siblings, Charlie Brown, Daria Morgendorffer, Gumby, Betty Boop, Pooh, Dexter, Pikachu, Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Yosemite Sam, Porky Pig, Bobby Generic, Barney Rubble, Dino, Eric Cartman, Stimpson J. Cat, Doug Funnie, Cosmo, and Rat Fink. There are also Emerson clones resembling Fred Flintstone, Pac-Man, Odie, Peppa Pig, and the Grim Reaper.
  • Whilst contemplating the pros and cons of being turned into a werewolf, Crange notes "Van Helsing (?)" as a possible con.
  • When Van Helsing later appears in "Crange and the Vampires," he calls Crange a "harked vagrant." Earlier, Crange imitates the classic panel of Tom Buchanan.
  • As the training video in "Orientation" mentions bugs being cultured beings like humans, a bug is shown with a boxset of the first season of Breaking Bad.
  • In "Crange and the Ants", the alt-text and visuals reference the Lemon Demon song "Spiral of Ants", from the album "Spirit Phone".
  • For whatever reason Crange namedrops Pirates of the Caribbean while using sailor lingo in this strip.
  • In the first two strips of "Crange and the Crazy Castle", a guy whose brain is being used to power a "portal destroyer" rambles about how Chuck Jones' Looney Tunes shorts "Hair-Raising Hare" and "Water, Water, Every Hare" are the exact same. This is to foreshadow what the arc will be a parody of.
  • "Crange Is Stuck In A Room" is alluded to being "a Silent Hill parodie" in its opening's Alt Text, and is explicitly labeled as such by the third strip's description. The plot mirrors that of the fourth game.
  • The Sdrawkcab Names of the vampires as mentioned above are those of vampires across different media.
  • In "Crange Starts His Day. (Again)", Crange uses the computer onboard the rocket to play Moistsun Basin.
  • The door on the Wristchapel that leads to the god apparently shaped into Crange is modeled after the boss doors from Super Mario World.
  • In "Crange Digs a Grave", Crange meets a man pining after a dead woman named Lenore, and helps him dig up her grave so he can, uh, have relations with her corpse. After this, Crange stumbles upon a clown skeleton while looking in a hole, and after that he finds a man strapped to a table with an axe swinging over his stomach. After this, Crange decides he's had enough and decides to abort the story arc. It doesn't work.
• Shrink Ray: Used primarily to facilitate trade between humans and Bugworld.
• Slasher Smile: Pretty much Wristchapel's default facial expression.
  • Also is the last thing seen in the comic, Old Brain Emerson gives a massive one in the stinger.
• Something Else Also Rises: When a fellow patron at the bar catches Crange's eye in "Crange Is Horny," his stalk springs straight upward.
• Starfish Aliens: The pod people.
• The Stinger: The old brain Emerson takes control of the first Crange's corpse.
• Take That!:
  • When our protagonist finds a copy of Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties in his adult video pile in "Crange Is Horny," he responds thusly:
    Crange: Oh, fuck off.
  • The same chapter has Crange visibly exasperated at a porn parody of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The original film released the same week the arc started.
  • From "Crange Goes To A Kegger:"
    Crange: No T.P. my dude, but I found the show bible for The Simpsons. You can definitely wipe your ass with this. invokedThey ain't using it!
• Technical Pacifist: Crange may stick up for himself where he can, but he is really reluctant about killing people, and is consistently disgusted with the idea of taking a life. The fact that his only recurring source of murderous hatred, out of all the antagonistic people he's found in his travels, has been himself is not lost on him in the slightest.
• The End... Or Is It?
• Toilet Humour: To the point where one chapter is literally titled "Crange Takes A Shit."
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Crange, being a drunkard and, as a general rule, a self-centered jerk.
• When the Planets Align: Crange splits into two beings, one representing his intellectual side thirsting to free himself from his reality in a ghostlike form and the other being his hedonistic slacker side, who keeps his corporeal body. After being freed from the other the two Cranges find their own forms of happiness, and almost agree to live their lives entirely separately until Saturn falls out of line and they become one being again.
• Whole-Plot Reference: As mentioned under Shout-Out above, "Crange and the Crazy Castle" and "Crange Is Stuck in a Room."
  • All of "Crange Digs A Grave" and "Crange Finds a Hole" is a reference to the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
• You Are Number 6: The Emerson we've been following and you are supposed to care about is #24679.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Verbatim, Emerson's reaction to seeing Old Brain Emerson in Crange's brain.