Melonpool is a collection of characters created by Steve Troop whose adventures have been portrayed through both puppetry

Puppetry

Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance which involves the manipulation of puppets. It is very ancient, and is believed to have originated 30,000 years BC. Puppetry takes many forms but they all share the process of animating inanimate performing objects...

 and in a long-running webcomic

Webcomic

Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....

. The webcomic is the larger of these two areas and has recently been restarted after a long hiatus.
The storyline centers on a cast of alien

Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...

 misfits and their adventures in space

Space

Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...

 and on Earth. It has been published on the web since April 28, 1996, making it one of the first webcomics.