New Adventures of Queen Victoria
Encyclopedia
The New Adventures of Queen Victoria is a daily webcomic
created by Pab Sungenis. It uses the photo-manipulation technique popularized by Adobe Photoshop
and other image editing programs to insert actual photographs and paintings of the characters into situations, instead of more conventional methods. It is syndicated on-line by uClick Universal
, a division of Andrews McMeel Universal
, and has been collected into four trade paperback editions.
blog
on February 8, 2006. Sungenis, who had been planning on creating a webcomic called In The Land Of Wonderful Clipart (the title was an homage to Winsor McCay
's Little Nemo in Slumberland) did the first strip as a one-shot joke commenting on what he perceived as a lack of humor in the comic strip Garfield
. Inspired by the humorous potential, Sungenis decided to add the strip to his own blog and keep doing it. Eventually, he moved the strip to its own blog.
On April 5, 2006, the strip joined Comics Sherpa, an online service of uClick
. On April 3, 2007, uClick announced that 'Queen Victoria' had been picked up for inclusion on its GoComics.com and MyComicsPage.com services, and began running on those services on Monday, May 21, 2007.
As of April 9, 2009, the strip has attracted more than 10,000 daily subscribers.
Recurring secondary characters:
s of Terry Gilliam
as seen on the television show Monty Python's Flying Circus
. This same technique was used to a limited degree by Berkeley Breathed
in his comic strip Bloom County
, to add photographs and images of famous people to the background of the strip.
Like Gilliam's creations, which Sungenis openly acknowledges as an influence, the strip uses cut-out photographs and other images for its characters and settings. Sungenis uses the PhotoImpact
program by Ulead Systems
to create each strip, using a series of stock images he has collected over the years along with some artwork he himself will draw when needed. A degree of motion is sometimes portrayed by subtle tilting or shifting of characters within frames, and emotions are sometimes expressed by adding "bug-eyes" to the character photographs.
, with occasional forays into postmodernism
and satire
. As a quintessential 19th century figure thrown into modern society, Victoria becomes an everyman
, commenting on modern pop culture. Television, movies, current celebrities, and other aspects of modern culture have been commented on and criticized in the strip.
Often, the strip comments about the comics industry itself; such as during mid-late June 2007 when the strip commented about shrinking page sizes of newspapers and the proliferation of "reruns" of comics no longer drawn such as Peanuts
. Peanuts was parodied again in late October 2007, when instead of the normal strip characters an entire week of strips was devoted to an "interview" with what a middle-aged Charlie Brown
might look like, discussing David Michaelis' controversial biography Schulz and Peanuts. Part of the parody has him married to Lucy van Pelt
, who henpecks him.
The strip has occasionally wandered into what could be considered political
material. When Vice President
Dick Cheney
accidentally shot a man
during a hunting trip, Victoria went hunting with him shortly afterward. When twenty students were suspended from a California
school for viewing postings on MySpace
, Edward found himself expelled for creating his own page.
In July 2007, in response to the Supreme Court's overturning of anti-segregation laws in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1
, which Sungenis compared to overturning Brown v. Board of Education
, the strip "segregated" itself into two separate strips — a "white" strip above a "black" one which was represented by showing characters and text in photo-negative on a black background.
In support of the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike, Pab spent a week "on strike" in November, 2007, replacing the strip's dialogue with that of classic comic strips from the late 19th and early 20th centuries like Happy Hooligan
, Abie the Agent
, and Buster Brown
, which had fallen into the public domain
.
In December 2007, the strip ran a week-long storyline criticizing the Beloit Daily News
of Beloit
, Wisconsin
for dropping the comic strip Non Sequitur
over a strip that mocked the Ku Klux Klan
. Publicity arising from Queen Victoria's mockery of the paper was one of the reasons cited by the paper's editor for the decision to return Non Sequitur to its comic pages.
Perhaps most controversially, in response to the controversy over the Jyllands-Posten
cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad
, a new character was introduced into the strip based on the Virgin Mary. Although the depiction of the character of Mary caused some backlash against the strip (one reader called it "Sacrilegious and unfunny"), Mary has since become a regular cast member.
called the strip one of his favorite webcomics, claiming that he is "surprised more by 'Queen Vic's' wit in a week than I am by a year's worth of 'Garfield.'"
Comics Buyer's Guide
gave the third paperback collection of the strip three out of four stars, referring to it as a "brilliant webcomic" and saying that "the strips are hilarious."
The strip was chosen as Comics Coast To Coast's "Webcomic Pick Of The Week" on July 14,2007.
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....
created by Pab Sungenis. It uses the photo-manipulation technique popularized by Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
and other image editing programs to insert actual photographs and paintings of the characters into situations, instead of more conventional methods. It is syndicated on-line by uClick Universal
Uclick
Uclick LLC was an American corporation selling "digital entertainment content" for the desktop, the web and mobile phones...
, a division of Andrews McMeel Universal
Andrews McMeel Universal
Andrews McMeel Universal is an American corporation based in Kansas City, Missouri. It was founded in 1970 by Notre Dame alumni Jim Andrews and John McMeel as Universal Press Syndicate and was renamed in 1997 to AMU to reflect the diversification that had taken place since its founding...
, and has been collected into four trade paperback editions.
History
The strip first debuted in a discussion on a LiveJournalLiveJournal
LiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....
blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
on February 8, 2006. Sungenis, who had been planning on creating a webcomic called In The Land Of Wonderful Clipart (the title was an homage to Winsor McCay
Winsor McCay
Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator.A prolific artist, McCay's pioneering early animated films far outshone the work of his contemporaries, and set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades...
's Little Nemo in Slumberland) did the first strip as a one-shot joke commenting on what he perceived as a lack of humor in the comic strip Garfield
Garfield
Garfield is a comic strip created by Jim Davis. Published since June 19, 1978, it chronicles the life of the title character, the cat Garfield ; his owner, Jon Arbuckle; and Arbuckle's dog, Odie...
. Inspired by the humorous potential, Sungenis decided to add the strip to his own blog and keep doing it. Eventually, he moved the strip to its own blog.
On April 5, 2006, the strip joined Comics Sherpa, an online service of uClick
Uclick
Uclick LLC was an American corporation selling "digital entertainment content" for the desktop, the web and mobile phones...
. On April 3, 2007, uClick announced that 'Queen Victoria' had been picked up for inclusion on its GoComics.com and MyComicsPage.com services, and began running on those services on Monday, May 21, 2007.
As of April 9, 2009, the strip has attracted more than 10,000 daily subscribers.
Cast
Main characters:- VictoriaVictoria of the United KingdomVictoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Empress of IndiaEmperor of IndiaEmperor/Empress of India was used as a title by the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II, and revived by the colonial British monarchs during the British Raj in India....
, and thoroughly modern monarch. - EdwardEdward VII of the United KingdomEdward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...
, her son and future king.
Recurring secondary characters:
- LizElizabeth I of EnglandElizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
, a former queen, and Victoria's best friend. - Mary, Victoria's friend and spiritual guide.
- Maurice, a clipart image, who serves as Victoria's handyman.
- Mrs. Clipart, another clipart image, who is principal of Edward's school.
- GrandpaGeorge III of the United KingdomGeorge III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
, Victoria's grandfather, who is quite mad. - AnneAnne BoleynAnne Boleyn ;c.1501/1507 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of Henry VIII of England and Marquess of Pembroke in her own right. Henry's marriage to Anne, and her subsequent execution, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that was the...
, Liz's mother. - OsamaOsama bin LadenOsama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
, a master of disguise and Victoria's self-appointed nemesis. Extremely incompetent. - BarflyGarfieldGarfield is a comic strip created by Jim Davis. Published since June 19, 1978, it chronicles the life of the title character, the cat Garfield ; his owner, Jon Arbuckle; and Arbuckle's dog, Odie...
and Schrodinger, a cat-and-physicist VaudevilleVaudevilleVaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
act - Fumetto dell'Arte, a "spin off" comic strip supposedly done by "Pirandello diPierdiemenico" featuring characters from the Commedia dell'arteCommedia dell'arteCommedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...
like Arlecchino and FlavioInnamoratiGli Innamorati were stock characters within the theatre style known as Commedia dell'arte, which appeared in 16th century Italy. These characters were present within commedia plays for the sole purpose of being in love with one another, and moreover with themselves...
Style and influences
The graphic style of the strip has been compared to the animationAnimation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
s of Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
as seen on the television show Monty Python's Flying Circus
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Monty Python’s Flying Circus is a BBC TV sketch comedy series. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines...
. This same technique was used to a limited degree by Berkeley Breathed
Berkeley Breathed
Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed is an American cartoonist, children's book author/illustrator, director and screenwriter, best known for Bloom County, a 1980s cartoon-comic strip that dealt with sociopolitical issues as understood by fanciful characters and through humorous analogies...
in his comic strip Bloom County
Bloom County
Bloom County is an American comic strip by Berkeley Breathed which ran from December 8, 1980, until August 6, 1989. It examined events in politics and culture through the viewpoint of a fanciful small town in Middle America, where children often have adult personalities and vocabularies and where...
, to add photographs and images of famous people to the background of the strip.
Like Gilliam's creations, which Sungenis openly acknowledges as an influence, the strip uses cut-out photographs and other images for its characters and settings. Sungenis uses the PhotoImpact
Ulead PhotoImpact
Ulead PhotoImpact is a raster graphics editing program published by Ulead Systems.Alongside its image editing capabilities, the program also features HTML tools, such as a rollover assistant, an imagemap assistant, an HTML assistant, a background designer and a button library.The current version...
program by Ulead Systems
Ulead Systems
Ulead Systems is a Taiwanese computer software company headquartered in Neihu district in Taipei, Taiwan. It is a subsidiary of Corel.- History :Ulead was founded on August 5, 1989 by Lotus Chen, Lewis Liaw and Way-Zen Chen...
to create each strip, using a series of stock images he has collected over the years along with some artwork he himself will draw when needed. A degree of motion is sometimes portrayed by subtle tilting or shifting of characters within frames, and emotions are sometimes expressed by adding "bug-eyes" to the character photographs.
Themes and subject matter
Mainly due to its juxtaposition of historical figures into modern society and current events, the overall style of the strip tends toward absurdismAbsurdism
In philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
, with occasional forays into postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
and satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
. As a quintessential 19th century figure thrown into modern society, Victoria becomes an everyman
Everyman
In literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances...
, commenting on modern pop culture. Television, movies, current celebrities, and other aspects of modern culture have been commented on and criticized in the strip.
Often, the strip comments about the comics industry itself; such as during mid-late June 2007 when the strip commented about shrinking page sizes of newspapers and the proliferation of "reruns" of comics no longer drawn such as Peanuts
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward...
. Peanuts was parodied again in late October 2007, when instead of the normal strip characters an entire week of strips was devoted to an "interview" with what a middle-aged Charlie Brown
Charlie Brown
Charles "Charlie" Brown is the protagonist in the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.Charlie Brown and his creator have a common connection in that they are both the sons of barbers, but whereas Schulz's work is described as the "most shining example of the American success story", Charlie...
might look like, discussing David Michaelis' controversial biography Schulz and Peanuts. Part of the parody has him married to Lucy van Pelt
Lucy van Pelt
Lucille "Lucy" van Pelt is a fictional character in the syndicated comic strip :Peanuts, written and drawn by Charles Schulz. She is the main bully and the older sister of Linus and Rerun. Lucy is a crabby and cynical eight-year old girl, and often bullies the other characters in the strip,...
, who henpecks him.
Politics and controversy
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
material. When Vice President
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
accidentally shot a man
Dick Cheney hunting incident
The Dick Cheney hunting incident occurred on February 11, 2006, when then U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney shot Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old Texas attorney, while participating in a quail hunt on a ranch in Kenedy County, Texas...
during a hunting trip, Victoria went hunting with him shortly afterward. When twenty students were suspended from a California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
school for viewing postings on MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
, Edward found himself expelled for creating his own page.
In July 2007, in response to the Supreme Court's overturning of anti-segregation laws in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 , decided together with Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, is a decision of the U.S...
, which Sungenis compared to overturning Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
, the strip "segregated" itself into two separate strips — a "white" strip above a "black" one which was represented by showing characters and text in photo-negative on a black background.
In support of the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike, Pab spent a week "on strike" in November, 2007, replacing the strip's dialogue with that of classic comic strips from the late 19th and early 20th centuries like Happy Hooligan
Happy Hooligan
Happy Hooligan was a popular and influential early American comic strip by Frederick Burr Opper.Happy Hooligan, the first major comic strip by already celebrated cartoonist Opper, debuted with a Sunday strip on March 11, 1900 in the William Randolph Hearst newspapers, and was one of the first...
, Abie the Agent
Abie the Agent
Abie the Agent was a popular early American comic strip about a Jewish car salesman by Harry Hershfield. When Hershfield had success with a Yiddish character in his comic strip Desperate Desmond, he was encouraged by his editor to create a new strip centered around Yiddishism and Jewish immigrants...
, and Buster Brown
Buster Brown
Buster Brown was a comic strip character created in 1902 by Richard Felton Outcault who was known for his association with the Brown Shoe Company. This mischievous young boy was loosely based on a boy near Outcault's home in Flushing, New York...
, which had fallen into the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
.
In December 2007, the strip ran a week-long storyline criticizing the Beloit Daily News
Beloit Daily News
The Beloit Daily News is a daily newspaper that has served Beloit, Wisconsin and the stateline area since 1848.-History:The Daily News grew out of a series of weekly and daily newspapers founded in the 1840s and 1850s. The Beloit Journal was first published in June 1848 as a weekly...
of Beloit
Beloit, Wisconsin
Beloit is a city in Rock County, Wisconsin, United States. As of the 2010 census, Beloit had a population of 36,966. The greater Beloit area is home to more than 91,000 residents.-Claim to fame:...
, Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
for dropping the comic strip Non Sequitur
Non Sequitur (comic strip)
Non Sequitur is a comic strip created by Wiley Miller in 1992 and syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate to over 700 newspapers...
over a strip that mocked the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
. Publicity arising from Queen Victoria's mockery of the paper was one of the reasons cited by the paper's editor for the decision to return Non Sequitur to its comic pages.
Perhaps most controversially, in response to the controversy over the Jyllands-Posten
Jyllands-Posten
Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten , commonly shortened to Jyllands-Posten or JP, is a Danish daily broadsheet newspaper. It is based in Viby, a suburb of Århus, and with a weekday circulation of approximately 120,000 copies, it is among the largest-selling newspaper in Denmark...
cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
, a new character was introduced into the strip based on the Virgin Mary. Although the depiction of the character of Mary caused some backlash against the strip (one reader called it "Sacrilegious and unfunny"), Mary has since become a regular cast member.
Reception
Michael Cavna of The Washington PostThe Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
called the strip one of his favorite webcomics, claiming that he is "surprised more by 'Queen Vic's' wit in a week than I am by a year's worth of 'Garfield.'"
Comics Buyer's Guide
Comics Buyer's Guide
Comics Buyer's Guide , established in 1971, is the longest-running English-language periodical reporting on the American comic book industry...
gave the third paperback collection of the strip three out of four stars, referring to it as a "brilliant webcomic" and saying that "the strips are hilarious."
The strip was chosen as Comics Coast To Coast's "Webcomic Pick Of The Week" on July 14,2007.
Collected editions
Six paperback collections of the strip have been published:- We Are Not Amusing ISBN 978-0-557-03054-5, published 2006 by Lulu Publishing.
- I Can Has Empire? ISBN 978-1-4357-0847-1, published 2007 by Lulu.
- Norton Hears A Who, And Other Stories ISBN 978-0-557-03043-9, published 2008 by Lulu.
- Suffragettes Gone Wild, ISBN 978-0-9842157-3-7, published 2009 by 2,000 Monkeys With Typewriters, LLC.
- Meet The Royals, ISBN 978-0-9842157-4-4, published 2010 by 2,000 Monkeys With Typewriters, LLC. (a compendium edition collecting "We Are Not Amusing", "I Can Has Empire?" and "Norton Hears a Who, And Other Stories" with extra never-before seen material)
- Real Housewives of Windsor, The, ISBN 978-0-9842157-5-1, published 2011 by 2,000 Monkeys With Typewriters, LLC.