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Goodbye, Cruel World!
Follow the wacky adventures of Noel and Leon Lemming and many other crazy folks.
About | 1995 Cartoon & Intro Story | Series I | Series II | Series III | Series IV | Series V | Series VI | Series VII | Series VIII | Series IX | Miscellaneous
About
With 207 episodes released between 2001 and 2005, Goodbye, Cruel World! was one of Andrew Kepple's most long-lived webcomics. It stars two contrary lemmings, the suicidal Noel Lemming and the life-affirming Leon Lemming. But there are also comics featuring neither lemming, and various other recurring characters appear over the course of the series. Many episodes are part of one of multiple storylines, while there are also standalone cartoons with no continuity. Some guest comics created by fans are among the episodes as well.
More than half of the cartoons are available. Little is missing from episodes 1 to 81 and everything is there from episodes 189 to 207, but inbetween, it's rather scrappy. Nonetheless, I mirrored every episode's HTML page of the site, which can all be accessed from the list, so that you can at least read Andrew's notes (and the quotes of the day from episodes 88 to 178). Fragments of a few of the missing episodes can be seen in the archive with images; many more such pieces appear in the episode "Shockwave Flashback" of the seventh series.
A few episodes are accompanied by music – or at least were, not all pieces have been archived. The available ones can also be accessed in the Music section.
1995 Cartoon & Intro Story
On the News page, you can read about earlier cartoons by Andrew and the eventual creation of Goodbye, Cruel World! The first Noel Lemming cartoon made in 1995 is included, where the character looks very different from his 2000s incarnation.
Also, an intro story explains how Noel and Leon met each other and why they left their lemming hometown.
BIZARRE SERIES I: A Web-Comic is Born
HORRIBLE SERIES II: A Horrible Ending
EXTRATERRESTRIAL SERIES III: Mars/Hell
TRAUMATIC SERIES IV: Poultric Injustice
EVIL SERIES V: Toasters, Romance, and GE Food
EPIC SERIES VI: Poos, Puns, and Imation
A modified version of "The Ultimate Penis Game" by Bobo Donkey™ can be found under "Miscellaneous" (or go here). Unlike the original cartoon, it's available in complete form.
Shouldn't've Asked
LUCKY SERIES VII: Rower's and Reincorpse
The episode "Shockwave Flashback" is a Flash animation, more specifically an animutation.
Post-Apostrophic Nightmare World
SICKENING SERIES VIII: Piracy & Apathy (or "The Fans hit the S**t")
MAGICAL SERIES IX: THE END is near?
Miscellaneous
The site included a list of "The Best Goodbye, Cruel World! Episodes Ever", which only covered episodes until November 2002 and was not updated afterwards.
Below are images found on the homepage of Goodbye, Cruel World! Also, a small banner that was used by at least one external site, and a special illustration of Noel Lemming that was posted together with the episode "Sox a Peel".
From 2001 until at least December 2004, GCW-themed merchandise, such as T-shirts, mugs and stickers, was sold on CafePress.com. Mousepads and basketball backboards were also among the purchasable items, as seen below.
The ASCIIs is a kind of short-lived spin-off webcomic. Its origins trace back to the episode "CTHUMP!", which shows Leon inventing a comic where everything (excluding speech balloons) is made up of ASCII characters. In a later episode, Leon decides to become a cartoonist, and Andrew created a page where Leon "himself" posted The ASCIIs cartoons. Only the 13th and last of the strips remains. See also "web comix suck".
The printed comic Vaultman and Stuff, created in cooperation with fellow New Zealand cartoonist Jason Lennie, contains an exclusive episode of GCW, a little snippet of which appeared in Andrew's diary. Also, Noel is seen on the cover.
A TmsT fan named Bobo Donkey™ created a "Scottish bastardisation" of the episode "The Ultimate Penis Game" from the sixth series. While the original cartoon is missing the grand finale, you can at least see it in the modified one.
Noel makes a guest appearance in the Commander Keen in Copyright Infringement! episode "The End... And The Beginning".