Grandy02's Site > TmsT Vintage Archive
Main Page | The Pokémorons Zone | Post-Ironic Pig | 20th-Century Flashbacks | Mulletboy | Goodbye, Cruel World! | Chasm & Strife | Scapegoat | UC Student Diary 2004 | Iggy the Dragon | Kids These Days | Other Comics | Freelance Animation School | Caricature Gallery | Self-Caricatures & Photos | Flash Animations | Live-Action Films | Music | More Stuff
Chasm & Strife
Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Doom Marine, and other computer game characters as you never saw them before. And computer game fans, too. Andrew Kepple commonly used the moniker King Sluggy (which is still occasionally seen) and drew his alter ego as a Poison Slug from Commander Keen, more specifcally a crowned individual only seen in statue form in the fourth episode.
As much content relevant to this section is already covered by the PCKF Archive and NY00123's Selected Strife Contents, I won't repeat everything here.
The Chasm of Chills / Strife | This Strife / That Strife | Strife Strips
The Chasm of Chills / Strife
In July 2001, when he had also joined the Public Commander Keen Forum, Andrew launched a new site called The Chasm of Chills, where he released multiple Commander Keen comics and other related creations. The site's name is taken from a level found in the Commander Keen episode Secret of the Oracle. I gathered the available content of The Chasm of Chills with Andrew's consent and sent the archived site to NY00123 in 2020, so that it could be added to Selected Strife Contents. The same goes for the Chasm that followed after the original one.
Goodbye, Cruel World! also had its Commander Keen tribute in July 2001, the episode "Marooned On Mars".
The Chasm of Chills was also the place where the Emotikeens made their debut. Up until today, they are used as the PCKF's emoticons, and many more Emotikeens derived from the original ones have been created by various people since then. Additionally, the site included a "toy" called Disco Keen (mostly lost) and a song in MP3 format; the latter can also be found in the Music section.
The founder of This Strife, Peter "Maverick" Bridger, himself a webcomic creator, greatly enjoyed Commander Keen: Ten Years On and eventually approached Andrew, whose creations (though not Ten Years On) where primarily hosted on GeoCities at the time. Andrew was offered free hosting on ThisStrife.com, so in May 2002, the Chasm was relaunched under the name The Chasm of Strife. Over the period of a year, many more comics and other works were put online, including some guest contributions.
Below are two GIF teaser animations from the pre-Flash era of TmsT. The first one was the teaser for The Chasm of Strife less than a month before its opening, while XAX was an ambitious project that never got finished.
Almost every update included a new Dopefish of the Week. You can find a gallery of the available ones in the PCKF Archive, as well as links to the "guest fish". Andrew also presented a (now incomplete) PCKF Calendar using artwork by many different PCKF members and himself. Many of Andrew's early Flash animations were hosted by This Strife, such as Dopefission. Also, don't miss Sluggy's prank call.
While The Chasm of Strife was closed after a year, Andrew's collaboration with This Strife continued.
This Strife / That Strife
This Strife started out as a place to host Peter's webcomic. Over time, the site and its community grew, and other creative minds like Andrew contributed to it. The latest incarnation of Strife is named Strife Forever.
Both during and after the Chasm days, Andrew made various contributions to the main Strife site, such as the special "Where is DNF?" created by Peter and him. He also made a Strife comic in reaction to a flamewar that took place on the site's forum at the time. The thumbnail leads to the episode's current home, Strife Forever. Another contribution were caricatures of interviewed persons of the computer game industry.
Only a week after the Chasm's final update, a new series of comics, the Sluggy comics, was launched. You can find all available pieces on Selected Strife Contents, some are still missing. Duke Nukem, Doom Marine, Walter, Commander Keen and many other computer game characters appear over the course of the series. Certain comics focus on members of the Strife community (also in non-human form) and related in-jokes.
These two pieces are promotional Flash animations for Strife. The first one advertises a then future extension of the Strife community, while the second movie is a teaser for the successor of This / That Strife, Strife Strips. The name "That Strife" was used after Peter had lost the domain ThisStrife.com, by the way.
Andrew drew more than 30 caricatures of Peter that accompanied the news posts on This Strife. Many "Mini-Mavs" are spoofs of pop culture icons, with Mav's appearance altered accordingly. In several cases, the mollusc King Sluggy, whose look is equally flexible, is part of the picture, too.
(I made up some of the parody names, including "Mavtin", "Strifenuts", "Dr. Sluggil", "Slugger", and "Mavinator".)
Additionally, Andrew created the posters for most of the films made in 2002 and 2003 by the Bridger Brothers, Peter and his younger brother Michael "Xeryus" Bridger. One of Andrew's own live-action films, Jedi Springer, was added to the Features page of This Strife in 2003.
(low-res only)
Information on "web comix suck" can be found in the "Other Comics" section. Various other content by Andrew was hosted by This Strife, including some episodes (the images, not the HTML pages) of Goodbye, Cruel World! and multiple of the pieces found in the "More Stuff" section.
Strife Strips
After a break, Strife was revived by Peter in the form of Strife Strips. Andrew released a series of Flash animations in 2006, titled StrifeStrips, about the daily life of computer game characters. It ended after three episodes (and a short "mailbag" special), though the unfinished fourth episode was eventually made public in 2012. All episodes can be found on Albino Blacksheep and Selected Strife Contents. Strife Forever has them, too, except for the unfinished fourth one.
In July 2007, Peter made his Strip Editor available to the general public, allowing anyone to create their own comics with it. Andrew did so multiple times, but only one of his comics appears to be available.
Strife Strips also included a comic by Andrew, called "The other Ken [Silverman] interview" (2005-12-03), which is currently unavailable.