Ever wonder how the Tron Guy is keeping himself busy these days? Or how many feline friends the LOLcatters own? Or whether Chris Hastings (of webcomic The Adventures of Dr. McNinja) is either a doctor or a ninja in real life?
What do the creators of internet memes like these do when they're offline?
To prep for this week's ROFLCon -- which is shaping up to be possibly the greatest gathering of meme masters the world has ever seen -- Underwire is going Behind the Memes. These profiles of ROFLCon attendees will uncover the people behind the simple (and sometimes strange) ideas that capture the internet's collective attention, at least for a little while.
In this Behind the Memes profile, you'll meet Chris Hastings, creator of *The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, *a thrice-weekly webcomic about a doctor that also happens to be a skilled superhero ninja. While studying cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and fooling around in the Something Awful forums, Hastings came up with the handle Dr. McNinja.
"Dr. McNinja kind of magically harmonized all of my tastes, humor and sensibilities together into one comic like they hadn't before," said Hastings in an e-mail exchange. "I understand that sounds totally artsy-fartsy, but I just drew a bunch of flying sharks, so interpret that as you will."
A ninja with a superhero complex that battles his simultaneous desire to maim and help people? If it sounds funny, it's because it is. And plenty of people agree -- the comic won the 2007 Web Cartoonist's
Choice Award for Outstanding Superhero/Action Comic, and the site receives about 110,000 unique visitors each day.
These days, Hastings spends all his free time working on the webcomic, devoting 40 hours a week to penning the adventures of Dr. McNinja and friends. The comics are inked by his roommate Kent Archer. Hastings, who finances his work by selling books and T-shirts off the site, estimates that he spends three to four hours drawing each page.
__
Name: __Chris Hastings
__Age: __24
__Location: __New York
__Day job: __Self-employed as the creator of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja
__You know him from: __Webcomic* The Adventures of Dr. McNinja*
Memestruck over ROFLCon attendees: "Man who aren't I excited to meet at ROFLCon? If I had to pick, I am probably most excited to meet the cartoonists I haven't met yet whose
work I love. Brad Neely, the brothers Chaps, the Cyanide and Happiness
guys. And I am dying to witness a live Average Homeboy set."
His favorite McNinja strip: "The two-part D.A.R.E To Resist Ninja Drugs and Ninja Violence. I am a huge fan of the action movies from the the '80s. So I took as many of them as I could and made a story out of it as a giant parody/homage."
His biggest secret? He's neither a ninja nor a doctor. "I'm just a boy who has a Physician's Desk Reference, and some ideas about what a good kick looks like."
Photos: Beth A. Keiser/Wired.com
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