| Real Life | |
|---|---|
 Strip from 2005-08-01 | |
| Author(s) | Maelyn Dean |
| Website | reallifecomics |
| Current status/schedule | Semi-active |
| Launch date | 1999-11-15[1] |
| Genre(s) | Exaggerated reality |
Real Life is an American webcomic drawn and authored by Maelyn Dean.[2] It began on November 15, 1999, and is still updated, after breaks from December 10, 2015, to September 10, 2018, and again from July 16, 2019, to June 15, 2020, and most recently, from December 6, 2022 to February 26th, 2024. The comic is loosely based around the lives of fictionalized versions of Dean and her friends, including verbatim conversations, as well as fictional aspects including time travel and mecha combat.[3] Characters regularly break the fourth wall. Real Life focuses on humor related to video games and science fiction, and references internet memes.[4]
YouTube Encyclopedic
-
1/3Views:2 199 040662 9631 734 908
-
If superpowers were real: Super strength - Joy Lin
-
How to Make REAL Superhero Serum
-
The Dark Side of Science: The Robbers Cave Experiment 1954 (Short Documentary)
Transcription
If you wake up one morning with 1,000 times the strength you had the night before, how will you handle delicate day-to-day tasks? Everything must seem so fragile to you since the scale of your strength has expanded one thousand times. You'd have to be very careful when you're shaking someone's hand so you don't end up breaking their bones or crushing everyone you hug. And using a fork to pick up a piece of broccoli from a Styrofoam plate without driving the fork through the plate is going to be as difficult as brain surgery. Say the day comes and you get the chance to save a damsel in distress falling from a helicopter. So, you hold out your arms, hoping to catch her. Seconds later, you will find yourself holding her lifeless body. What happened? Well, pressure is force divided by area. The smaller the area, the bigger the pressure. This is why we can lift heavy objects without breaking our skin, but a tiny needle can make us bleed with just a little poke. The pressure that will be exerted on her body can be calculated by force divided by the area on the top of your arms that comes in contact with her. It doesn't matter if your arms are strong enough to catch her body without breaking your bones. Her spine is not strong enough to be caught by you without being damaged. Even if you rip off the nearest door to provide a bigger area to catch her with, you still wouldn't be able to save her anyway. Remember, it's not the fall that kills her, but the sudden stop at the bottom. Let's say she's falling from a 32 story building, about 300 feet, and you are 6 feet tall, maybe 10 feet on your tippy-toes, with your arms above your head holding a door, in hopes of distributing the pressure across a larger surface area, but all you're doing is essentially moving the ground up by 10 feet. So, she's now falling from 290 feet, instead of 300 feet, reaching the speed of 173 feet per second just before impact, not counting air resistance. It's the equivalent of crashing at 94 miles per hour into a wall with a door in front of it. The only thing that could save her is flying. But that power comes with its own host of scientific issues. If you could fly, what you must do is fly up to her, start flying down at the speed she is falling, hold on to her, then gradually slow down until you come to a complete stop. This process requires a lot of cushion space between the point she starts falling and the ground. Every second you waste on changing into your superhero costume and flying up to her height, her head is getting that much closer to the pavement! If she's falling from a high place, and you can't get to her until she's only a few feet above the ground, there's really nothing you can do other than magically turn the pavement into marshmellow to allow her enough time to slowly come to a stop. Then, break out the chocolate and graham crackers and you've got s'mores. Mmmm, delicious! Now, which superpower physics lesson will you explore next? Shifting body size and content, super speed, flight, super strength, immortality, and invisibility.
Development
Real Life launched in 1999 and became part of Keenspot shortly after. Dean switched to the Blank Label Comics collective in 2005[5] before going solo again in February 2010.[6] The Real Life website is currently self-hosted by Dean.
Year one of Real Life was published as a paperback by Starline Multimedia Inc. in 2004,[7] and a second book published by Lulu was released in 2008. A German translation of some portions of the webcomic has been made available on the website's archive.
Characters
- Greg / Maelyn (Maelyn Dean[8]) - The main character of the strip, and a fictional representation of the author of the comic. She seems to vacillate between being the voice of reason and the voice in need of reason. She is also very fond of Pepsi, to the point of addiction, going so far as to import Mexican Pepsi because it contains real sugar instead of corn syrup. She used to work as a fuel jock at a small airport, but eventually attended and graduated from culinary school. She previously lived in Sacramento and Rancho Cordova, both California, but moved to San Francisco - and moved again to Lockhart, Texas,[9] but moved back to the California area, where she is once again roommates with Dave and Tony. (In June 2020, the author came out as transgender. Older comics before this point will feature Greg, and newer comics will feature Maelyn.)
- Elizabeth "Liz" Dean (née Van Buskirk) - Maelyn's wife, and an avid cosplayer; most of the strips have her acting as straight man in contrast to Maelyn's antics. She started out as "Lizzy" to avoid confusion between the "Liz" that had already appeared in the comic and this new Liz. Eventually, the old Liz was phased out and now the new one is called Liz. Liz and Maelyn married in March 2005.
- Tony Flansaas - The comic's resident evil overlord, and the fulcrum on which most of Real Life's more far-fetched story lines revolve. They have made many attempts over the course of the comic's existence to take over the world, and has even succeeded a couple of times.
- Dave Reynolds - Resident powergamer and supernerd. While the real Dave's currently in the Navy, that doesn't stop him from showing up and adding some of his cynical, nerdy point of view to a strip. Dave rivals Tony in technical ability. However, whereas Tony seems to be a genius in all subjects, Dave's genius seems to lie mostly in computers. In one of the earlier comic strips, Dave upgraded his computer into a sentient being. The computer, PAL, went on to become a minor character in the strip, and was joined over time by several other technologically improved computers and consoles.
- Crystal - Maelyn's girlfriend when the strip started, but they broke up in 2001. She is no longer mentioned or appears in the strip, but was an integral part of the first year of the strip.
- The Cartoonist - Cartoonist Maelyn primarily appears in the strip to make an announcement, to answer questions that readers occasionally send her or to complain about a possible lack of ideas for the strip. Her appearance originally was differentiated from her comic counterpart by a change of colours (light brown overshirt, black tee with white stripes), and slightly shaggy hair. When the character came out as transgender, the Cartoonist was differentiated with longer hair and a different outfit.
- Harper Dean - a daughter of Maelyn and Liz. Born on July 29, 2011.[10]
Reception
Maelyn Dean won the "Outstanding Reality Comic" category of the Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards four times: in 2001,[11] 2003 (when her webcomic tied with Nowhere Girl),[12] 2004,[13] and 2005 (when her webcomic tied with The Devil's Panties).[14]
Collected editions
- Real Life: The Year One Collection. Starline Multimedia Inc. 2004-08-25. ISBN 0-9746966-2-5 ISBN 978-0974696621
- Real Life: The Greg's Notes Edition. Lulu. 2008
References
- ^ Dean, Maelyn (1999-11-15). "1". Real Life Comics. Retrieved 2017-03-16.
- ^ Sjöberg, Lore (2006-09-01). "Real Life Comics, Remixed". Wired. Condé Nast Publications. Archived from the original on 2006-09-02.
- ^ Horton, Steve (2008). Webcomics 2.0: An Insider's Guide to Writing, Drawing, and Promoting Your Own Webcomics. Course Technology. p. 22. ISBN 978-1-59863-682-6.
One popular autobiographical webcomic is the appropriately named Real Life, by Maelyn Dean.
- ^ Delafuente, Anna (2013-09-26). "Geek Parenting: Meet the Deans! (Part 1: Interview with Creator of Real Life Comics, Maelyn Dean)". Nerdy Minds Magazine. Archived from the original on 2015-09-19.
- ^ Guigar, Brad (2005-06-22). "Dave Kellett and Greg Dean Join Blank Label Comics". Comix Talk. Retrieved 2017-03-17.
- ^ Dean, Maelyn (2010-02-09). "Blank Label Comics". Real Life Comics. Archived from the original on Mar 17, 2017. Retrieved 2017-03-16.
I have officially tendered my resignation from Blank Label Comics.
- ^ Dean, Greg (2004). Real Life: The Complete Year One Collection. Starline Multimedia. ISBN 0-9746966-2-5.
- ^ Dean, Maelyn (2008-08-15). "2055". Real Life Comics. Archived from the original on 2017-03-17. Retrieved 2017-03-16.
- ^ Dean, Maelyn (2007-10-22). "Wagons East!". Real Life Comics. Archived from the original on 2017-03-17. Retrieved 2017-03-16.
- ^ Dean, Maelyn (2011-06-29). "2856". Real Life Comics. Archived from the original on 2017-03-17. Retrieved 2017-03-16.
- ^ "2001 Winners and Nominees". Web Cartoonists Choice Awards. 2001. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05.
- ^ "2003 Ceremony". Web Cartoonists Choice Awards. 2003. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05.
- ^ "2004 Results". Web Cartoonists Choice Awards. 2004. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04.
- ^ "2005 Results". Web Cartoonists Choice Awards. 2005. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05.
External links
This page was last edited on 6 April 2024, at 17:06