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The Optimist: The Only Comic On The Internet.
—Page Title
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The Optimist is a weekly black & white comic strip of dumb gags, little complainy rants, parodies, designery crap, infographics, fake ads, and bad writing by Tom Pappalardo. The comic was named Whiskey! Tango! Foxtrot! from 2007-2008 (also archived on the site) before a new layout and name change in 2010. Pappalardo is also the author of Broken Lines, an illustrated story/graphic novel. The Optimist runs in The Valley Advocate weekly paper.
Tropes used in The Optimist include:
- Amusing Injuries - ouch.
- Art Evolution
- Beat Panel - An often-used device in the comic, as seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and a double dose here and here.
- Bland-Name Product - Stabbucks and Monsanta.
- Character Overlap - The two kids from W!T!F! carried over into The Optimist
- Comic Book Time
- Complaining About Complaining
- Deadpan Snarker
- Death Glare - An angry retail worker
- Double Entendre - A hot steaming pile of double meanings
- Eyes Always Shut - The grumpy kid scowled for almost the first two years of the strip.
- Face Palm - What an incredible joke.
- Four-Fingered Hands - here, here, and here.
- Friendless Background - What a loser
- Homage - A reference to The Family Circus
- Humans Are Bastards
- Hypocritical Humor
- Jerkass
- Law of Disproportionate Response - Napkins. Grammar correction.
- Lazy Artist - A single drawing is often reused over several panels w/ slight adjustments, as seen here and here.
- New Years Resolution - In this comic and in this comic.
- Political Correctness Gone Mad - In this strip
- Rubber Hose Limbs - This guy has elbow issues here and here.
- Self-Deprecation
- Series Hiatus - Tom Pappalardo published the comic strip Whiskey! Tango! Foxtrot! from 2007-2008, took a year off, and returned in 2010 with a retooled layout & new name.
- Strip Buffer - Most strips are drawn well in advance of publication, but occasionally semi-topical material is included.
- Slice of Life
- Strawman Political - In this comic
- Take That
- Unsound Effect - EXPIRE, THROW, GOUGE, FLEX & SWELL, REND & MASTICATE, SUBMIT & REFRESH, FOLD, and this comic and this comic have multiple examples. This comic has a very large unsound effect as a punchline.
- Unwanted Glasses Plot- The fat kid gets a wrong prescription
- Vitriolic Best Buds
- With Friends Like These... - Those two WTF kids with no names.