A canceled TV show revived? On the internet? But in 2000, when new, short episodes of The Critic began to appear on the now defunct, it all seemed impossible. Arrested Development, Will & Grace, Mad About You, and dozens more have returned long after they’d said goodbye. Today we live in a world where TV shows never die.
However Strong Bad and pals show up next they will do so with a lot of silliness, a lot of fun, and a lot of consummate V’s. Homestar and friends disappeared for a bit, but they continue to reemerge from time to time in various forms - most recently as a board game, but perhaps most memorably when they were brought face-to-face with their own mortality as their world of Adobe Flash began to crumble around them. Slowly but surely over the years, Strong Bad came to overshadow the title character, and through his responses to viewer emails, dozens of early-aughts memes were launched, from 20圆, to Teen Girl Squad, to the insanely catchy fhqwhgads. The premise of Homestar is pretty simple: There’s a slightly dopey good guy named Homestar Runner, and a bad guy named Strong Bad.
The site spread completely by word of mouth, its creators turned down several offers to bring their show to television, and it sold a boatload of T-shirts. Beginning in 2000, the world of Homestar Runner grew quickly from short cartoons to weekly email responses to elaborate, dragon-based music videos. One cannot write about animation on the internet without writing about Homestar, Strong Bad, and their friends.