Journey Into Irrelevancy

"That's it!" said Scary Ghost Lass. "It's time to end this farce!"

"This isn't a farce," said Kid Quickly-Irritated-By-Others, quickly becoming irritated. "I hate it when people use the word `farce' incorrectly! A farce..."

"Is a fast-paced comedy revolving around slapstick humour, mistaken identities, ironic timing, and double entendres, all elements of the show Three's Company," said Ben Stein's Monster.

Journey Into Irrelevancy is a Classic LNH series by Amabel Holland. It introduced or reintroduced many of Amabel's Classic LNH characters not affiliated with Teenfactor. (And killed off a bunch of them, but a surprising number came back as ghosts or revenants.) Many of the survivors went on to form the cast of Net.heroes on Parade.

Journey Into Irrelevancy is a lot of things – a nonsensical gag series with a convoluted time-and-space-jumping plot, an often violent and horrific soap-operatic melodrama, a story about how to open up to people when you feel like you hate everyone and especially yourself, the place where Amabel ran Maggie Bernard's origin as a backup because she wasn't sure whether she could finish a miniseries.

But above all, it is a series where the heroes spend several issues in a giant space toilet.

It can be read on the Eyrie Archive here.

History and Context

This sometimes darkly absurd, sometimes just silly comedic series was originally intended as a distraction from the grim, super-serious Pearly White, but Amabel found writing that series too depressing and concentrated on JII instead:

It was very seldom that any drama was seriously attempted. It possessed the pacing and logic of a Jay Ward cartoon and showed a healthy disrespect for anything resembling taste. It was goofy and silly and broke the fourth wall at every possible occasion. It had no redeeming artistic qualities and most of the jokes were lame puns or obscure pop culture references.

But damn, did I love writing it.

– Amabel Holland, Some Psuedo-Random Thoughts on the LNH

This was a reaction to an environment where, due to diminishing Usenet activity, many LNH writers had left and those who remained end up leading the direction of the LNH as a whole. The LNH around this time became skewed towards horror and intense drama, with the more active series including The Team, Alt.Riders, and later issues of Amabel's Teenfactor. After three issues of Pearly White, Amabel got burned out on this and decided to do a traditionally LNHian gag series instead, making the value of comedy and the LNH's gag characters an explicit theme.

Nonetheless, Journey Into Irrelevancy was a troubled series. Begun literally a week after the September 11th attacks, it dealt heavily with themes of grief and guilt. It had a lot of intensely dark humor and disturbing subject matter, and veered wildly between comedy and drama. A whole lot of characters kicked the bucket (see below); some of them even actually stayed dead.

It also featured backup stories of wildly varying style and tone, especially the origin of Maggie Bernard – which often ran considerably longer than the main stories. This was another very grim, emotionally intense horror story. Nonetheless, both main and backup series ended with their protagonists learning to forgive themselves and move past their grief, and the series reestabished LNH as a place where incredibly silly humor can coexist with horror and drama. It was thus a significant milestone for both Amabel Holland as a writer and the LNH as a community.

Plot

Kid Quickly-Irritated-By-Others and his ragtag band of net.hero allies seek to protect the Looniverse's flow of Comedy, go on the run and get wrapped up in a succession of rapid-fire cinematic parodies. And also, of course, get stuck in a giant space toilet. Don't ask.

Characters

There are a lot:

Main Cast

• Kid Quickly-Irritated-By-Others
• Anything-You-Can-Do-I-Can-Do-Better Lad
• Ike the Pike
• Lunchbox Lass
• Rachel Buckley, who is not Renee Killjoy

Other LNHers

• Super Apathy Lad
• Scary Ghost Lass
• Bears-a-Striking-Resemblance-to-Linda-Blair-in-The-Exorcist Lass
• Ultimate Ninja
• Sister State-the-Obvious
• Groundswell
• Sleeps-With-Anything-Alive Girl
• Speed Richardson
• Maggie Bernard
• Elvis Man
• And a bunch of other characters who show up for one-off gags.

Awful Antagonists and Vile Villains

• Ben Stein's Monster
• Baby Pain, AKA Doctor Willy, and her evil robots
• Comics Snob Boy
• The Bhigghrehenghuyhs
• The Shi'tar Empire
• The Intergalactic Union of Good-Guys Opposed to Non-Good-Guys

Others

• The Godmaker
• The Gravelly-Voiced God
• Tyler Bridge

Plot Devices

• The Clogs of Comedy
• The Tower of Song

Deaths

• Scary Ghost Lass (#1, sent to Net.Hell by Ben Stein's Monster, returns as an actual ghost in Hungry, Hungry Sabertooths!#6pi (October 2020B))
• Sister State-the-Obvious (#3, shot by Dr. Willy, resurrected in #5)
• Sleeps-With-Anything-Alive Girl (#6, eaten by zombies, returns as a zombie net.heroine and regular supporting cast member in The Continuing Misadventures of Miss Translation #7)
• Cannon Fodder (#6, eaten by zombies, returns as usual)
• Fuzzboy (#7, shot by Rachel, returns as a shinigami in Death of Trophy Wife #6)
• Renee Killjoy (who was really Rachel, #7, shot by Rachel, who was really Renee, comes back as part of a convoluted scheme)
• Cannon Fodder (#7, eaten by zombies again, returns as usual)
• Baby Pain AKA Doctor Willy (#13, exploded by a cosmically powered Comics Snob Boy, turned out to still be alive in an alternate future)
• Cannon Fodder (#13, exploded by a cosmically powered Comics Snob Boy, returns as usual)
• Manga Girl (#13, exploded by a cosmically powered Comics Snob Boy, returns as a shinigami in Death of Trophy Wife #6)
• Lance Darney (killer of Lunchbox Lass's husband, #13, exploded by a cosmically powered Comics Snob Boy)
• Rachel Buckley (who was really Renee, #13, exploded by a cosmically powered Comics Snob Boy)
• A Cosmically Powered Comics Snob Boy (#13, exploded by himself, returns indirectly as a ghost in Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #50)
• Lunchbox Lass (#18, killed by the Shi'tar, resurrected by Future Doctor Willy as a bargaining chip in #21)

Issue 8's backup feature was titled The Death of Michette Duclos, but that was the metaphorical kind of death. Tyler Bridge had died before the series even began.