Homestar Runner

• 1. Introduction

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  Homestar Runner got its name from James Huggins, a childhood friend of the Chapman brothers who knew nothing about sports. The brothers grew up in Dunwoody, Georgia, and later lived in Atlanta. There, a local grocery store ran a commercial tied to the Atlanta Braves, promising that shoppers could hit a home run with savings. The ad mentioned Mark Lemke, an all-star second baseman for the team. James loved doing an old-timey radio announcer voice. Having no idea what a second baseman was, he started calling the player "homestar runner for the Braves". Mike and Matt Chapman, who would later work together as The Brothers Chaps, heard it and laughed. As they remembered it, their reaction was: "Homestar Runner? That's the best thing we've ever heard!"

  That in-joke now names an American comedy series made in Flash animation. It follows a huge cast of oddball characters and mixes surreal humor, self-parody and satire. It pokes fun at video games, classic television and popular music. How did a mangled sports phrase become the title of a picture book that almost nobody read? What turned a cartoon about a heroic runner into something its fans checked as faithfully as a morning crossword? And how did a website built on a software format that browsers abandoned keep working afterward?

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• 2. From Picture Book to Website

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  In 1996, Mike Chapman and his friend Craig Zobel, both students at the University of Georgia, were working summer jobs in Atlanta around the Summer Olympics. During a visit to a bookstore, they remarked that the children's books on the shelves were terrible. So they decided to write one themselves. Its title was The Homestar Runner Enters the Strongest Man in the World Contest, and it was meant as a parody of children's literature. They spent about two hours designing the look of Homestar Runner, Pom Pom, Strong Bad and The Cheat. They finished the whole book within a day.

  Only five to ten copies were printed, and those were for friends. Neither author planned to publish it. Their father, however, had other ideas. Without telling them, he mailed the book as a manuscript to about 80 publishers. Nothing came back except rejection letters, and from some publishers not even that. The pair started a sequel, Homestar Runner Goes for the Gold, which would have introduced Strong Bad's brothers, Strong Mad and Strong Sad. They abandoned it. The first time the characters actually moved was in a cartoon made with Mario Paint, a Super NES video game.

  Around 1999, Mike noticed how quickly Flash animation was catching on. He and his younger brother Matt began teaching themselves Macromedia Flash. They needed something to practice on, and the old picture book was sitting right there. Their homestarrunner.com website opened on New Year's Day 2000. Mike did the animation, and Matt voiced the male characters. Mike's girlfriend, now his wife, Missy Palmer, voiced Marzipan.

  The first shorts staged contests between Homestar as a hero and Strong Bad as a villain. They did not hold viewers. The brothers then realized the better jokes lived in the scenes between the contests. Matt put it this way: the funnier material was "the stuff happening between the plot points". They had made only about one competition cartoon by then, so there was hardly a formula to abandon. From May 2000 to February 2001, the cartoons and the site kept changing their art styles.

  The audience grew slowly, and almost entirely by word of mouth. The brothers sold only a few dozen T-shirts by 2001. In February 2001, the site finally gained the look that, with small changes, it still has today.

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• 3. Strong Bad Takes Over

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  In mid-2001, Mike moved back to New York, and he and Matt began building the first Strong Bad Email, titled some kinda robot. They meant it to be a weekly feature. The series launched that August, and it quickly became the most popular and most prominent part of the site. Strong Bad had begun as the main antagonist. Now he was the breakout star.

  Each Strong Bad Email follows a loose routine. Strong Bad sings a short song to himself while his computer boots up, then opens fan mail. He mocks the sender's name, spelling and grammar, and he rarely answers the actual question. Early episodes stayed mostly at the desk, with occasional cutaways. Over time the cutaways became more elaborate, and whole storylines grew sideways out of a single email.

  When a new email ran late, the brothers heard about it. Angry messages arrived asking where the cartoon was. Matt said it gave him "a cool feeling to know you're as important as a cup of coffee or morning crossword to some folks". Their father suggested that Matt quit his full-time job and devote his time to more shorts. By January 2003, so many people were visiting that the site had outgrown its original host, Yahoo. Merchandise sales covered every cost of running the website, plus the creators' living expenses. Their retired parents handled much of the business side.

  The emails also became a factory for inside jokes. Homsar, Trogdor, Senor Cardgage, 20X6, the Teen Girl Squad shorts and the Homestar Runner Emails, known as hremails, all grew out of the series. As of the 24th of November 2025, the website holds 210 Strong Bad Emails, and six more exist only on DVD releases.

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• 4. Free Country, USA

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  The twelve main characters of Homestar Runner live in the fictional town of Free Country, USA. Besides Homestar and Strong Bad, the cast includes The Cheat, Marzipan, Coach Z, Bubs, Strong Sad, Strong Mad, Pom Pom, the King of Town, the Poopsmith and Homsar. The Brothers Chaps have described them as "dumb animal characters". Each one has multiple alternate versions, such as an Old-Timey version and a 20X6 version.

  Email No. 53 asked Strong Bad to draw a comic strip about a girl and her friends, and Teen Girl Squad was born. Strong Bad narrates the crudely drawn strip in a falsetto voice. Its four archetypal heroines are Cheerleader, So and So, What's Her Face and The Ugly One. The strip mocks high school life and teen movies, and the girls' ordinary school situations often end in their gruesome deaths. A spinoff, 4 Gregs, follows four nerdy classmates who are all named Greg.

  Marzipan's Answering Machine is a series with almost no animation, mostly a picture of the machine as messages play. In every episode Strong Bad prank calls her, badly pretending to be someone like Detective Everybody or Safety Dan. Early episodes had version numbers ending in .0, such as Version 5.0. After Marzipan got a new machine, they ended in .2, such as Version 15.2. As of the 1st of April 2016, there were 17 of them.

  Puppet Stuff is a live-action series in which puppets play the characters. Some are skits and some are musical performances. One spinoff, Biz Cas Fri, shows Homestar and Strong Bad's exchanges from Strong Bad's office cubicle. Its first video arguably coined the term Doge. In Powered by The Cheat, the character of The Cheat supposedly makes the cartoons himself. Matt animates and Mike does the voices, reversing their usual roles, so the animation is deliberately poor.

  The alternate universes parody other cartoon styles. Old-Timey cartoons are black and white, with film grain and scratchy sound, imitating animation of the 1920s and 1930s in the manner of Steamboat Willie. 20X6, pronounced "twenty exty-six", spoofs the year 200X of Mega Man and EarthBound. It began with Email No. 57, japanese cartoon, where a fan asked how Strong Bad would look in anime. The answer was Stinkoman, a blue-haired, shiny-bodied hero in robot boots who keeps asking others whether they want a "challenge".

  Cheat Commandos parodies G.I. Joe, with a cast of The Cheat's own species. It treats every location as a "playsets" and ends each episode by singing "Buy all our playsets and toys!" in a patriotic style. The universes eventually collided in the 150th Strong Bad Email, alternate universe.

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• 5. Songs and Rock Stars

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  The band They Might Be Giants collaborated with the site many times. In 2004 the Homestar Runner characters appeared in the band's music video for Experimental Film, and the brothers supplied the animation. The creators spent time with the band and wrote songs released as Puppet Jam, a spinoff of Puppet Stuff in which a puppet Homestar sings alongside them. The band composed the music for Email No. 99, different town, and wrote and sang the intro for the 200th email, thunder.

  In Email No. 58, dragon, a fan asked Strong Bad to draw a dragon. The result was Trogdor, the Burninator, along with a heavy metal theme song. The dragon proved popular enough to appear on T-shirts, hoodies and posters. An extended version of the song went onto the CD Strong Bad Sings and Other Type Hits, which was made with the help of the band Y-O-U.

  The site also invented entire fake musicians. Limozeen arrived in 2002 as a hair metal band modeled on 1980s groups such as Skid Row, White Lion and Poison. Their songs include "Because, It's Midnite" and "Nite Mamas". On the 17th of March 2008, Limozeen became real for an evening in Atlanta, played by the Atlanta indie band Y-O-U with Matt on vocals. On the 8th of November 2008, they opened for the indie pop band of Montreal.

  A college rock band called Sloshy appeared in 2007, with songs in the vein of Pavement. Other invented performers include the Scandinavian death metal parody Taranchula, the rapper Peacey P and the R&B singer Tenerence Love. Two of these songs reached the real world: "Trogdor" landed in Guitar Hero II, and "Because, It's Midnite" in Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s.

  Other musicians also contributed. The Skate Party helped create The Cheat Theme Song. Paul and Storm of the a cappella band Da Vinci's Notebook wrote "Ballad of The Sneak", the theme for the Old-Timey Cheat, and later the theme tune for the Stinkoman 20X6 game. In 2011, Matt sang as Strong Bad on The Aquabats' "Pink Pants!", from the album Hi-Five Soup!.

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• 6. Games from Videlectrix

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  Early on, the site offered simple web toys, among them the Homestar Soundboard, Homestar Talker and a Lite-Brite imitation called Astro-Lite 2600. Later games grew more complex, and many were credited to Videlectrix, an in-world game company that spoofs 1980s titles. Several began as games the characters played inside Strong Bad Emails. Secret Collect, StrongBadZone and Strong Bad's RhinoFeeder all parody early Atari and arcade games.

  In TROGDOR!, the dragon tries to burn every cottage on each stage without being slain by knights. Its spinoff Peasant's Quest stars Rather Dashing, a young peasant in short pants who finds his cottage burned down and vows revenge on Trogdor. The game copies the look and controls of Sierra's Adventure Game Interpreter, the system behind King's Quest and Space Quest. Stinkoman 20X6, a Mega Man-style platformer, gained nine levels during 2005. Its tenth and final level arrived in December 2020, just days before browsers stopped supporting Flash.

  Thy Dungeonman came from Email No. 94, video games. It spoofs text adventures, with a goal of getting "ye flask". Though it claims a medieval setting, the text imitates the English of William Shakespeare. It has two sequels, and "You can't get ye flask" even ended up on a T-shirt. In 2007, Wii versions of some games appeared for the console's browser. Later, Halloween Hide & Seek and Dangeresque: The Roomisode Triungulate, an expanded remake of Dangeresque: Roomisode 1, were released on Steam and Itch.io. Both were made in Unity.

  On the 10th of April 2008, Telltale Games announced Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, an episodic game developed with Videlectrix. The first episode, Homestar Ruiner, premiered on the 11th of August 2008. The fifth and last, 8-Bit is Enough, reached North America on the 15th of December. A Mac version followed in 2010 after a vote on Telltale's website. Strong Bad also appears as a computer opponent in Telltale's Poker Night at the Inventory, released on the 22nd of November 2010. If a player beats him after he bets Dangeresque Too's sunglasses, they unlock a cosmetic item for the Demoman in Team Fortress 2.

  The Kickstarter for Trogdor!! The Board Game, made with designer James Ernest, opened on the 17th of July 2018 with a goal of $75,000. That goal was passed within hours. By the 23rd of July, the total exceeded $700,000, and the campaign ended on the 15th of August with $1,421,903 from 23,338 backers. Players cooperate, each taking the role of one of twelve Keepers of Trogdor, to burninate tiles, thatched-roof cottages and peasants. It plays one to six people in about 30 minutes, with a recommended age of 14 and up.

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• 7. Word of Mouth

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  In 2003, the site drew several million hits a month and almost a thousand emails a day. According to Matt, no advertising was ever bought. Bands with sizable followings linked to the site, and it was Shockwave site of the day several times. The site has never carried advertisements, and The Brothers Chaps have turned down offers to make a television series. Mike explained how they chose projects: "We learned how to politely say no to things that were going to affect our lives negatively. If it's going to be fun, if we're going to enjoy doing it, and if the end project is going to be something we want to have happen, we say yes."

  Coverage came from Wired, National Review, Entertainment Weekly, Total Gamer, G4 and NPR's All Things Considered. National Review found humor with "the innocence of slapstick with sharp satire of American popular culture", and added that it "tends to be cultural, not political".

  In a 2017 Gizmodo interview, the brothers called the period from 2002 to 2005 their most creative and successful. Matt singled out one day in February 2004. A demo tape arrived from They Might Be Giants for a song in a Strong Bad Email. The same day brought a life-sized replica of Tom Servo from Jim Mallon, producer of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The brothers also noted that newly formed couples bonded over the cartoons. Joss Whedon slipped references to Homestar Runner into Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

  Not every admirer was friendly. In 2003, someone calling himself DimenZion released an email worm named Lacon, which used the characters. It hit 32-bit Windows computers on the 10th of each month, mailed itself to everyone in the address book and added .exe files to the hard drive. Its final payload played a Homestar Runner Flash animation called The System is Down.

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• 8. Hiatus and Return

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  Through 2010, Homestar Runner still supported the brothers through merchandise sales. By then both were married with children. They knew they would need other jobs to support their families. When Matt had a second daughter, they agreed to pause the series, without promising a return date. Mike also felt they had delivered a weekly cartoon for nearly ten years and needed a creative break. Their work led to writing jobs on Yo Gabba Gabba!, Gravity Falls, The Aquabats! Super Show! and Wander Over Yonder.

  The pause was not total. In 2010 they released cartoons for April Fools' Day and for Decemberween. For the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con, they made a special video with Homestar and Strong Bad to introduce a panel about the history of W00tstock.

  In 2014, Matt finished work on Gravity Falls and moved back to Atlanta, where Mike lived. Their first short in nearly four years came out on the 1st of April 2014 and teased them for not updating the site. In July 2014, Matt confirmed the series would continue. Updates have since arrived occasionally, usually for holidays. Until 2017, development of the Disney XD animated show Two More Eggs kept the brothers busy.

  Adobe Flash was due to be discontinued in December 2020, and global support ended on the 31st of December that year. Most new cartoons were released directly as videos on YouTube, and the brothers converted older Flash cartoons to video for archival purposes. The Internet Archive had already included Homestar Runner in its collection of Flash animations and games. The website itself now runs on the Ruffle Flash emulator, which restores much of its original behavior.

  Holidays remain the site's main calendar. Halloween shorts show the cast in costumes, trick-or-treating or carving pumpkins, and a separate video has Strong Bad mocking or praising photos from fans. Decemberween, a fictional holiday resembling Christmas, satirizes gift-giving and carol-singing. It falls on the 25th of December, which the cartoons insist is a coincidence and say comes "55 days after Halloween". On April Fools' Day, the site has turned itself into a paid subscription service and flipped itself upside down.

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