Current status / schedule Finished End date August 2002 | Launch date July 2000 | |
Similar Errant Story, Chopping Block, Bruno the Bandit, Count Your Sheep, Mac Hall | ||
Exploitation Now was a webcomic drawn by Michael Poe (generally referred to simply as "Poe") on Keenspot from July 2000 to August 2002. Exploitation Now was notorious for its use of fanservice, sex, violence, and anime references, including anime-style artwork. A single-volume ink-and-paper version was produced by Keenspot, appropriately titled Exploitation Now: Selling Out for Fun and Profit.
Contents
In the beginning, Exploitation Now concerned a female porn star and a male moogle-like person, and their comedic (and sexy) mishaps, such as accidentally summoning tentacle monsters. Eventually, however, the focus shifted to a female mad scientist with a dramatic past. One strip alluded to this shift by showing Bimbo and Ralph in the background, sitting on a couch and musing, "Remember when we used to be in this comic?" Like many webcomics, the comic slowly evolved from being a gag-a-day strip into long dramatic storylines, which finished off with a tragic ending.
When the comic ended, the site announced that "chapter one" of Exploitation Now was complete, implying that another chapter would follow. The same happened with Errant Story, although Errant Story is now on volume 4.
Storyline
Like many other webcomics, Exploitation Now began as a joke-a-day strip with a minimal storyline. In the beginning, Ralph and Bimbo basically hang around their apartment and make jokes. There are also several minor story elements such as Bimbo posing nude in an art class which Ralph decides to attend because he's bored and wants to annoy her. Later back in their apartment, Ralph flushes the clam chowder that Bimbo made for dinner down the toilet. This clam chowder, plus the fact that the toilet hadn't been cleaned out in weeks, somehow managed to weaken the dimensional barrier, which then led to the god Cthulhu trying to break out of his dimension through Ralph and Bimbo's toilet. Ralph managed to send Cthulhu back to his dimension by using a copy of Necronomicon he recently had just found and bought in the out of print section in Amazon.com. Using a spell in the book he thought would work, Ralph banished Cthulhu back to his dimension destroying his and Bimbo's apartment along with all their possessions, and the book in the process. Vowing revenge on the demon (which he never delivers on) for destroying his things, Ralph and Bimbo set off to find another apartment.
At this point, the character Jordan Kennedy is introduced. As luck would have it, Jordan, a sixteen-year-old mad scientist, is the owner of a small building downtown. Also as luck would have it, the apartment above her secret laboratory has recently been freed up because the strip club that used to be there had to leave due to the dancers suffering from radiation sickness and spontaneous mutations. Ralph and Bimbo quickly take the apartment, though Ralph is very suspicious of Jordan because she's a sixteen-year-old girl with a cybernetic arm that is currently being watched by the FBI. Bimbo however is completely unconcerned and signs the lease [1].
After moving into their new apartment, Ralph is offered the chance to buy some pot from one of the shady dealers on their new street, which he quickly accepts. He and Bimbo soon get high and go into a huge flashback into their high school days. It is revealed that the pair became fast friends back in their first year because they had to take the same bus to the trailer park where they both lived. They quickly flash forward in time (with pictures of what they looked like in each of their high school years [2]) to their first day of senior year. However, Ralph never reaches school because Bimbo drags him to the doctors to provide her moral support because her period is two weeks late(it turns out she just has in infection). Bimbo decides to celebrate by dragging Ralph and her boyfriend Dave (in one of his only appearances) to a piercing parlor so she can get her tongue pierced. On the last day of school the three spray paint a giant piece of graffiti on the side of the school. At this point the flashback is over. Ralph reveals that they almost went to jail for the graffiti, Bimbo moved away and then went on to fail out of college, and Ralph lost his one true love (who is never introduced) and never saw her again. Ralph is upset with Bimbo for bringing up the whole flashback sequence and reminding him of his troubles but then realizes that he is still high from the Pot and laughs it off [3].
It is at this point of the story that things begin to shift more towards Jordan. As this storyline starts it is revealed that Jordan has been financing her operations by selling and building equipment for global terrorist and rebel groups. She also currently built a coolant device for the Peoples Canadian Liberation Front (PCLF) but has some trouble getting them to pay the $15,000 dollars that they owe her. The PCLF, seeing that they have the military strength of a small country and Jordan is just a 16-year-old girl working out of a secret lab, refuse to pay the fee and are soon vaporized when Jordan, as an act of vengeance, hijacks an old Russian satellite-based laser death platform and fires on them. Canada takes this as an attack from Russia and declares war, which the United Nations find absolutely hilarious [4]. Jordan, however, is completely overjoyed by this and discovers that making all this suffering makes her incredibly horny. However, this soon passes when after month or two of heavy fighting the two countries make peace with each other.