Follow the Leader/Web Comics

• Penny Arcade's success led not only to a swarm of gamer Web Comics, but a swarm of gamer Web Comics starring Two Gamers on a Couch.
  • Bob and George and 8-Bit Theater did the same thing for sprite comics.
• DM of the Rings was the the first 'Screencap RPG Webcomic'. Once it ended, Irregular Webcomic creator David Morgan-Mar took some of the words of Shamus and Adam Bloom as a challenge, and he got the Comic Irregulars to put together to create Darths and Droids. Since then, at least three more Screencap RPG Webcomics have appeared, based on Conan the Barbarian, Stargate, Avatar: the Last Airbender, and One Piece. All of them credit DM of the Rings as at least one of the sources that inspired them.
  • There's now even one based on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Friendship Is Dragons.
• The Order of the Stick inspired a lot of Dungeons & Dragons based comics in general; often using 'a compelling story with Dungeons & Dragons physics' as the premise. Even the fans have been putting this trope to use going as far as creating such comics in Burlew's stick-figure art style. A good example of this is the webcomic Anti-Heroes.
  • It also inspired Keychain of Creation, a stick-figure comic based on Exalted.
  • Similarly, xkcd has spawned a few more stick figure comics.
  • It's also becoming popular for non-stick-figure comics to go stick-figure for fillers. "Shirt Guy Xom" appears to be a Shout-Out to "Shirt Guy Dom" (as GGC often riffs on Megatokyo)...which, in turn, was a Shout-Out to "Shirt Guy Tom".
• Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures spawned quite a few fancomics such as Project Future and The Foxfire Chronicles...
  • And somehow also inspired Last Res0rt, at least in terms of the art style. The main difference is that both Project Future and The Foxfire Chronicles use Cubi outright as a central locus; Last Res0rt, while having a few characters that appear Cubi-esque, considers these characters as a variant of Celeste, which have distinctly different powers and otherwise are very not-Cubi. (Also, evil.)
• Sluggy Freelance and Goats largely paved the way for Planet Eris web comics like CRFH, El Goonish Shive, and The Adventures of Dr. McNinja.
• Fans from Nintendo Acres are known to duplicate the premise as well.
• The Wotch is almost solely responsible for the creation of many, many Gender Bender Transformation Comics, some of which (or to others, all of them) are Fetish Fuel with very little in the way of actual plot besides men being randomly turned into very attractive women. The good ones don't exclusively revolve around it, with the victim(s) also having actual lives, problems and Character Development. The others are the exact opposite, in which Gender Bender is the center of the universe which everything in existence revolves around, particularly anyone male.
• Parodied as a major running theme of Checkerboard Nightmare. Checkerboard Nightmare wants his webcomic to be a massive hit, so he constantly and shamelessly copies anything that catches his attention. Even his appearance and name were plagiarized from a guy he knew in school, Striped Reverie.
• MS Paint Adventures inspired many to copy its interactive faux Adventure Game style; it was the Genre Popularizer for Interactive Comics.
• Nerf Now strip "Clone" mocks this. And later "Chess Royale", thanks to a Pointy-Haired Boss (if currently bald one) and "Arabian Nights".

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