Originally titled "Dr. Lobster and Steve", then "Dr. Lobster (Steve Died)", then "Dr. Lobster (Zombie Steve)", and currently known as "Dr. Lobster and Steve Hate You", Dr. Lobster is a
web comic started and currently done by Michael Buonauro and Jeff Lofvers. It's one of those
comics that uses the same
art over and over again to save time, although the Jeff, the
artist, has thoughtfully created a number of poses and facial expressions for the main characters, Tall Guy and Star Shirt Guy, who bear a mysterious resemblence to Jeff and Michael, respectively. You can
download the
Photoshop files they use if you go to the "make your own" section of their
site, and the way the characters are
constructed is actually quite clever, although ultimately just a tool for
laziness.
I guess the comic first attracted readers, with it's rather bizzare, offbeat sense of humor. It was linked by Penny Arcade a bunch of times, giving it a fairly solid fan base. It had a tendency to to often resort to running gags ("...you don't have a girlfriend..."), but all in all, was a somewhat amusing, but pretty typical web comic. There was some cool stuff they did. Once Jeff and Mike had an "Insane Week" where a new comic was uploaded every hour, every day. That was cool.
Somewhere down the line, they started a second comic, called Gamer Hotties, about a bunch of Hotties who play games... in space! This comic was only updated once a week, but it had actual art. It was written by Jeff and Mike, and Jeff did the art for the first few strips, although he was later replaced by Cowkitty.
Then Jeff and Mike decided to stop doing Dr. Lobster and auction it off on eBay. It was purchased by a guy named Kurt, who was hideously unfunny. But the readers still stayed- some one at the forums said it was like watching a pcar crash]. Then, after hyping the greatest Gamer Hotties comic ever, Jeff and Mike disappeared without a trace. Kurt gave up Dr. Lobster too, so it passed to IQPierce, a forum regular. He was actually pretty funny. Then he gave up, so Jeff and Mike, surprisingly enough came back, deleted all of Kurt and IQPierce's comics, and replaced them with their own. They were still making Dr. Lobsters this whole time, those tricky bastards!
Since then, they've had numerous scams and tricks designed to get rid of their readers. They've password protected the comics, had the forums replace all occurances of the letter "f" with the letter "r", and made it abundantly clear that they hate every one of their readers.
And yet, people still come. Most of the forum regulars who were around when I started reading Dr. Lobster are still there, making rude comments about eachother's sexuality.
Dr. Lobster, is, therefore, an odd phenomenon. It's like a kind of internet masochism. Jeff and Mike hurt their readers, but the readers keep on coming back for more.