Linkara

Linkara
Real Name	Lewis Lovhaug
Affiliation	Channel Awesome
Contributions	Atop the Fourth Wall 5 Panel Comics
Website	http://www.TGWTG.com http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/

Get out before I shoot you!

Linkara is the pseudonym for Lewis Lovhaug, comic book reviewer and author. The name comes from a series of self-published books that he wrote at ages 14-19 (and subsequently plans to revisit since he wants to revise them to fix plot problems, characterizations, and various other mistakes he made because he was young and inexperienced). Usually appearing seated on a sofa, wearing a hat and brown coat, he will also sometimes brandish a flintlock pistol (which is fake). The first proper appearance of the pistol was when Linkara introduced himself to the site. After giving a brief tour of his house, which consisted of saying what he was sitting on, Linkara brought out the pistol and ordered the viewer to get out before he shot them. The pistol has made a number of appearances, most recently it was used as a suicide prop, which Linkara set on standby, should the comic he was reviewing prove to be too much for him.

Atop the Fourth Wall - Text Recaps

When Lewis saw the hilarious efforts of sites like Jabootu and The Agony Booth to review and recap horrible movies and TV shows, he took it upon himself to do the same with comic books, seeing it as an untapped market. Like the two sites, he also included the occasional bizarre panel of the comic that he'd place a humorous caption under. He did seventeen text recaps without any other posts on his blog, Atop the Fourth Wall, before he threw in the towel on them. See Article for more: Atop the Fourth Wall.

He had decided that the text recaps took far too long to write out and make funny, going from once a week to once a month to once in a blue moon. As such, he turned the Blog into one that discussed comics and his opinions on them, hoping to do more text recaps in the future.

That Guy with the Glasses Contest

After discovering ThatGuyWiththeGlasses.com, he became a fan of the site's various videos. When That Guy with the Glasses announced his contest to do videos, Lewis decided to make a video and enter. After enjoying the experience of filming it all and making jokes, he then realized he could do the same thing with his reviews of bad comics.

As a special Halloween treat, Lewis did a three-part comic review and recap, the first he had done in quite a while. The first two parts were text recaps of Web of Spider-Man #122 and Amazing Spider-Man #399, covering a small part of what is known in comics as "The Spider-Man Clone Saga." The third recap, of Spider-Man #56, covered the final part of the storyline but was done as a video review.

Because of how much fun he had with the concept, Lewis was inspired to do more video recaps.

A Feature on ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com

After several videos were completed and posted, Lewis sent an e-mail to Mike Michaud asking if the site would be interested in hosting the show, since there was a talent hunt going on at the time. After some discussion, the show was given a trial run of a few episodes, the first two being Lewis' Top 15 WTF Moments in Bad Comics and then his review of the comic book US-1 #1. Because of the overwhelmingly positive response to the videos, Atop the Fourth Wall, and subsequently Linkara, became a part of the site's team.

Comics in Five Panels

5 Panel Comics, like 5 Second Movies and 5 Second Games are snippets of the story where Linkara would get to the gist of that the story is about. Usually they have hilarious results. For example, in the Titans Five Panel Comics' video, he outlined the main points of the story with some running commentary.

"This Comic Sucks."

The traditional format of the show is as follows: Lewis does an introduction that varies in length and usually is without many jokes, then goes on to describe the cover of the book and the story as it goes along, making jokes at the expense of the material. Panels of the comic will move across the screen (in what is described as "The Ken Burns effect") as Lewis narrates and performs voices for characters. Sometimes he'll drift into explanations of some of the situations behind the story, trying to educate the audience on comic books while also further explaining why the comic itself is so awful. The show ends with Lewis saying, "This comic sucks" (or variations thereof), explaining why it sucks, and then ending on a joke before he angrily throws the comic onto his futon and walks away in disgust.

His own comics!

Linkara has written and published his own comic series about superheroes. The stories are called "Revolution of the Mask", which is about a group of supers banding together to solve problems the world over. Another story is called "Lightbringer" where the main character is the first superhero set in in modern times. It is, in Linkara's words, "a realistic look at superheroes". The art for Lightbringer is done by TGWTG.com's Chad Rocco aka CR!.

"'90s Kid"

'90s Kid is a character Linkara uses to describe comics made in the 1990s. He imitates 1990s comic book culture at the time, showing fascination with Rob Liefeld art and other aspects of comics made during the decade. When the '90s Kid makes an appearance, ""Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana can be heard in the background.

"Harvey Finevoice"

Harvey Finevoice is another character Linkara uses. He appears to be a PI of some kind and has shown up the Uncanny X-Men 424 and Countdown reviews. The character acts similar to 1940s style private investigators and uses the lingo of the day. For example" "Could you hurry it along? I got dames to smooch!"

For more of his running gags, see: LinkaraGags.

External Links

• Linkara at TGWTG
• Linkara's Blogspot "Atop The Fourth Wall"
• Lightbringer, One of Linkara's webcomics.
• Revolution of the Mask