Webcomic / Loading Artist

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Loading Artist is a weekly gag-a-day webcomic by Gregor Czaykowski and can be found at loadingartist.com.

While the majority of the comics are in the style of gag-a-day comics, there is a subtle overall storyline. The comics that do not feature the recurring characters, are actually comics created by the main recurring protagonist. The main recurring protagonist is an artist who draws the comics, and wants to get better at art (thus Loading Artist as he is still in the process of loading).

Recurring characters (no official names yet):

• The Guy with the Hat aka Hat Guy aka Loading Artist aka Gregor
• The Girl aka The Girlfriend aka Jes
• The Friend
• The Cat aka Cat
• The Bird
• The Grim Reaper aka Grim aka Death
• The Boss aka Gamework Boss
• The Colleague aka Gamework Employee

Loading Artist provides examples of:

• 30 Minutes, or It's Free!: A variation. They promise not to charge if the pizza is cold on arrival. Cue the Loophole Abuse involving ice cubes.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: His latest invention "Cake-Bot" wants to kill all humans which doesn't keep the board of Corrupt Corporate Executives from putting the product on the market.
• Alien Abduction: In this strip, one guy excitedly points out a UFO while his friend dismisses it, insisting "it's always a meteor, or a test missile, or something. It's never aliens." A tractor beam promptly descends and abducts the skeptic mid-sentence. His friend's only response: "Rude."
• Always Someone Better: Gregor expresses his dismay at this, but someone assures him that he'll always be the best at being himself. Then along comes a shining version of himself with a star on his chest.
• April Fools' Day: In this strip, a robber holds someone up at gunpoint, gets handed a wad of cash, then yells "April Fools!" The victim points out that April Fools was yesterday. A long beat follows as the robber processes this, then scatters the money and walks off.
• Are We There Yet?: Driven Mad features a kid pestering the driver with "are we there yet?" so relentlessly that the man screams and kicks the child out of the moving car. The final panel reveals via newspaper headline that the driver was a kidnapper.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In this strip, a parent finishes reading a bedtime story and cheerfully confirms that everyone has their own story. The kid innocently asks where the parent is in theirs, which triggers a spiral of self-doubt, fumbling through "are you living happily ever after?" and "has your story... even begun?" The final panel is just the parent sitting alone in the dark after the kid has fallen asleep.
• Art Shift: In this self-portrait, the comic's usual simple cartoon style gives way to a dark, painterly rendering of the Loading Artist's signature hat-wearing character, rendered with unsettling realism and deep shadows.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A 50-Foot Heart Monster? That's a first.
• Bad Date: In this strip, a friend teaches the protagonist how to pick up women, stressing things like compliments and never breaking eye contact. He takes this far too literally and ends up hitting on a women's restroom sign while staring intensely at it, turning "confidence" into pure awkwardness.
• Bait-and-Switch: Quite frequently.
  • Like in this strip where the heroes are thought dead but then it's revealed the dead bodies were someone else's.
  • In this strip, a child is turned away from a roller coaster for being too short. He spends what appears to be months designing and building an elaborate contraption across multiple panels of blueprints and construction. The reveal is that he built stilts not to meet the height requirement, but to get up high enough to punch the attendant in the face.
  • This comic features two characters watching breaking news of the Mars Rover landing, waxing philosophical about how far technology has come. "Mankind truly is magnificent." Then a sale banner flashes on screen, revealing they were marveling at the TV the whole time. The final panel is them frantically wheeling it out of the store in a shopping cart.
  • One-Person Birthday Party: In Happy Birthday to Me, a man sits alone at a birthday table, seemingly waiting for guests that never arrive, until the doorbell rings and reveals he was just waiting for the pizza delivery.
• Beat Panel: Programming sees a job interview grind to a halt when the interviewer asks "Do you know C++?" The applicant stares blankly for two full silent panels before answering "D?" making the inevitable rejection much funnier.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In this strip, a girl wishes for humans not to be sad anymore. Her wish comes true in the form of a comet colliding with Earth.
• Become a Real Boy: A robot's wish to become human is not getting fulfilled.
• Big Anime Eyes: Gregor apparently contracts these from staying in Japan.
• Black Comedy Cannibalism: When fried eggs are served to a chicken.
• Brutally Honest: In this strip, a reporter demos an AI-powered smart mirror at a tech expo and gets told he is "97% UGLY." He laughs it off on camera, holding back a tear, with "well at least I'm 3% not ugly!" The mirror updates behind him: "3% HIDEOUS."
• Come Back to Bed, Honey: In this strip, Hat Guy's neglected game controller pleads jealously, "Why don't we spend time together anymore?" and accuses him of seeing someone else, only for a phone to call out "Come back to bed, honey" from the other room, a Candy Crush-style mobile game glowing on its screen. He left his controller for a casual phone game, and the comic plays it as a full-blown affair.
• Comically Missing the Point: Subverted in this strip. A king furiously demands "What is the meaning of this?!" and a servant looks it up in a book, reading out the dictionary definition of "this." Rather than missing the point, the king genuinely didn't know, nods along, and thanks him.
• Cupid's Arrow: Played for laughs in this strip, where a hungover Cupid accidentally shoots a table instead of a person, and the guy eventually concedes the table is kind of sexy.
• Cute Kitten: Even astronauts are being sidetracked by cute cat videos on youtube.
• Deathbed Confession: Subverted in this strip, where a dying old man's greatest regret is revealed to be a mildly awkward elevator greeting, the whole deathbed scene turning out to be an Imagine Spot by the guy currently standing in the elevator, working up the nerve to say hello.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Mentally Prepared shows a guy nervously rehearsing "hi there, how's it going?" before approaching a girl, then psyching himself up at the counter with "alright now don't fuck this up!" out loud to the cashier. The final panel is him alone at a table with his coffee.
• Didn't Think This Through: In this strip, a guy greets the apocalypse with pure joy, ticking off fuel, snacks, and zero responsibilities before settling in for the ultimate gaming session, having apparently not considered that online gaming requires the internet, which the apocalypse has also taken out.
• Electromagnetic Ghosts: In this strip, a lonely ghost tries and fails to find other ghosts to befriend, growing increasingly dejected. His attempts to communicate go unnoticed, the TV flickering being dismissed as a technical fault by the oblivious human sitting right next to him.
• Exact Words: In this strip, an old woman reaches for her anti-aging cream, only for it to tell her "Fuck you, granny" and skateboard away. The cream is anti-aging in the most literal sense.
• "Far Side" Island: The setting of this strip, where a castaway is stranded on the classic tiny desert island with a single palm tree, despairing that he's going to die there, right up until his phone gets signal and he forgets all about it.
• Felony Misdemeanor: A kid gets himself into police custody when opening his Christmas present too early.
• Fourth-Wall Portrait: This strip is a painted portrait of the artist himself sitting in a field with his cat, sketching his own comic characters in a notebook.
• Freudian Couch: The patient in this strip is a donut lying on a couch at a therapist, literally describing a hole in its chest it can't fill.
• Fright Beside Them: This strip has the hero mistaking a ghost-cat for his cat. In a subversion, he gets excited because now he has two cats to pet.
• Genie in a Bottle: In this strip, a genie offers one wish to a man stranded on an island. He chooses poorly.
• Gone Horribly Right: In this strip, a scientist's formula successfully turns a rotten apple into a candy bar, then he accidentally spills it on himself. His kids arrive to find a giant candy bar where dad used to be and immediately start eating him.
• Grammar Nazi: In this strip, a man spots a baby bird's misspelled "HAPY MAMA DAY" card and panics, sprinting to a shop and buying a greeting card. The reveal is that he wasn't scrambling because he forgot his own mother, he just couldn't leave a typo in a bird's nest uncorrected.
• Great White Hunter: Subverted in this strip, where a safari-hatted hunter spots a lion and declares "I must shoot it," pulling out a camera. The final panel is a selfie of the two of them captioned "BEST BUDS."
• "Help! Help! Trapped in Title Factory!": In this strip, a child finds a "HELP US" note stuffed inside a Christmas toy, presumably from whoever made it. The family treats it as a genuine cry for help, with the father demanding "what kind of factories are they running over there??" The punchline is that his big solution is to return it to the store for a replacement.
• Hit Stop: The final panel of this strip depicts the stilt-assisted punch landing on the attendant with a full "SHRPONG!" freeze-frame impact.
• Hollywood Mirage: Subverted in this strip, where a group of desert wanderers spot a real oasis party and are invited to join, but dismiss it as a mirage and walk away. The oasis partygoers watch them leave, baffled.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • In this strip, a character dismisses Let's Play (watching someone else play a game) as "a complete waste of time," then is revealed in the final panel to be watching an esports broadcast on his own TV with a bucket of popcorn.
  • Drained features a character ranting about having to charge his phone every night, calling it pathetic and annoying, then goes to bed himself, equally in need of a nightly recharge.
• I Ate WHAT?!: In this strip, a diner compliments the chef on the egg inside his roast chicken. The waiter's confused "egg, sir?" and the diner's dawning "...what egg?" says everything.
• Interrupted Suicide: Subverted in this strip, where a man standing on a rooftop ledge declaring "so, it has come to this.." turns out not to be contemplating suicide at all, just about to jump down because the elevator was broken. News that it's fixed earns a relieved "UGH FINALLY."
• ISO-Standard Urban Groceries: The deflating reveal in this strip comes with the standard single grocery bag, as Toby shuffles in with "I brought groceries" while two people were busy convincing each other they were being haunted by a really, really fat ghost.
• Jacob Marley Apparel: In this strip, a séance successfully summons a dark spirit, which turns out to be a ghost in a banana costume, forced to spend eternity in it after having died at a costume party.
• Just Friends: In this strip, two candles share what seems like a tender final moment as their wicks burn down, only for one to friendzone the other.
• Kidnapped by an Ally: Subverted in this strip where a man releases a pet rat into the wild only for it to be immediately snatched by a hawk, which turns out to be delivering it to a mouse family complete with a "WELCOME HOME" banner and birthday cake. The final panel pulls back to reveal the father narrating all of this to his tearful kid as a comforting bedtime story.
• Killer Rabbit: An innocent pet rock turns ugly on a mocking onlooker.
• Killer Robot: Hug-Bot is introduced as a robot that analyzes your feelings and hugs you the perfect amount. It scans its first user, offers some reassuring on-screen comfort, then hugs them so perfectly that the final panel is just blood and a message promising everything will be okay.
• Laser Sight: In this strip, a cat chases a laser dot across the floor in typical fashion, until the final panel reveals the dot is coming from a sniper rifle being operated by a gang of dogs peering over the fence.
• Lemonade Stand Plot: In this strip, one kid suggests having a sale on their $1 lemonade, only for his partner to panic that they can't go any cheaper. The other kid ignores him and puts up a "WAS $25, NOW ONLY $1" sign, instantly triggering a frenzied stampede of customers with money flying everywhere and the stand going up in flames.
• Literal Surveillance Bug: In this strip, one man nearly swats a bee before his compassionate friend intervenes, releases it outside, and waves it off with "bye bye lil guy." The final panel pulls back to reveal the bee is a spy drone flying away from a power plant, uploading its data to a satellite.
• Loony Fan: In this strip, a fan at a comic expo grabs the artist's hand for a handshake and simply will not release it, holding on through panel after panel of increasingly desperate pulling until the artist resorts to "CALL THE POLICE."
• Magic Misfire: In this strip, an amateur magician performs a card trick that causes his volunteer's head to explode, then flips back to his magic book in frustration, apparently not for the first time.
• Manipulative Editing: In this strip, a restaurant chef receives a review sheet filled top-to-bottom with 1-star ratings. Rather than accept the verdict, he tears off a horizontal strip of the page, then displays it sideways in the window, so what was a long row of 1-star symbols now reads as a single column of five stars. A technically accurate "5-star review."
• Message in a Bottle: In this strip, a man sends off a message in a bottle, only for it to keep boomeranging back to him no matter how many times he tries. The final panel pulls back to reveal he is stranded in the middle of a desert with no water in sight.
• Minion with an F in Evil: The hero fails the bad boy gang initiation because of too much politeness.
• Misplaced Wildlife: In this strip, two escaping prisoners freeze when a guard hears something, and one whispers to the other to pretend to be a bird. The resulting "um.. KA-KA-KA-KOW" somehow satisfies the guard, who radios in a false alarm. Then the guard clocks that Yellow-billed Cuckoos aren't native to the area.
• No Longer with Us: In this strip, a man sighs that he misses his cat, prompting a friend to offer condolences that he's "in a better place now." The next panel reveals the cat is very much alive, just living its best life on a tropical holiday.
• Not Hyperbole: It really was the map to his heart.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Barkeeping: The barkeeper in this strip is polishing a glass while being questioned by a detective.
• Old-School Chivalry: In this strip, a man shares his umbrella with a woman caught in the rain, sparking an instant romantic connection. The sun comes out, making the umbrella unnecessary, and he is visibly devastated.
• One-Person Birthday Party:
  • In this strip, a man cheerfully thanks everyone for coming to his birthday party and admits he was worried nobody would show up, the reveal being that all his "guests" are just balloons with drawn-on faces. The strip twists the knife when one floats away and he panics after it, desperate not to lose even one.
  • In Happy Birthday to Me, a man sits alone at a birthday table, seemingly waiting for guests that never arrive, until the doorbell rings and reveals he was just waiting for the pizza delivery.
• Parental Abandonment: In this strip, a boy feeling like he has no one to turn to is reassured by loving parental voices, only for the final panel to reveal he is alone in his room, practicing the exchange in the mirror with a fake moustache and a wig on a stand.
• Partially-Concealed-Label Gag: In this strip, a kid proudly wheels his snowman to what the banner advertises as a "SNOWMAN BUILDING CONTEST." Inside, the competition turns out to be jacked, muscle-flexing snowmen on a stage. The final panel reveals the full sign: "SNOWMAN BODYBUILDING CONTEST."
• Piano Drop: In this strip, the hero makes a Diving Save to save a girl from dropping bird poop only for her to be crushed by a falling piano.
• Picky People Eater: In this strip, the reveal that our protagonist is a zombie comes only when he crawls out of his grave demanding "BRAAINS".
• Pity the Kidnapper: Happens with this bratty kid that nags its kidnapper with Are We There Yet? to the point where the man loses his patience and lets the kid go.
• Puddle-Covering Chivalry: Subverted in this strip where the man places his jacket over a puddle but it turns out he was using it to do laundry rather than helping his date across the puddle.
• Revealing Hug: In this strip, two friends hug warmly after a gift of literally nothing goes down surprisingly well. The final panel is a close-up of the gift-giver sweating with the caption "IT'S ESCAPED."
• Reveal Shot:
  • This comic features a guy delivering what sounds like a heartfelt crisis — feeling lost, things getting difficult, running around in circles, not knowing what he's doing anymore — until the final panel pulls back to reveal he's just stuck in a video game and needs to be told to push the up arrow.
  • In this strip, a classroom cheating dispute escalates into a screaming match until the final panel pulls back to reveal the whole scene is being observed by aliens in a spacecraft, who respond to the chaos by ordering the probes prepared.
  • In this strip, a guy appears to be fishing from above water, reeling in shoes, a drink, and a wallet full of cash across several panels. The final pull-back reveals he is on a rooftop, lifting things straight from passers-by on the street below.
  • Every Day is the Same has our hero dramatically declare he needs to make a change, building to what seems like a life-altering moment, until the pull-back reveals he's at a fast food counter being told extra cheese is 50 cents.
• Sell-Out: In this strip, a cartoonist whose comic goes viral makes the fatal mistake of asking the crowd to check out his website for more. The mob turns instantly, pelting him with arrows and burning his comic to the ground.
• Significant First Steps: In "Picture Perfect", two excited parents capture their baby's first steps on camera and spend so long editing the photos to post on social media that their baby wanders away and ends up missing.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Keep playing Tic-Tac-Toe while your rubber raft loses air.
  • Trying to backup your files while the computer is on fire.
  • In this strip, a friend projectile vomits a horrifying amount of blood, prompting a panicked call for emergency services. The pizza delivery guy shows up instead, because that's who was called.
  • This one features a cop walking into a store where a robbery is secretly in progress and innocently asking the robber to break a $20. The bound and gagged employee tears himself free specifically to blast out the store's no-change-without-a-purchase policy.
• Skyward Scream: In this strip, a guy unleashes a full can of what turns out to be deodorant on a cockroach, which not only survives but uses the pleasant scent to attract a mate. The final panel is our hero's Big "NO!" echoing across the room as the cockroach scurries off to start a family.
• Stock Money Bag:
  • Parodies in this strip where the hero's business plan consists of two steps: (1) buying stock money bags and (2) actually filling them up with money.
  • Parodied again here where a thief disguises his Thief Bag as a sack of potatoes.
• Surprise Party:
  • Subverted in this strip. A man arrives home dejected that nobody remembered his birthday, hears a thud and a "shhh" inside, spots shadowy figures through the window holding what looks like a birthday cake, and psyches himself up to act surprised. He opens the door to find two burglars frozen mid-robbery.
  • Deconstructed in this strip, where a surprise party goes immediately wrong when the guest of honour collapses from the shock, has a heart attack, and dies, the banner is rearranged in the final panel to read "HAPPY DEATHDAY!"
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: A lesson wants to be told about a Butterfly of Transformation but then reality gets in the way, as the attempt at a heartfelt "everyone can be beautiful" message is broken when a bird swoops in and snatches up the caterpillar and its cocoon in one go, ending the inspirational journey before the first wing can even flutter.
• Terrible Pick-Up Lines:
  • The hero in this strip tries to rely on Innocent Innuendos to charm women, but the lines come off awkward and fall completely flat.
  • In another strip he doubles down with yet another terrible line, only for it to backfire so badly that he immediately veers into If I Can't Have You…, turning a failed flirtation into full-on bitterness.
• The Perfectionist: In Standards, the protagonist's sky-high personal standards turn a simple signature into an exhausting perfectionist loop that hilariously shows how the drive for flawlessness can make even the smallest task feel impossible.
• Turbine Blender: In Mama, a baby bird finally gathers the courage to leave the nest for its first flight. it mistakes a plane for its mother and flies straight toward it, resulting in a tragic puff of feathers.
• Umpteenth Customer: The One-Millionth Criminal gets a free trip to Hawaii. Jail in Hawaii, that is.
• Walk the Plank: Into a shark-infested sea. The comic plays it as a diving competition, complete with an audience of pirates and onlookers holding up score cards (ranging from 8 to 9, so at least they appreciate good form) and cheerfully clapping along, right up until the water turns red.
• Weird Moon: In this strip, mission control launches a moon landing right as the clouds part to reveal the moon is a crescent. Cue full panic, frantically ringing astronauts, and a targeting display still aimed at the center of a moon that is mostly not there. The rocket flies clean through the empty gap
• What Did I Do Last Night?: The hero waking up on the moon after a night of heavy drinking.
• Who's on First?: In this strip, the guest constantly misinterprets the waiter's lines.
• Will Talk for a Price: Subverted here. When a detective demands to know who is behind a crime, the witness hints that some money might help jog their memory. The detective grumbles and hands over the cash. The witness pockets it, announces "Nope, still nothing," and then cheerfully asks to see the photos again.
• Wowing Cthulhu: With a bracelet. A ghost crashes into the bedroom with a thunderous "WOOOOOO," clearly ready to haunt the occupant forever and ever. The problem is that instead of cowering in fear, the character is just... flattered. Charmed by a response that was probably not in the haunting playbook, the ghost pivots and presents a BFF bracelet.
• Writer's Block Montage: The hero in this strip. A three-panel montage of Gregor slumped at his drawing desk, surrounded by a growing mound of crumpled paper and discarded attempts, looking progressively more haggard with each beat.
• X-Ray Sparks: In Silver Lining. Having just quoted the "every cloud has a silver lining" proverb to himself, Gregor spots an actual cloud with a literal silver lining and gleefully points it out. The universe rewards his optimism with an immediate lightning strike, leaving him a smoking, sparking skeleton silhouetted against a brilliant flash of light in the final panel.
• You Must Be Cold: Subverted in this strip where instead of handing his jacket to the freezing lady, the protagonist throws it in the water to invoke a Commonality Connection.
• You Must Be This Tall to Ride: In "Vomitron", a child is turned away from the "Vomitron" roller coaster for being too short. The twist comes when after what appears to be months of blueprints and construction, his elaborate solution is revealed: stilts, built not to meet the height requirement, but to punch the attendant in the face.