The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is a webcomic written and drawn by Christopher Hastings, and inked formerly by Kent Archer and after 2010 by Hastings himself. Published three times a week on its own website, it features the fictional adventures of a character named Dr. McNinja, a thirty-five-year-old doctor who is also a ninja. Dr. McNinja is highly story-driven, with twenty- to ninety-page issues. The first story was published in the summer of 2004 as a one-off, and the comic was published regularly from 2005 to 2017. The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is a member of Dayfree Press.

History

In 2003, when Chris Hastings was a forum member of Something Awful Forums, his screen name was "Dr. McNinja". During a drawing contest involving a characterization of user screen names, Hastings drew an image of Dr. McNinja behind his desk with a sword on his wall and a speech bubble reading, "Should anyone need the services of a ninja or a doctor, my office is always open." Shortly afterward, Chris made a full-length comic about McNinja for an art class. Strips were presented in a high contrast black-and-white, and then for a period of time were shaded digitally. Starting in August 2008, comics began to be drawn in full color, provided by Carly Monardo (the author's wife). In February 2009, Monardo stepped down to focus on her job on The Venture Bros., and Anthony "Nedroid" Clark replaced Monardo.

List of characters

McNinja family and associates

Antagonists

Other

In print

The first three volumes of Dr. McNinja are published and sold online by TopatoCo. Dark Horse Comics took over publishing beginning with the fourth volume, although Dark Horse numbers their volumes of the series as Vol. 1, Vol. 2, etc. All of the printed comics include comics not available on the Dr. McNinja website.

Awards

Dr. McNinja won the 2007 Web Cartoonist's Choice Award for Outstanding Superhero / Action Comic.

Proposed video game

In April 2012, Christopher Hastings entered a partnership with Fat Cat Gameworks to create a video game based on the comic for mobile and web. Titled Dr. McNinja's Radical Adventures, it was slated for release by that July. The project used the Kickstarter platform for funding, to avoid the need for a publisher, but the project never came to fruition due to financial issues.