Surviving the World

Concept

In the first half of 2008, Lucas Landherr was a doctoral student of chemical engineering at Cornell University and was looking for a creative outlet. He did not want the scientific community to know that he had a side job as an artist, so he worked under the pseudonym Dr. Dante J.T. Shepherd.

While reading Jeph Jacques' webcomic Questionable Content, Landherr recognized the creative potential of webcomics. Because he had no experience drawing, Landherr's webcomic consisted purely of photographs. Each photograph featured Landherr wearing a white lab coat and Red Sox hat, standing next to a chalkboard on which a daily lesson is written in big white capital letters. Speaking with the Northeastern University paper, Landherr said that his webcomic "really helped sustain me throughout my final two years of graduate school and my post-doc."

Landherr posted over 3,000 unique photographs on his website, focusing on a large variety of topics, such as reality TV and social networks.

History

Landherr launched several Kickstarter campaigns in the 2010s, raising tens of thousands of dollars to produce page-a-day calendars. By 2016, Surviving the World had amassed millions of page views, receiving an average of 10,000 visitors per day.

Surviving the World ended on June 1, 2018, shortly after the webcomic's tenth anniversary.

Reception

Stephanie Mlot of the Frederick News-Post described Surviving the World as "one of [her] favorite discoveries. The pure obscurity of the man in the white lab coat and Red Sox cap add mystery and intrigue to an already random commodity."

Jules Rivera of Comic Related criticized the fact that Surviving the World pages consist purely of individual, unedited photographs, saying that though he finds the webcomic amusing, he does not consider it a webcomic: "It's a photographic affirmation at best."

References

References

1. Cipera, Kelly. (2009-07-15). "Webcomic Wednesday: Surviving the World". Fandomania.
2. Kornwitz, Jason. (2016-06-03). "Chemical engineering professor moonlights as webcomic artist". [[North Eastern University]].
3. Shepherd, Dante. (2018-05-31). "Anniversary, Part X". Surviving the World.
4. Rivera, Jules. "Art, "Art", and Almost "Art" – What qualifies as "art" in webcomics?". Comic Related.