Mr. Boop, the psychosexual webcomic that is a scathing critique of copyright

You can’t summarize the webcomic Mr. Boop better than its first panel, which emerged out of what felt like the raging id of the internet on February 28, 2020. “My wife Betty Boop is really hot,” says Alec, the strip’s spectacled, grinning protagonist, a cartoon avatar for actual writer and artist Alec Robbins.

His wife, you see, is Betty Boop. She’s really hot.

At first blush, Mr. Boop might not seem all that different from the webcomics that largely defined the genre’s boom a decade or so ago: imperfectly drawn panels, constant flirtation with copyright violation, and a horny, endlessly self-indulgent hero based directly on the author.

But Robbins isn’t just channeling the tropes of a largely bygone era of fanfiction; he’s weaponizing...

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