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Doctor Fun is a cartoon. Not all Doctor Funs may be suitable for children and some childlike adults. There's a new Doctor Fun every weekday. Doctor Fun is hosted by ibiblio, the public's library and digital archive, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Doctor Fun first appeared on the Internet in 1993, and has been at ibiblio (ibiblio has had other names, including SunSITE and Metalab) since 1994. What Doctor Fun is, for the literal-minded, is a 640 x 480 pixel 24-bit color JPEG file. Doctor Fun has the dubious distinction of being the first web cartoon. Doctor Fun was not, however, the first cartoon on the Internet.

I still don't get it. Why do they let you ...? You're not ...? But ...?

Never you mind. Look - there's no reason for Doctor Fun to even exist, but here it is.

Thanks! Now that I know all that, I want to read the latest Doctor Fun cartoon!

Here is the latest cartoon. If you'd like to always link to the latest Doctor Fun, you can use this link:

http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/latest.jpg

You can get a little thumbnail of (only the artwork) the latest cartoon, too.

http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/thumb.jpg

That cartoon sucked.

That wasn't really a question, was it? If you didn't particularly like whatever the latest Doctor Fun cartoon happened to be, perhaps you are still Doctor Fun-curious and would like to see some Doctor Funs that other people seem to like a lot. Here's a mix of cartoons that other people, perhaps like you, seemed to enjoy. These cartoons actually got some hits, or I actually got some e-mail about them, or both.

• Here's the one about Barney.
• Here's the one about beavers.
• Here's the one about gerbils.
• Here's the one about tribbles.
• Here's the one about wasabi.
• Here's the one about vasectomies.
• Here's the one about Clusenix.
• Here's the one about Usenet.
• Here's the one about Don Knuth.
• Here's the one about The Incredible Hulk.

Those cartoons all suck, but continue with your feeble efforts to entertain. Show me some more.

Now, then - those are not necessarily my favorites, either. So I went through each year and picked out some that I thought were either particularly funny, or particularly well-drawn. A few I thought were both funny and well-drawn.

• Here's the one about the donuts.
• Here's the one about Godzilla.
• Here's the one about the chickens.
• Here's the one about the human cannonball.
• Here's the one about Mr. Spock.
• Here's the one about the sperm.
• Here's the one about the protozoa.
• Here's the one about the blow-up doll.
• Pick this one!
• Here's the one about the squirrel.
• Here's the one about the ice cream cones.
• Here's the one about the pinatas.
• Here's the one about the deathray.
• Here's the one about the elephants.
• Here's the one about tomatillos.
• Here's the one about watering the plants.
• Here's the one about the tapeworms.
• Here's the one about the Zamboni.
• Here's the one about the operating room.
• Here's the one about the goldfish.
• Here's another one about squirrels.
• Here's the one about Gumby.
• Here's the one about Santa.
• Here's another one about chickens.
• Here's the one about Mr. Potato Head.
• Here's the one about the weasels.
• Here's the one about the Titanic.
• Here's the one about the Muppets.
• Here's the one about the pickles.
• Here's the one about Vlad the Impaler.
• Here's the one about carrots.
• Here's the one about Rear Window.
• Here's the one about the fleas.
• Here's the one about the Enchanted Forest.
• Here's the one about Steely Dan.
• Here's the one about the Amish.
• Here's the one about noses.
• Here's the one about Mister Clean.
• Here's the one about Harry Potter.
• Here's the one about the chipmunk.
• Here's the one about the polar bear.
• Here's the one about Ultraman.

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These are the cartoons with just the right balance of 30-something sophistication and juvenile humor that I've been searching for! Thank you, Mr. Cartoon Drawing Man! Where can I read more?

Still not satisfied? Why not visit the Doctor Fun Archive, where you can browse all the old cartoons? Or Doctor Fun's Special Cartoons Unit, where you can browse stuff that's even older than Doctor Fun?

However shall I peruse only this week's Doctor Fun cartoons?

You can also see all the cartoons to date for the latest week. If you want to link to this page, it is always:

http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/this-week.html

In a shameless attempt to increase traffic, I'm introducing a new, and perhaps temporary, feature called "Some Old Week of Doctor Fun Cartoons". It changes every day. Link to it at:

http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/old-week.html

What's the deal with the logo? I don't understand the relationship between the unchanging dog-like character in the Doctor Fun logo, and the actual cartoon, and stuff I don't understand makes me mad.

There is also a Doctor Fun logo, which should be at the top of this page unless I screwed the link up, in which case there is an "error". The little guy in the logo is Doctor Fun, but he doesn't actually appear in the cartoons. We won't ever be able to sell any cute little Doctor Fun beanie dolls or big ugly Doctor Fun blow-up dolls unless there's some kind of cute little mascot, and that's the best I could come up with. (To date there haven't actually been any Doctor Fun dolls of any size at all.) There is a larger version of the logo available, than the one that appears on this page. Nobody ever clicks on it, but here it is anyway.

http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/logo.jpg

You can get the smaller version, too.

http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/logo-small.jpg

And a thumbnail.

http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/thumbl.jpg

It would be nice if I could search the Doctor Fun captions. Tell me I can search the Doctor Fun captions.

Oh, yes, you can search the Doctor Fun captions two different ways:

Jack Leblond at Net Smart Incorporated, and Support Your Troops has kindly provided a mirror for Doctor Fun in the form of a search engine. You can also get a random Doctor Fun cartoon at Jack's page. Have fun.

Mark Plaga has created another Doctor Fun search page. Mark's page will display a slide show of cartoons after you make your search. Have more fun.

It would be great if I could search more than the captions.

Yes, it would be great, but none of that is available and it's entirely my fault.

Electronic postcards are so popular with the young people these days. Can I send a Doctor Fun electronic postcard to some teenage girls I met on IRC?

You can send a smaller version of a selected number of Doctor Fun cartoons as an electronic postcard at Toonogram, sponsored by Cyber Loft.

Toonogram was provided courtesy of Mostafa Eldefrawy, who did all of the work. Mostafa was also kind enough to give me the code to turn any Doctor Fun into a Toonogram, which I will do someday.

I should wish to receive Doctor Fun cartoons as missives in my "electronic mail". Is there perchance a Doctor Fun mailing list?

You can receive the latest Doctor Fun cartoon in your e-mail by joining Nicholas Barnard's Doctor Fun Mailing List.

I'm far away. Not close up. Is there a Doctor Fun site closer to me?

These Doctor Fun mirrors might be closer to you than ibiblio. This list is new and improved because the cartoons on these sites actually update. There used to be more mirrors. If you know of a mirror that isn't on this list, or want to be a mirror, drop me a line.

• Australia - Today's Doctor Fun and The Doctor Fun Page from Australian Cybermalls. (Their page only updates the latest cartoons, and looks different than this page.)
• Austria - Today's Doctor Fun and browse the Doctor Fun files from the Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria.
• Germany - Today's Doctor Fun and The Doctor Fun Page from Dr. Bernhard L. Winkler's WWW-Mirror at the University of Bayreuth, Germany.
• Great Britain - Today's Doctor Fun and The Doctor Fun Page from Manchester.
• New Zealand - Today's Doctor Fun and The Doctor Fun Page from Nick Kean in New Zealand.
• Sweden - Today's Doctor Fun and The Doctor Fun Page from SUNET.
• United States - Today's Doctor Fun and The Doctor Fun Page from the ibiblio mirror at Yale Medical School.

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We're a group of former Enron billionaires trying to spend our now-worthless stock options on foolish purchases. Where can we buy Doctor Fun stuff?

Nowhere that that I know of, but if you keep asking for stuff, sometimes stuff appears.

Are you soliciting ideas for Doctor Fun?

No, I am not soliciting ideas for Doctor Fun.

But, I've got an idea..

No.

Is Doctor Fun Copyright (c) 2003 David Farley?

Yes. Feel free to link to Doctor Fun, send it to your friends, send it to your enemies, print it out and use it for toilet paper (use the glossy photo paper so you clog the toilet real good) or tape it to your door. But anything beyond personal use I'd appreciate it if you'd contact me. You can use all those file names that never change to always link to the latest cartoon, the latest logo, the latest thumbnails, the latest week, and that. Thanks.

Some of those e-mail addresses on the old cartoons don't work. That's a puzzler.

Yes. tezcat.com, for instance, is out of business. This is the correct address:

d-farley@ibiblio.org

More! More! I want to know more!

Quick - before you wet your pants, read the tedious and exhaustive Doctor Fun FAQ.

Thanks for reading Doctor Fun! David

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Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2003 19:19:14 --0400
From: strongbad@homestarrunner.com
To: d-farley@metalab.unc.edu
Subject: Re: Your application
Parts/Attachments:

$ rsync -av ibiblio.org::Dr-Fun/ /path/to/local/mirror/dir

The rsync man page is here.

I am hopeful that the mirror sites that are updating (some seem to be a little sporadic, but I appreciate the thought) will continue to mirror using rsync. There might be other ways to do it using http, but that is up to you.

If you are not mirroring Doctor Fun and are simply one of my cherished readers, you will not see any change at all.

Thanks ot Adrianne at ibiblio for helping me with this. Adrianne also set up a second area for some of the files on the /Dr-Fun tree. I will be moving some of the extraneous stuff, like the running pictures to this area so that mirror sites don't need to pick these things up if all they want is the cartoons. In fact, I might add more silly things that don't belong under the /Dr-Fun directory and everybody will be a winner.

July 21, 2003

• Stay tuned for an announcement about mirroring and Doctor Fun file locations. We are either going to move to using rsync, and put all the Doctor Fun files in the html branch of ibiblio (meaning ftp access goes away), or put the html files in the /Dave/Dr-Fun directory so that this hated recursive symbolic link that makes people think the files aren't updating goes away. If you have an opinion about this, let me know. Thanks.
• Tardy on the logo again.
• Happy Birthday, Mom!

July 9, 2003, I've eliminated the bizarro linkage between the /html file under /Dr-Fun/html and /Dr-Fun, which maybe used to be useful but now causes nothing but problems. If this has messed up your mirroring, contact me and I'll, um, do something, I'm not sure what.

July 1, 2003, for no particularly good reason other than to have a news item, and because I suppose it keeps me fit to draw more cartoons, I've updated the running pictures to include two more races, one recent, and one from last summer. Not much of an explanation for either of them, except you can follow the pictures from start to finish. If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you might like.

• 2003 Kettle Moraine 100-mile/100K Endurance Runs. I made it all the way through the 100-miler.
• 2002 Iceland Ultramarathon (55K).

June 16, 2003, haven't forgot the the logo - busy, busy - you're still getting the new cartoons.

June 9, 2003, due to a little scheduling problem, I didn't update the cartoon Monday, but there is no break this week. New logo soon.

June 6, 2003, next Monday's cartoon will be updated late, probably Monday afternoon my time, but there will be new cartoons next week - no break.

June 2, 2003, my as it turns out not-very-trusty Sony VAIO pen tablet computer suddenly crapped out on me due to an expensive and proprietary cable that breaks, however this should not interrupt production. Back to the old ways...

May 26, 2003 - we're back we're back we're back! That's a good thing, I think. No breaks for awhile.

May 19, 2003 - (same notice as above) - Since few people saw last week's break cartoons before ibiblio started having some problems, I'm continuing the break for another week. Normal operations will recommence on May 26th. At least there's a new logo. Also, many thanks to the ibiblio staff for putting everything back together.

May 12, 2003, Doctor Fun is still on break, but as promised, here's some "more stuff", meaning 100 more cartoons from 1988-89. How many of them can there possibly be? There are still some left, and then there are all the other years between then and 1993 when Doctor Fun started. New stuff next week. Sorry about the bunny logo - I had a fabulous Mother's Day logo planned, but only had time to get the old cartoons ready.

May 5, 2003, Doctor Fun is on break this week. As usual, there are some, meaning "100" freshly-scanned old cartoons for you to feast your peepers on. The fun starts here. Also, as an extra feature, I'm slipping some of these new cartoons in as the "latest" Doctor Fun in hopes that people like that better than the usual note that I'm on break. This batch of old cartoons seems to be a bit better than some of the other batches, in my humble opinion, but what do I know. More stuff next week.

April 28, 2003, ok, probably a two-week break starting next week, with some new/old stuff each week. I have two trips (not related to cartoons) coming up and I'm a little behind schedule.

April 21, 2003,

• Slashdot me two times baby - slashdot me twice today. Well, this past weekend, anyway. What were the chances of that. Stories are here and here.
• And that's not all the excitement. Just like last year but maybe not like next year (yeesh), I squeezed out thirty more Peeps cartoons, hastily written and sloppily drawn. It's Doctor Fun's Peeporama 2003! Also, check out last year's Peeporama, and other Doctor Fun peep cartoons from the past, including last week, 2002 and this one, 2001 and this one, not to mention this one from 2000.
• Most likely for sure I will be taking a one-week break May 5.

April 14, 2003,

• It's Peeps Week on Doctor Fun. For those of you listening in from other places who don't know what peeps are - imagine a small, delicious marshmallow chicken.
• Curiously, there is an article about Doctor Fun in this month's University of Chicago Magazine. And if you typed in that link at the end of the article, welcome Chicago Alumni! At no extra charge to you here's a special expanded list of links to things mentioned in the article:
  • A cartoon about squirrels with the Regenstein Library in the background
  • Another cartoon with the entrance of the Regenstein Library. This is the old entrance before the lobby was rebuilt.
  • The Paul Serano cartoon
  • The Manhattan Project Christmas cartoon
  • Me drawing at the Sony Vaio drawing tablet computer, and here's what the screen looks like.
  • My "corner office near the A-level stacks" in the Reg. I do have a day job.
  • The first comic on the Internet: Hans Bjordahl's "Where the Buffalo Roam"
  • The first home of Doctor Fun: Keith Waclena's computer "neuromancer". (Sorry, this is the best picture I have.)
  • The Bill Gates cake. This was actually the "screen" for a cake that was shaped like a computer monitor. I heard he didn't eat any of the cake but he kept the screen. (There's more to this than meets the eye; this was drawn when Microsoft Windows was still Windows 3.x. "Chicago" was the code name for Windows 95; the screen is Microsoft's within-Word web browser plug-in; the Doctor Fun pose is a reference to an Easter egg that was hidden in Windows 3.x.)
  • The book Amy mentioned that I was reading was "The Earth Dwellers: Adventures in the Land of Ants", by Erich Hoyt.
• Not only that, but there are some Doctor Fun cartoons on display in the John Crerar Library's Science & Humor Exhibit.

April 3, 2003, Jack Leblond, who has maintained a Doctor Fun search engine at Net Smart Incorporated, since way back when, has asked me to note that he is also maintaining the Support Your Troops page.

April 2, 2003, This cartoon is running in National Review this week.

March 31, 2003 - I did, in fact, forget to update the cartoon last Thursday, but everything's fixed now. Thanks to everyone keeping score. By amazing coincidence, this week happens to be archive page "404" of Doctor Fun.

March 17, 2003 - back, from a fabulous one-week break! There will be more.

News news! There was an article about ibiblio that mentioned Doctor Fun in the News Observer.

March 10, 2003 - As promised, a one-week break, and, as usual, some old scanned cartoons from 1988-89. The new ones start here. There may not be as many cartoons from those two years as I thought - I've caught some duplicates. You might also notice that some in this batch were re-used in early Doctor Funs. And, there's a whole bunch about guitars. I might give those their own page after the break. I deny knowing how to play the guitar or knowing anything about guitars anymore.

Not sure what the schedule is for the book. Keep sending me your favorites. Thanks.

March 6, 2003 - It seems nobody much liked having the thumbnail of the latest cartoon on this page, so I got rid of it.

March 4, 2003 - For sure I am taking a one-week break next week. For sure I will have some treat for you in place of new cartoons.

February 27, 2003 - Cock-a-doodle-doo! Today is either the 2000th or the 2001st Doctor Fun, if I counted them right. Why the confusion? It turns out I repeated myself. Honest mistake. Didn't catch it until recently. Never happen again. Right. The two culprits are

and

I'm keeping them both, because they are of historic interest. Now I can say there are thousands of Doctor Funs online. Why not read them all? Why not read them randomly?

Wait! That's not all. There is even more. Want to know when anything updates on the Doctor Fun pages? It's important to know this because hardly anybody ever looks at this page compared to the gazillions (slight exaggeration) of readers who just grab the cartoon. I could be giving free money away here and you'd never know. Thanks to Jonathan Ah Kit, you can now join the Doctor Fun Website Changes List. Thanks, Jonathan!

February 24, 2003 - stayed tuned for a Doctor Fun milestone later this week, but in the meantime, enjoy this old favorite.

February 17, 2003 - whenever I don't have any real news, I'm going to start posting some random page here in order to make it look like there's some news. For instance, this week check out Doctor Fun's Head Trip. Whoa.

February 10 - Ever wanted to color in Doctor Fun yourself? Try a Doctor Fun Segmation! What's a Segmation? Click on it and find out. From ... Segmation!

February 3, Coming real soon, Doctor Fun Paint-by-Numbers! (As soon as I hear back from them - think I'm not allowed to call it "Paint-by-Numbers" ... "Color-According-to-Digits"?)

January 22, Here's a Doctor Fun logo from many years ago.

January 20

• In case you didn't notice, there's now an RRS feed for the last 15 Doctor Funs, courtesy of Philip Newton. Thanks, Philip!
• I finally finished the Doctor Fun book cover. You can see it on the Doctor Fun Book FAQ page. Still looking for your favorite Doctor Funs. Mail me. Thanks.
• Coming real soon, Doctor Fun Paint-by-Numbers! (I think)

January 6 - back again. No breaks for awhile. The book cover will be available for you to peep at soon. Thanks to all of you who sent me their votes for favorite Doctor Fun cartoons. Looks like we'll be sorting them all out at the end of January, so you still have time to e-mail me . More news soon.

December 29, 2002

• Still on break, but there is new stuff (see above).
• A certain P. Wilkins is the only person so far to send me any favorite cartoons to consider for the book. And she wants this one.

December 10, 2002 At last, here's some news about the Doctor Fun book.

November 25, 2002 Hello to anybody who stopped by the Plan Nine Publishing booth at the Midwest Furfest and picked up some cards or stopped to chat. See? There really is going to be a Doctor Fun book and this proves it.

November 10, 2002 I've changed the main Doctor Fun page to put all the links back at the top. News on the book to follow, as promised. There will likely be a two-week break at Thanksgiving due to my driving all over the place. Fortunately I have about a zillion more old scanned cartoons to put online.

October 29, 2002 Trick-or-treat! We found another mirror site. This time it's Yale Medical School. Yay for Yale! Go Bulldogs! Actually it looks like they're mirroring most or all of ibiblio and Doctor Fun is just part of this mix. Never-the-less, you can get the latest Doctor Fun, or the Doctor Fun Page, from gnujake.med.yale.edu.

October 28, 2002 A slightly less confusing home page and some news on the book (yes, there is a book, no, it won't be here by Christmas) is coming. I'm posting this here to make me actually do it sometime soon.

September 23, 2002 Thanks to Nicholas Barnard, who runs the Doctor Fun mailing list, you can also subscribe to get the latest Doctor Fun logo whenever it updates.

September 16, 2002 - we're back. No breaks until maybe Thanksgiving (except for unexpected breaks) - yay!

Also, new mirror discovered! This one in Austria. They are mirroring the cartoons but not the pages, but that's ok. Get the latest Doctor Fun or browse the Doctor Fun files at the Vienna University of Technology.

August 13, 2002 Mirror News! I've been told the SUNET mirror for Doctor Fun in Sweden is active again, and I've corrected the links to the mirror at the Manchester University in Great Britain. Thanks to both these places for their continuing support.

May 20, 2002 The Doctor Fun book is still in the works, in color, and all that. I should have the cover art ready for you to look at soon, which will be at Plan Nine Publishing, but it is not ready yet.

May 3, 2002, Virus warning: My e-mail addresses from ibiblio, including old ones that I don't even use anymore, are cropping up on this Klez or Exploit-MIME virii that are going around. I have nothing to do with these messages, other than someone has hijacked my e-mail address as the return. Most likely, the people sending them are unaware that their computers are infected, so it's bad both ways. I've been receiving these things myself, supposedly from me! It is a continual aggravation.

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