Following the adventures of two mad scientists (fictionalized versions of Weir himself and his best friend Casey Grimm) and of their friends and acquaintances (such as writer Jennifer Brozek), it was typically updated three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays throughout the early 2000s, primarily with a gag-a-comic format, including ongoing storylines and running gags.
Some strips are inspired by then-current events, such as with the Opportunity mission to Mars, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2004 United States presidential election.
[6] On 31 December 2021, a Casey and Andy subreddit, created and overseen by David Morgan-Mar, Casey Grimm, and John Gillman, with Weir's approval, was created for the social news and discussion website Reddit, publishing an official crossover comic with the Tredlocity science fantasy webcomic Val and Isaac, starring the character of Space Dread, in January 2022, along with an authorised offline-accessible Mega archive of the webcomic.
[11] At the 2016 Silicon Valley Comic-Con, Weir sat on the “Master of Webcomics" panel in response to his series,[12][13][14] with Tapas App's 2016 promotion on Weir's webcomic start (prior to the launch of Principles of Uncertainty and Cheshire Crossing) additionally citing Bob the Angry Flower as a primary influence for Casey and Andy.
[15] The title characters are 21st-century mad scientists dabbling in time and dimension travel, instantaneous cloning, and increasingly complex apocalyptic doomsday devices.
In an interview with Leesa Hanagan of Sequential Tart on 7 January 2008, Weir cited Peanuts, Bloom County and Stephen Notley's Bob the Angry Flower as the inspiration behind Cheshire Crossing and the then-on-hiatus Casey and Andy.
His alter-ego is Dr. X, a supervillain whose attempts at evil often cause good instead,[23] although he does easily become dictator of France (before becoming bored with the country and accidentally having them surrender themselves over to Germany).
[24] Casey sports a pointy spike of yellow hair swept forward over his forehead, which only accentuates his large nose.
[34] Fortunately (or unfortunately) for the rest of his universe, once Casey realized the clone would not share the fruits of world conquest, he quite sensibly shot the new Dr.
[35] Casey did get to indulge his passion for ruling (briefly) when Satan asked him to mind Hell while she fought the rebellious demon Azrael, later joining the League of Recurring Antagonists alongside him,[36][37] and running for President of the United States.
Barely more stable than Casey, he's mostly content to live a placid suburban life of building dimensional portals and dating Satan, including selling out Neo to the Agents.
[66][67][68][69] Satan is the fallen archangel and Queen of Darkness, also known as Lucifer "Luci" Morningstar, the Light-Bringer, "grounded" from Heaven by her father, God, for attempting to usurp him.
Satan in her normal form has a forked tongue,[45] a little tuft of hair right between her eyes, and horns inspired by the character Rook Bartley from Genesis Climber MOSPEADA and Robotech: The New Generation.
[72] Despite being the ruler of Hell and the second most powerful being in the universe, Satan commutes to work much like any mortal – except that she jumps dimensions rather than taking the bus.
She can shapeshift into a dizzying array of demonic and mortal forms, produce flames anywhere on her body at will, and shoot jets of fire from her hands.
[73][74] She can possess people,[75] provoke unnatural terror in any who dare contravene her wishes and summon numerous low-grade demons to perform her bidding – even if their loyalty is grudging at best.
As an idealist, he strongly believes that law and order are needed to maintain a stable, prosperous society, describing "Quantum probabilities [as] a dicey matter (no pun intended) .
[93][94][95] Despite this astounding intellect, he is not good at applied science, particularly inventing and building gadgets, or lying, a skill which his captain instructs him to learn.
[96] Jennifer "Jenn" Brozek lives next door to Casey and Andy on Wasatch Drive, therefore repeatedly suffering collateral damage from their failed experiments,[97] as well as being rendered incapable of socializing with more "normal" perople due to always ending up recounting various horrific tales she's involuntarily witnessed in front of them,[98][99] including having been sent back in time,[100][101] into hell, and into multiple parallel realities.
Based on the writer of the same name,[102] Jenn is later revealed by Quantum Cop to have an abnormal probability curve which results in strange things frequently happening in her vicinity; thus her many adventures are not as a result of her living so close to Casey and Andy, but rather Casey & Andy live next door to her because strange things are destined to happen in her vicinity.
[104][105] She is the future mother of the time traveller J.J.. During The Finale Arc, it is revealed that she is an international jewel thief (based on Shanex from Weir's novel Theft of Pride[106]) in the present day,[107][90] after having a successful career publishing her plagiarised Star Wars/The Lord of the Rings-mashup fan-fiction in 1886 on being stranded there: "Sith Lord of the Rings", under the bearded persona of "J. Brozek", and inadvertently creating the first fanboys.
[111] On 9 April 2006, Weir released a theme song based on Casey and Andy to his website, sung by Corey Vidal and the a cappella group Moosebutter,[112][113] which was subsequently animated on 12 May 2008.
[114] In December 2006, Lore Sjoberg of Wired praised the series for "finally address[ing] the still-important affliction of Stand-Up Smugness" with its protagonists, described as those who "assume that anything you don't understand must be stupid [and] repeat the rhetorical questions of stand-up comedians because you think your ignorance makes you look intelligent", in particular citing the "Comedian Night School" arc (from Strip #576).
[115][116] In December 2008, Morgan Wick negatively described the art style of Casey and Andy, in particular its "Casey and Andy Eyes", as nonetheless having been highly influential across the webcomic genre of the early 2000s, in particular The Wotch, El Goonish Shive, and later issues of the early-started Sluggy Freelance, saying:[117] "This condition, afflicting many a webcomic but especially those drawn by marginal artists or those overly inspired by anime, has as its major symptom extremely large eyes, often taking up more than half the face, with outlines that stop in the inside.
[118] RP Kitty of RPG.net has described the series as "rather hilarious in a completely bizarre way" and "a fun romp of an adventure presented in comic strip form" Speaking with regards GURPS Casey and Andy, Kitty describes the role-playing game as "[a] faithful and well-done adaptation of the Casey & Andy webcomic.
[119] Graham L. Wilson of icculus similarly lauded Casey and Andy as "one of the best web comics out there", in particular praising the recurring character of the Bug Fairy as "a poignant representation of the feeling that we software developers get that something unseen is wreaking our code", before presenting a homage GIF of the character for his own then-ongoing series Symel, a free content Internet cartoon project first created on 1 January 2006.
[120] Rebecca Salek of Sequential Tart praised Casey and Andy as "geeky fun, [worth] a chance [to read]!
", comparatively comparing its protagonists to Riff from Sluggy Freelance, and in particular praising Weir's characterisation of Satan as a "real softie",[20] while WebSnark referred to it as "the future of geek comics [and] a journeyman strip", praising Weir's improving artistic style and the character development of the characters of Satan and Quantum Cop throughout the series.
[121][122] Reviewing If I Were An Evil Overlord by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis for the MIT Science Fiction Society of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jake Beal favoured the novel in comparison to Casey and Andy as "an evergreen source of geek meta-humor", in particular the events of the webcomic's "Quantum Crook!"
[123] Sergei and Morag Lewis of Toothy Cat comparatively compared the series to fellow webcomic College Roomies from Hell, described as "another 'me and my mates' comic", with both being "[n]otable for some really quite insane plots and a lack of characters", in addition to "[l]ong stretches of random gags, interspersed with long plots which require accurate quantum physics to navigate provides an interesting tempo", further praising the series' "occasional 'solve this riddle' strips, which would be better if the riddles used were less well known", but nonetheless as "[s]till a nice touch.".