Lackadaisy

Submission 8,633

About

Lackadaisy is an ongoing webcomic series by Tracy J. Butler set during Prohibition-era St. Louis. The series follows the exploits of the Lackadaisy Crew, a formerly prosperous crime gang fallen on hard times after the murder of their boss, Atlas May. The main protagonists for both the original webcomic and animated pilot are Rocky Rickaby, Calvin "Freckle" McMurray, and Ivy Pepper.

History

On July 19th, 2006, Tracy J. Butler debuted the Lackadaisy website^[1] along with the first four pages of its comic (shown below).^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]

The comic would later go on to earn four awards from the 2007 Web Cartoonists Choice Awards: Outstanding Artist,^[6] Outstanding Character Rendering,^[7] Outstanding Anthropomorphic Comic,^[8] and Outstanding Newcomer.^[9] The comic was also nominated for "Best Digital Comic" at the 2011 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards.^[10] The webcomic series went into hiatus in early 2020 to focus on a Kickstarter campaign for an animated pilot.

Kickstarter Campaign

On March 16th, 2020, a Kickstarter was launched for a animated short which adapted one of the comic's storylines focusing on Rocky, Freckle, and Ivy. On April 17th, 2020, the campaign ended after reaching a total of $330,256, which was over three times its initial goal of $85,000.^[11]

Animated Series

The Lackadaisy animated pilot premiered on the Lackadaisy YouTube channel on March 26, 2023. The pilot (shown below, left) received over 14 million views in over one year. On July 25th, 2023, a teaser trailer for the first season of Lackadaisy was posted to the YouTube channel (shown below, right), which received over 2.2 million views in over ten months.