Cross Time Cafe

The Cross Time Cafe is a crossover webcomic started in 2003. It features characters from Freefall, 21st Century Fox, Carry On and Freighter Tails, as well as various characters from these comics' forums. The comics are primarily drawn (in order, by total number of strips drawn) by Scudder "White Pony" Kidwell, Kathy Kellogg (née Garrison), Mark Stanley and/or Scott Kellogg, with occasional guest artists.


 * Address: http://www.whiteponyproductions.com/ctc/present.htm
 * Ran from/to: October 2003 - present

Concept
The concept behind the comic is that it exists outside of the above comics' continuities, allowing the characters to let their hair down and relax. As noted on the site itself:


 * What you see and read inside the "Cross Time Cafe" here in no way reflects or affects what is happening inside the Official Online Canon of anyone [sic] artist's currently running storyline. What takes place inside the "Cross Time Cafe" is all in fun and silliness; and should not be taken seriously.

The general plot line has Florence (Freefall), White Pony (S. Kidwell's character) and Mzzkiti (Freighter Tails) running the Cross Time Cafe in their spare time. They are frequently visited by Jack Black, Jenny Curtis (21st CF) and Kathy Grrsn (Carry On), as well as other characters. Florence and White Pony are a couple, an idea that originated in APAs and fanzines of old, well before the current webcomics.

Each episode of the strip is written in "round robin" style: the current artist is free to continue whatever happened in the previous strip, taking off in any direction he or she chooses. This has resulted in two or three ongoing subplots, which have slowly proceeded since the beginnings of the strip:


 * Florence and White Pony have become lost exploring the catacombs beneath the Cafe (though it is implied they aren't very far away).
 * Mzzkiti is attempting to manage the actual cafe, though she has to put up with incompetence from her employees...especially Sam Starfall, who acquired a monstrous wreck of a food-vending machine that now needs to be repaired.
 * A clutch of sqids (Sam's origin species) have shown up, and are in the beginning stages of their own plan for world domination.

Appearances

 * The first two characters to arrive at the Cross Time Cafe were Florence and Jenny.
 * The first character to appear outside of the comics' casts was "Hortmage", a frequent poster to the Freefall forum.
 * White Pony arrives in strip #3.
 * Sam Starfall (Freefall) first appears in #5.
 * Hortmage's daughter appears in #6. (A running joke on the forums revolves around Hortmage getting caught "looking at vixens again" by his daughter.)
 * Mzzkiti first appears in #14.
 * The robots from Freefall pitch in to remodel the CTC in #18.
 * Helix (Freefall) shows up in #22...sort of. (The strip is an April Fools comic.)
 * Jack (21st CF) makes his first appearance in #36.
 * Strip #38 is the first appearance of Kathy (Carry On) in the CTC.
 * Scott Malcomson draws strips #53 and #84, where his "Roy Calbeck" character makes an appearance.
 * Helix makes his "official" first appearance in #62.
 * "Archae," the anthropomorphic archaeopteryx from a number of message boards, makes a cameo (looking quite startled) in #70.
 * Kyota, a character from Eric Nault's comic Hellbound who appeared as a wolf-morph in an April Fools edition of that comic, appears in that form for the first time in  #128, alongside three of her co-stars from that comic.

Trivia

 * Strips #37 and #38 do cross back over into 21st Century Fox and Carry On, respectively, in regards to events surrounding Cecil's marriage to Beth and Barb in 21st CF.
 * There are a handful of strips that contain Easter Eggs hidden within the panels that the reader can click on to reveal new humorous images.