Mac Hall

Mac Hall (debut: November 7, 2000) is a webcomic which was created through a bet between the creator Ian McConville and a friend who claimed he "couldn't make a comic like "Penny Arcade"". After the fifteenth comic, McConville was joined by Matt Boyd who began to write the comic.
"Mac Hall" follows the exploits of a group of college students who are typical slackers. The series primarily focused on the events that occurred between classes and after hours and only rarely references actual class work. The comic takes its name from MacDonald Hall, a dormitory at Bowling Green State University. Later in the series, the cast moves into a house, where they reside until graduation, and the comic's conclusion.
Mac Hall concluded on September 22, 2006, with McConville explaining that creating the comic was no longer fun. He also mentioned that the comic would continue in a new phase in October 2006, and after some delay a new project began. In early March 2007, Boyd linked to the pair's new webcomic, "Three Panel Soul", which had been updating unannounced since November 5, 2006. A note posted on February 5 welcomed visitors who managed to find the site on their own, but called it "(not) quite public yet."
"Three Panel Soul".
In Boyd's final "Mac Hall" newspost, the end period has a link to a 3 panel comic strip, showing an older representation of Boyd's comic strip persona, contemplating a lasting relationship. On December 27, Ian's wife Jes posted a link to "Three Panel Soul" in the Snafu Comics message board.
As of March 16, 2007, the front page of machall.com showed a split screen with the left side linking to the Mac Hall archives and the right side linking to Three Panel Soul. However, according to a post by McConville on March 29, 2007, "Mac Hall" was hacked. The site was down with a short notice posted, stating that Machall was being moved to a new server (the same one as Three Panel Soul). As of June 20, 2007, the "Mac Hall" archive was re-uploaded to the site's new host.
Other appearances of characters.
A spin-off series called "Mac Hall: Inside Mac Games" was made in 2001 for the website InsideMacGames. This series involved the same characters, but focused on their interest in video games for the Apple Macintosh. The series ran bi-monthly from October 2001 to July 2002. The real-life counterpart to the character Anthony eventually assumed writing these comics.
The series has often had crossover episodes with other online comics, in particular "Megatokyo".
McConville has drawn a number of guest episodes for "Megatokyo", and characters from both series make occasional cameos in each other's comics. Most notably, it was one of McConville and Boyd's guest strips for "Megatokyo" that gave Piro (Fred Gallagher) his reputation as a self-degrading artist whose "happy place" involved "sad girls in snow."
Several of the characters from "Mac Hall" were used in the War of the Webcomics expansion of the Internet-based trading card game, Cardmaster Conflict. The game is run by Mark Shallow, creator of such web comics as "Antihero for Hire" and "Adventurers!".
Characters.
Major characters.
Much of the costume/visual iconography of the characters was based on their real-life counterparts and/or their suggestions.
Digimon.
A notable in-joke with Mac Hall revolves around an attention grabbing gag involving "Digimon". Early on, Boyd and McConville noted that the top three search engine terms that led people to "Mac Hall" all had to do with Digimon-related pornography. So the joke was made that in order to boost traffic they would pander to the tastes of those people. As a result, a large number of websites of that persuasion linked to the comic, much to the chagrin and amusement of the authors. This particular gag sticks out, most likely because of its sexual content. However, it does not accurately reflect any of the comic's material.
As an April Fools prank in 2002, MacHall changed their frontpage to what initially appeared to be a Digimon Erotica page.
Books.
"Mac Hall" has released one book, "Mac Hall Volume:1", which covers the first 19 months of comics published by "Mac Hall".