Buttercup Festival is a webcomic created by poet and author David Troupes. The comic's first run, from February 17, 2000 to January 10, 2005, began as a feature in the University of Massachusetts Amherst newspaper, The Daily Collegian, where Troupes was an editor during his college years. It was written under the pseudonym "Elliott G. Garbauskas." At various times during its first run it was published in the newspaper, on its own web site, and in other student newspapers and independent periodicals. The second series ran from January 28, 2008 to November 24, 2013. The third series started on February 4, 2019 and is presently ongoing. Buttercup Festival'''s typical format is a strip of three or four panels, with the last often a non sequitur. Early installments feature simple two-value illustrations; as the author's skills matured, he began drawing larger tableaus and events. The comic's humor is marked by whimsy, puns, parody, and a gentle, eccentric madness. However, not all strips are wholly humorous; many are intended simply to evoke a sense of beauty or wonderment at nature (especially Sunday issues, painted in watercolor and often lacking dialogue), somewhat reminiscent at times of Calvin and Hobbes. Individual strips were collected in three print editions: Buttercup Festival, Irony is Killing my Soul, and Buttercup Festival: Unsinkable Affection for the World. As of January 2005, all are out of print. The author's other works include a short poetic graphic story called An Island People Go To, likewise out of print, and another webcomic called Green Evening Stories. Characters Though Buttercup Festival has little, if any continuity from one strip to the next, and does not build on past strips, the same protagonist appears in every strip, and several other characters recur. The strip's protagonist resembles the Grim Reaper, dressing in black robes and carrying a scythe. However, he is not intended to be Death; rather, his appearance was a parody of the Goth sub-culture, and he never uses the scythe except occasionally to nudge things. On one occasion a cloaked figure with scythe was shown, his head a skull as death's is traditionally portrayed, though it is unclear if this figure is indeed the main character. The protagonist's defining characteristics include limitless optimism (he once successfully built a hot air balloon out of cinder blocks, using his "unsinkable affection for the world" as fuel) and an idiosyncratic perception of reality (in one