Kristofer Straub (born January 17, 1979) is an American web cartoonist, performer, and content creator. His key web comic projects include Checkerboard Nightmare, Starslip, Chainsawsuit, Broodhollow, and F Chords. Other notable projects include the creepypasta "Candle Cove" as well as collaborations with Scott Kurtz ("Blamimations"), Paul Verhoeven ("28 Plays Later"), and Penny Arcade ("Strip Search", "Kris and Scott's Scott and Kris Show," "Acquisitions Incorporated: The C-Team"). He currently writes and produces the YouTube analog horror series Local 58 TV. He also works with Penny Arcade, co-hosting the PAX gaming conventions as well as appearing in their Dungeons and Dragons collaborations with Wizards of the Coast. Career Straub graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a degree in computer science. Web Cartoonist Straub launched his first comic, Checkerboard Nightmare, online in 2000. The strip was self-aware and used metahumour to follow the main character Chex's obsession with gaining fame as a webcomic character. In 2005, Straub began creating Starslip Crisis (eventually shortened to Starslip), a daily science fiction/comedy webcomic. Starslip was first set in the 3440s and followed the crew of starship-museum IDS Fuseli, named after painter Henry Fuseli, which largely featured 20th and 21st century art. Starslip Crisis was part of the webcomics cooperation collective Blank Label Comics until Straub split away from Blank Label to merge Starslip with his new collective, Halfpixel, in November 2007. The comic initially ran under the name Starshift Crisis. The nearly identical Starslip Crisis appeared early in the strip's run, with its own website and associated content, differing only in that the term "starslip" replaced "starshift". The two ran in parallel, until a strip in August 2005 which definitively ended the plot of Starshift Crisis, but which played out differently in Starslip Crisis. Reportedly, the name change was caused by a legal issue. In 2008, Straub began writing another webcomic, Chainsawsuit, publishing three strips a week. The comic featured simple black and white drawings and slapstick humor. It ran for 11 years and achieved particular notoriety for its strip All Houses Matter upon release in 2014 and then again during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Writer and producer In December 2006, Straub became co-writer and co-producer alongside Scott Kurtz on PvP: The Series, a series of animated shorts featuring the PvP characters. In 2007 he repurposed the Halfpixel site to serve as a hub for his and Kurtz's joint creative projects.