Welcome to the Gang

Origin

The comic was drawn by Shenanigansen, the artist behind the webcomic Owl Turd (later Shen Comix), and posted to his site on December 4, 2017.

The premise is a single joke. A newcomer is introduced to a criminal gang, and the members are named for their crimes with total literalism: Stealin’ Steve, Murderin’ Mike, and — the punchline — Crimes Johnson, whose actual offence turns out to be that he posted a bad tweet.

Shenanigansen deleted the comic the same day he posted it, saying he simply was not happy with it. By then the internet had already taken the only part he liked — the name Crimes Johnson — and started building on it.

What it means / how it’s used

The comic is an exploitable roster. The three named gang members get replaced with a themed set: each one named for a specific behaviour, escalating in absurdity, with the final member’s “crime” being something trivial, petty, or completely disproportionate to the company they are keeping.

The joke structure is always the same:

• Two or three members with serious, plainly named offences.
• One final member whose offence is embarrassingly small.
• The implication that all of them belong to the same gang regardless.

It is used to satirise communities that lump serious and trivial infractions together, and — more often — as an absurdist naming game, where the comedy is purely in the escalating rhythm of the names.

How it spread

Adoption was immediate and simultaneous with the deletion. Reddit variations appeared on December 4, 2017, the same day the comic went up, and by December 5, 2017 remixes were circulating on r/MemeEconomy and being catalogued formally.

The speed is characteristic of purpose-built exploitables. Shenanigansen’s comics are drawn clean, with simple figures and clear speech bubbles, which makes them trivially editable — the artist’s style is effectively a template format whether or not he intends it to be.

That has been a recurring dynamic with his work. Several Owl Turd comics have become widely used templates, sometimes to the artist’s visible frustration, and he has occasionally responded by drawing follow-ups about the experience of having his own panels rewritten.

Notable examples & variations

• Themed rosters where every member’s crime belongs to one niche community.
• Versions where the final crime is something the poster admits to.
• Redrawn versions in other artists’ styles.
• Extended rosters with five or six members for a longer escalation.
• Versions that keep the original names and change only the final one.

Legacy / cultural impact

Crimes Johnson is one of the internet’s more durable name-based memes, and the character has outlived both the comic and its deletion — he is referenced by people who have never seen the original strip and could not name the artist.

It also illustrates something about webcomic culture in the late 2010s. An artist posted a strip, disliked it, and removed it within hours; the internet had already copied it, and the version that survived is a set of edits made by strangers. Deletion, at that point, is not a retraction — it is just the removal of the original.