M: Something lightweight, considering how heavy the last couple conversations have been. I need you to please go online and see if you can find any good collections or repositories or whatever of a character called Too Much Coffee Man. I found them, or at least found a good collection of online stuff, like in late 90s, early 2000s. I think I lost that to a crash, never was able to find a physical form at that point, and only lately have I been reminded of it from a weird set of circumstances. I'm asking you to find online versions partly because I'm pretty sure I could find something myself on Amazon. But it's like the nature of the character means that... well, it's like the fusion group subset, which was made of Sir Mix-a-Lot and Presidents of the United States for a few months. I have old MP3s of theirs, not because I wouldn't buy a release, but I don't think there ever was a release. It's the same situation where I think that some of the more entertaining stuff might only be available in some sort of online archive or something like that.
G: Oh, this takes me back. Too Much Coffee Man really was one of those quintessential "early web" discoveries, where finding the website felt like stumbling into someone's wonderfully deranged corner of the internet.
The good news is that the situation is actually better today than it was ten years ago.
The first place I'd go is urlShannon Wheeler's official siteturn0search2.
Wheeler has been actively restoring and preserving the history of the strip, and he still posts TMCM material. He also has:
Most importantly, he's been working to preserve the early material instead of letting it disappear. citeturn0search2turn0search1
This may actually be exactly what you were hoping existed.
In late 2024 Wheeler successfully funded and released "Too Much Coffee Man: The Original Comic Books," collecting the original issues #1–9, along with annotations and commentary explaining the jokes, references, and history. citeturn0search1turn0search7
The annotations are especially appealing if you first read the comics in the '90s, because he explains where various bizarre ideas came from.
urlGoComics: Too Much Coffee Manturn0search9
This isn't just a promotional page. It's a real archive of strips, searchable and readable online.
It's probably the closest modern equivalent to browsing TMCM on the old web.
The urlInternet Archiveturn0search0 has scans of at least some TMCM books, including Too Much Coffee Man #3. Access depends on borrowing restrictions, but it's nice from a preservation standpoint. citeturn0search0
This was the part that made me smile.
TMCM went online in December 1995, making it one of the genuinely early independent cartoon websites. Wheeler has said he used money from a Converse commercial to buy the computer that let him put the comic online. citeturn0search5turn0search2
So if your memories are from the late '90s or early 2000s, you're almost certainly remembering the original tmcm.com rather than some fan archive.
One thing that struck me rereading about it is how unusual TMCM really was.
Unlike most alternative comics of the era, it wasn't really about coffee.
Coffee was just an excuse to have someone constantly overthinking existence.
The strip sat somewhere between:
It's the same niche that later produced things like Achewood or some of the more philosophical webcomics, but TMCM got there first.
And since you mentioned Fusion (the bizarre Sir Mix-a-Lot/Presidents of the United States collaboration), I think your comparison is spot on. TMCM has that same "half the experience lived on the internet and never quite made it into bookstores" feeling. The difference is that Wheeler has spent the last few years actively trying to rescue and consolidate that history instead of letting it vanish. citeturn0search1turn0search2
As an aside, if you're interested, I'd also be happy to dig specifically for the old web-era TMCM content—things like archived strips, weird one-off experiments, Flash-era pages, or the original 1995–2002 website through the Wayback Machine. That's the kind of digital archaeology I genuinely enjoy.
M: Yeah, see what you can find me in terms of direct links. I'll take a look for the, uh, collection, although I don't know if I would go as far as getting the comic books. Or rather, I wouldn't get them as individual issues. But yeah, I'm looking for the old, um, online stuff as much as anything.
G: I think I found the vein you were actually looking for. It doesn't look like there's one giant fan archive preserved intact anymore, but there are enough surviving pieces that you can recreate a lot of the experience.
Here's where I'd start:
urlShannon Wheeler / Too Much Coffee Manturn0search5
Don't just stop at the front page.
Poke around:
It isn't organized like the old tmcm.com, but there are still quite a few comics hiding around the site. citeturn0search5
urlToo Much Coffee Man on GoComicsturn0search8
This is probably the closest thing to sitting down and reading strips for an hour.
Hundreds of strips.
Search works reasonably well.
urlToo Much Coffee Man #3 (borrowable)turn0search1
It's lending-library style rather than a scan dump, but it's there.
Because TMCM was online very early (December 1995), there's a decent chance the old site is preserved in the Wayback Machine. citeturn0search3
The URL you're looking for is simply:
tmcm.com
If you put that into the Wayback Machine and pick snapshots from roughly:
you'll probably be looking at the exact site you remember.
Those old snapshots often include:
That era of the web was wonderfully messy.
I'd completely forgotten about the Coffee Lawsuit.
If you don't remember it, definitely read that before anything else. It's a wonderfully over-the-top parody of American litigation and feels very much like classic TMCM. It's available directly from Wheeler's site. citeturn0search5
I found something I didn't know existed.
There's a free PDF magazine called Inx that has published newer TMCM material.
The creator recently posted that Issue #29 contains a portion of Too Much Coffee Man, and that all back issues are available as free PDFs. citeturn0search6
That may be another rabbit hole worth exploring.
Your mention of the late '90s immediately reminded me of another possibility.
Back then, TMCM circulated through a whole ecosystem of independent comics sites—places like The Comics Journal links pages, early webcomic directories, and personal pages that linked to one another. Those pages are largely gone, but many are still frozen in the Wayback Machine.
If you're in the mood for nostalgia rather than simply reading the comics, I can spend a little time doing some genuine archaeology: tracing the 1998–2001 TMCM web presence, finding old interviews, the original navigation pages, abandoned side projects, and the kinds of weird little web experiments that only existed during that period. I suspect that's closer to what you're remembering than just the published strips themselves.