Mac Hall

Writer Matt Boyd (left) and creator Ian McConville (right)

• Ian McConville – The main character of the series, Ian is based on the artist of the web comic. His trademark look is red ponytailed hair with a backwards baseball cap and his prescription sunglasses. Sometimes a cat can be seen resting on his cap, and the cat often seems to convey Ian's expressions, a motif also used by Fred Gallagher. He is the most innocent-seeming and upbeat of the characters, though often the most incomprehensible as well. He is prone to rather odd behavior when bored or procrastinating. Though not nearly as obsessive a gamer as Micah (see below), he plays computer and video games fairly often. He's known to be terrible at cooking. In May 2006, he graduated from college, moved to San Francisco, and joined the Three Rings Design crew (reflecting similar steps taken by the artist around the same time).
• Matt Boyd – A character based on the comic's writer, Matt is an aspiring journalist. Slender of build, with medium-length black hair and a goatee, he often wears a shirt with the Bungie logo on it. He seems sometimes more easily perturbed than the other characters, and occasionally less confident, but has a high regard for education, current events, and journalistic integrity. He seems frustrated fairly often by what he perceives as scientific illiteracy among the general populace. He was known to be taking, and may still be taking, antidepressants.
• JM – JM has black hair and a goatee somewhat similar to Matt's, but is rather stockier and heavier of build. He wears a shirt with a Superman-like logo on it that has an "SP" instead of an "S" on it, which stands for "SuperPimp". He is the least irascible of the characters, an unflappable young man who seems unsurprised by the less pleasant sides of the world in which he lives, maintaining a gentle stoicism and sense of humor about it. He was responsible for convincing the other characters to move into the house in which the series concludes.
• Drew – Drew is a cynical computer science major who is "permanently" angry. He is thin, has glowing red eyes (starting at comic 80), with brown hair that has changed styles several times over the course of the strip, but always has a goatee and glasses. He is dismissive of intellectual arrogance, though he does not always respond to those he considers less bright than himself with good humor. He enjoys pulling pranks on other people.
• Micah Chang – Micah is a usually-cheerful young man who is given to impulsivity at times, such as jumping off a second-story balcony while imitating the famous music video for Fatboy Slim's song "Weapon of Choice". He is the most obsessive gamer of the group. He has longish black hair, is at least half-Chinese, and usually is portrayed as wearing a mostly-black, Asian-style coat with two white bars on the collar and voluminous sleeves. He started out as a compulsive EverQuest player, in which he plays a gnome, but switched to World of Warcraft later on in the strip. His courtship (in a fairly loose sense of the word) and relationship with Helen Richter was one of the strip's themes for some time, though she has since broken up with him.
• Helen Richter – Helen is a former architecture student, generally cheerful but with a tendency to be quite sarcastic when annoyed, and is the only major female character of the series. She has long brown hair, a slender build, and is known to be quite physically attractive; she often wears a pink-and-white T-shirt with a deranged-looking smiley face on it. She dated Micah for some time, but eventually broke up with him. However, while they were together, Micah convinced her to begin playing EverQuest with him, though at Ian's suggestion she switched to World of Warcraft, and she is now a regular player of that.

Much of the costume/visual iconography of the characters was based on their real-life counterparts and/or their suggestions.

• Alan – An aggressive rival of Drew (though not always antagonistic to him), Alan is often the victim of Drew's pranks. He tends to hang out with either Jon or Drew.
• Jon – A college failure (he was kicked out for poor grades) who still hangs around the dorm. He sticks around the campus to play video games and use the college's high-speed Internet access.
• Mike – A friend of Helen who works at the college's sound studio. Popular with the ladies, but only when he isn't trying. He hasn't appeared in the strip for several years.
• Helen's mother – An attractive older woman who seems to take life as it comes, who usually appears with Helen's sister in portrayals of Helen's home life.
• Helen's sister – A bright-eyed little girl with a shock of wild red hair. She is in grade school, and does not always seem to enjoy the best or most forward-thinking teaching by her instructors, which has formed the basis of a few strips.
• Jason – Helen's ex-boyfriend, who resembled a classic nerd stereotype, thin and weak-looking with thick glasses and a pocket protector. He broke up with her because he thought they should see other people, which made no sense to the other people at the campus.
• Anthony – A somewhat violent friend of Ian's from back home and a self-described "car-ninja".
• Cthulhu – An H. P. Lovecraft character who pops up in the story now and then.
• Ren – Ian's character in the Morrowind video game. She is a moogle who sometimes appears wearing armor and carrying a sword.
• Prof. Dave Theison – Better known as the 'Hawaiian-shirt professor' who teaches one of Drew's classes. He hired Drew as his assistant because they share the same cynical outlook on life. He was based on the University of Maryland professor of the same name who died in 2003.
• Jes McConville – Also known as "That chick with Mac Hall", is the real life wife of artist Ian. She appears in many convention reports and escapades, especially in Three Panel Soul. Jes is also the business manager and convention coordinator for the comic and a more reliable member of the team to reply to emails. Ian has recently proposed to Jes. This comic shows a joke used in previous comics to show it, and a rant later posted by Ian shows that he used a videogame he created to pop the question. Ian then asked Matt Boyd to be his best man. They were married on December 20, 2008.
• Ice Nine – Based on Ian's friend and former roommate Seth Geib. Ice Nine (Seth's online gaming name) appears in only a couple strips, the occasional photo, and a strip named after his character. Known only for having one line in which he says "Damn you McConville!" (comic 114)