4/10: Week in Review

Well, it looks like the D&D-focused role-playing website Dungeon Mastering is reaching out into the world of webcomics. Last week I reported on its collaboration comic series with Geeks Next Door, the first installment of which posted last Saturday. Now Dungeon Mastery has also posted an interview with Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins, better known as Tycho Brahe. In the interview, Holkins talks about his past role-playing experiences, his thoughts on 4th edition D&D, and his contribution to the April Fool’s Day preview of the "witchalok" class. For the most part, it's solely of interest to RPG enthusiasts, but Penny Arcade fans may want to tune in for his characteristically loquacious humor.

On a related subject, here's a comic I came across a few months ago that will be of interest to old-school video gamers: The Final Fantasy 6 Comic. The FF6 Comic, whose creator goes by the handle "Orinocou," is nothing less than an unofficial comic-form retelling of the Super Nintendo RPG whose name it shares. The storyline and characters will be familiar to anyone who's played FF6, but they're also quite accessible to newcomers, even to comic fans who don't play video games. The art starts off decent enough, but in recent installments it's gotten downright exceptional. Just goes to show what drawing regularly will do to improve one's skills! If The FF6 Comic sounds like your bag, be sure to go check it out.

Also in the realm of fantasy, this past Sunday's The Princess Planet features a truly bizarre situation when the local graveyard comes to life. Princess Christi springs to the rescue once again, and we find in the punchline panel that she's the one responsible for the living-graveyard situation. How? Well, do I look like I'm going to give away the funny? You can read it for yourself, via the magic of hyperlinking.

It's been awhile since this blog paid a visit to the Blank It universe, so let's make that the next stop on our journey. After navigating such hazards as windstorms that blow away the light, exploding robot bugs, and intelligent hair, our heroes come full-circle and return to the shovel beam. And in Thursday's installment, our heroes discover that a town has sprung up around the Shovel Beam. Some of our heroes are more eager to discover who populates it than others. In any event, we'll all find out who its inhabitants are on Monday. My money's on "more bug people."

In other news, Boxer Hockey creator Tyson Hesse has received a print publication offer and is taking steps toward turning Boxer Hockey into a quarterly comic book. Hesse himself delivers the announcement in this video, where you can hear the news in his own words, and hear him respond to a few of his readers' inquiries. However, he does plan to reach some closure in the current webcomic story arc before the move to print, and his comic recently wrapped up the game against Australia's team (which starts here). It's an interesting move, going from web to print, and I'm curious to see how it turns out for him.

And, let's conclude with a handful of quick shots:

• Cat and Girl's unemployed Boogeyman goes looking for work, but appears to be hilariously out of his element for the job interview in Tuesday's comic.


• Over at Starslip, uptight Protocol Officer Quine makes Vanderbeam look positively mellow by comparison. Vanderbeam gets snarky.


• For Arthur the Duck, the bathroom mirror provides opportunity for philosophical speculation in Tuesday's Sheldon.


• This past week, Moe from Moe tries to impress a Christian girl he's met by joining an evolution protest. While other cartoonists might treat this as an opportunity to make fun of the side they disagree with, Moe creator Michael Firman delivers hilariously naive absurdity from all parties. It's less making fun of the issues and more simply making fun--and I like that.


• If you purchase one piece of webcomics merchandise this year, let it be Dinosaur Comics' Time-Traveler's Survival Guide Shirt. Actually, it's probably still too early in the year to make that call, but still.


• And something would almost certainly be amiss if I didn't mention today's epic clash of webcomic titans over at Least I Could Do. Today the Final Civil War Crisis Whatever reaches an apex of unmitigated violence!

So, that's a wrap. Don't forget: I don't just update on Fridays! Recently we've seen reviews of Jump Leads #3 and Superfogeys #1. Have a good weekend, happy Easter, and I'll catch you next week.

Holy Crud, Boxer Hockey Has Updated

Boxer Hockey would probably be one of my favorite comics if it updated regularly. I mean, I do have sympathy for the creator, Tyson Hesse, who is going through an intensive college art program, and who wisely gives his studies priority over his comic. And when Boxer Hockey does update, it's polished and high-quality, and it has a manic slapstick energy to it that I've only really seen matched by Nobody Scores. But it updates sporadically. So I check it sporadically.

Today I checked it, and found that it had updated three times since I had last checked it. All of the new installments are pretty great, so I just wanted to take a moment to share them with you right now.

Here we have:

• the characters' sentiments and reflections on the comic's sporadically-updated status


• a rather bizarre homage to "A Charlie Brown Christmas," rendered in a perfect imitation of Charles Schulz's style


• and, rounding out the holidays, a New Year's strip in which Skip has an enormous ego.

So! Boxer Hockey. Good times. I'll see you guys Friday.

EDIT: The more I read this post, the more passive-aggressive it sounds. Ugh. So Just let me go on record as saying that Boxer Hockey is genuinely awesome, and its creator is a stand-up guy, no foolin'. Read his comic.

I Read Webcomics Religiously

So, what's up in webcomics this week? Religion.

(There are some other things that are up in webcomics this week, like the election results, but frankly I am pretty tired of politics, and this blog is nothing if not biased. I don't even read Octopus Pie regularly, what the crap kind of webcomic enthusiast am I. But anyway. Religion.)

This week marks the long-awaited return of Tyler Page's Nothing Better, a serial tale of two reluctant college roommates with a lot to learn from each other. Pretty much the instant I discovered it, NB became firmly cemented in my "comics I can't get enough of" list: it regularly delves into issues of religion, life, and meaning that most other webcomics would treat with an innocuous quip, and what's more, it manages to be thoughtful and sympathetic in its treatment of its characters' deeper convictions. This past Wednesday, the first page of Chapter 13 dropped readers into the middle of what I can only guess is a weird dream for Kat, unless the roof actually did come off their dorm in the middle of the night. I'm interested to see where this goes.

Page is also beginning a daily feature, Page-a-Day, for those of us for whom one or two weekly pages of Nothing Better is not enough. Woot!

I also made a new discovery this week: Evangeline. Originally debuting as a print comic during the 80s, Evangeline chronicles the adventures of a nun who tackles missions for the Vatican in the 23rd century. The creators were dissatisfied with the simplistic, "nun-and-gun" turn the original storyline took, so they are rebooting it for the web, with the first three chapters as the base. On their site's About page, Chuck Dixon & Judith Hunt state, "We...wanted to do a fun-to-read comic with some serious thought behind it."

The art is solid, and definitely reflects the 80s comic-book ethos; you can tell it's from the same period as Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns and The Watchmen. So far, the story looks like it may tackle the theme of how personal faith can survive and persist in the face of religious corruption. We'll see. In the meantime, it's updating with a page every weekday, so check it out.

More "restarts" news: on Monday, You'll Have That creator Wes Molebash announced that he will be concluding his comic on Friday, January 2nd, 2009. This is sort of sad news, as Wes will be wrapping up his comic's loose ends and bringing everything to a conclusion, but he also promises: "In February of ‘09 I’ll be launching a new comic feature here at this site." I'll miss YHT, but I'll also be glad to see what new project Wes has in store.

One thing I appreciate about Wes' work in YHT is the subtlety with which he addresses religion. One can infer from certain comics that focal couple Katie and Andy are Christians, but the strip is never too overt about it. The two never beat their friends and acquaintances over the head with religion; instead, they simply try to live and love in a manner consistent with their faith. Wes himself is a confessing Christian, and if Angie Kurokami from Multiplex is an example from a non-christian's perspective of a Christian who's unobtrusive about her faith yet takes it seriously, then Andy is the same, but from a believer's view. The parallel just now struck me, and I find it kind of interesting.

I'd explore it in greater depth, but I have a headache from searching through the YHT archives on my slow-as-Christmas internet connection, and my brother and I are going to eat lasagna and watch some Heroes this evening. So, that's a thought for another day--or perhaps left as an exercise for the reader.

So, that's all the religion-in-webcomics news this week (unless you've got something to mention in the comments, which is of course always welcome!). A few quick shots of funny, and we'll call it a wrap.

• The most recent Boxer Hockey is a hilarious reminder of the value of voting, and one of the political comic strips that I still find funny after election overload


• Nobody Scores! wraps up its Martial Arts Death Tournament storyline (which begins here) and prepares for new adventures in catastrophe


• Real Life similarly draws its current storyline to a close and prepares for new adventures in Greg and Liz moving back to California

So that's that. Be sure and tune in sometime this weekend, when Ari Collins will deliver a post as well. No, really.

Got a lot to talk about for this week! Let's get down to business.

First off, today's the last day of the Sheldon Caption Contest--check out this earlier post for the details and links. Also over at Sheldon, the recent economic downturn has hit Sheldonsoft, so Sheldon's gone to the only place on earth that could conceivably grant him a loan to keep his company afloat: the country of Dubai. All of the strips in the Dubai arc so far have been decently funny, but this one I found especially good. And it wasn't the punchline either! It was the fact that Arthur's approach to gaining wisdom is precisely what someone with a lot of facts but not much wisdom would do. Clever comic there, Mr. Kellett. (Because Dave Kellett is totally reading this blog right now, no really.)

In addition to the Sheldon Caption Contest, I have some other old news that I should have mentioned earlier. A couple weeks back, Thinkin' Lincoln had a guest week, featuring the likes of Eli Parker from Tall Comics, David Malki! of Wondermark, Reprographics' Chris Yates, Justin Pierce from Wonderella, and even the illustrious Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics fame. In case you haven't checked Thinkin' Lincoln in awhile, the guest comickery starts here.

Monday's Thinkin' Lincoln was also noteworthy for cracking me up. It features Amelia Earhart misunderstanding Lincoln's use of a common idiomatic expression. I won't spoil it for you--go check it out.

Nobody Scores finished up another tale of protracted suffering this week: "Nobody Scores with the Chip Invasion." One of the longest Nobody Scores comics to date--and the longest since its Summer Formatting Reboot, clocking in at eight separate installments--The Chip Invasion features an obnoxiously sociable friend of Sara's who turns out to work for the NSA. As the arc spirals toward its inexorable horrific end, we have spy robots, Chad's crush on Jane, insidious marketing schemes, and repeated incidents of police brutality (all of them perpetrated upon Beans). Also, out of nowhere, fungus. The carnage begins here.

Nobody Scores will also be starting another epically huge comic series on Saturday, so we can look forward to even more tales of misfortune and comic violence in the very near future. Hooray!

Another of our favorite long-form infinite-canvas comics nears the end of an extended storyline: none other than Dresden Codak. And I've got to say, Aaron Diaz has kind of made me eat my words. In the most recent installment, we discover that mankind did not evolve to a new level of machine consciousness and merge with the Hob after all; as always, it's difficult to piece together, but the dream sequence that began in Hob #20 apparently didn't end there. Kim's been in the hospital the whole time, left with one arm from her scrape with the time travelers, who seem to have been driven off. As always the art is good, so even if stuff is confusing, it's worth tuning in for that.

Boxer Hockey also updated this week, which has been a rare occurrence lately. And that's unfortunate, because when it does update, the action is quite well-rendered and pretty dang funny. Check out this week's installment to see what's going on with lost-at-sea Not-Gay Chuck, and how the team is faring without him.

So there's been a whole lot of funny this week, but for those wanting something a little deeper, turn your attention to Multiplex. With the release of Bill Maher's Religulous, this week's Multiplex arc picks up where Angie and Jason's dispute about Expelled left off several months ago. Angie finds Maher's go-for-the-throat brand of abrasive comedy insulting, so she walks out of Religulous. She and Jason get to discussing God and science again, and once again they hit a dead end. To be completely honest, I'm feeling kind of tired as I near the end of this entry, but it's customary for me to take note when religion shows up in webcomics, so: there it is. Religion at Multiplex.

And let's wrap it up with some Chainsawsuit. Thursday's comic had a big surprise in the second panel that cracked me up. It was Kris Straub's random standalone humor at its finest. And Chainsawsuit has been generally good lately, so if you're looking for some absurdity and a few good chuckles, take a browse through the recent archives.

So, that's what I liked this week. As always, the comments section is your own open invitation to tell us what you liked this week. Drop us a note and share the funny.

P.S. Real Life continues to be awesome. 'nuff said.

Feature: Small Comics

Welcome to a special feature on small comics. Today, we begin with a Venn Diagram.

The left circle represents excellence in cartooning: comics within this circle are well-written, visually appealing, and generally awesome. The left circle represents prominence: these are the comics that everyone and his grandmother has heard of. Thus, we have excellent and prominent comics, prominent but not excellent comics, and excellent but not prominent comics. It is comics in this latter category that we celebrate today.

With the advent of Ryan North's ad auction system Project Wonderful, it suddenly becomes possible to know, roughly, the daily readership of most webcomics you encounter, simply by checking the comic's PW stats. Project Wonderful is crazy popular with webcartoonists. All of the comics featured today have an average daily readership of less than a thousand, but they're still worth a look. Check 'em out.

The Robot is Sad
Updates: MWF
Style: b&w newspaper-strip
The Robot is Sad does not have as many robots as you would expect. Certainly there is a robot, and he feels emotions, but there are also other things. The strip doesn't have a continuity so much as it has themes: inept dinosaurs, friend archetypes, medieval warfare, and Kurt Vonnegut-flavored video games. It tends toward visual rather than verbal humor, a couple of times using the visual gag to break the fourth wall, but it also has a little observational humor to mix it up. Sometimes it is crass, but it's generally amusing. Check it out.

Unwinder's Tall Comics
Updates: Saturdays
Style: long-form, color, penciled linework
Unwinder's Tall Comics is about a kid named Unwinder who looks like one of those Roswell aliens and has bad ideas that he pursues relentlessly. He fabricates and propagages his own internet meme, writes his own commercials to sell to Taco Bell, reads ponderous science fiction novels, and thinks up about a million different ways to turn a rock concert into a practical joke. For example, imagine if the band takes the stage and tunes their instruments...only to turn out to be an acappella group, so that the musicians just stand around looking bored. As a person with a penchant for bad decisions and thoroughly unmarketable creative ideas, I can sympathize with the character of Unwinder.
The art style of Unwinder's Tall Comics is weird. The linework is done in pencil and is very sketchy, which contrasts with the bold and polished color scheme. What's really weird is that it sort of works. From time to time it delves into other art styles--Unwinder sometimes reviews fictional photocomics, and for the science-fiction-novel comic, comic creator Eli Parker collaborated with a friend to create the covers for the fictional sci-fi series Khron's Wager. There's a weird sort of seven-comic interlude where Parker diverts into the realm of Victorian-style steampunk, which truthfully I didn't find too interesting. Also, as you might imagine, tall comics are often meta.
Anyway: Unwinder's Tall Comics, worth checking out. Next up:

Calamities of Nature
Updates: Mondays & Thursdays
Style: full-page, color
Calamities of Nature is a testament to the power of consistency. It updates dependably, has a solid and polished art style, and can be counted on to deliver clever, amusing comics. The woodland-creature cast is a pretty standard-fare ensemble of personalities--Aaron the deadpan snarker, Alp the gadgeteer-genius weirdo, Ferd the overenthusiastic wacky guy, and Harold the Nice Guy Who Finishes Last--but they hold their own fairly well as a means to the humor. For example, when Aaron and Ferd create miniature copies of themselves and fail to dispose of them in a timely fashion, the mini-duplicates run amok in an amusing montage of miscreancy. Things escalate as the crew tracks down the mini-dupes. Another good series of comics is the Wal-Mart exposé, in which Ferd and Aaron take a close look at that iconic institution of American consumerism. A theme of Calamities is social commentary, which gives it just enough bite to keep you coming back.
The art is particularly solid. It's nothing complex, but it's always polished, employs a pleasing color palette, and uses a combination of hatching and cel-shading to add a little depth to the art. Backgrounds strike a good balance on the level of detail. If anything, Calamities shows that you don't have to be a Dresden Codak in order to have effective and high-quality artwork.
In short, Calamities of Nature is nothing too ambitious, but it's got clever jokes and good execution all around. Give it a look.

Boxer Hockey
Updates: Monday/Wednesday evenings
Style: full-page, color, early comics b&w
With a name like Boxer Hockey, you're probably expecting a sexy-antics comic in the vein of Anders Loves Maria or Least I Could Do. Bzzzt, wrong.
Boxer Hockey, as the prefatory strip explains, is a fictional sport, essentially a cross between soccer, hockey, and a brutal gang beating. Points are scored by delivering a live frog into the opposing team's goal; the three runners are allowed to carry one "stick" each, which can be any sort of blunt object, and the goalie is allowed gloves. There is a five-point penalty for killing the frog. There is no such penalty for violence against other players. Have fun.
The inspired, violent madness that ensues is dynamically illustrated, with huge manga-esque action scenes and bold colors. Seriously, this stuff is good. And BH is nothing if not gratuitous. There's plenty of manic action: leaping, charging, passing, crunching, bludgeoning, and parodies of "dramatic" visual cues like close-ups and hyper-dynamic camera angles. The time between matches is spent with slapstick nonsense, timing gags, and gross-out humor. Think BASEketball: the Anime, and you're getting the vibe here.
All of this craziness is propelled by the five personalities of Team Mekpen, hailing from Alabama, USA in the International Boxer Hockey League. The main character, Rittz Tibbits, is one of those guys who sees the world through a lens of crazy, as if his brain had faulty wiring or had simply received too many bludgeonings. He's also kind of naive. Then there's Skip, the team captain and straight man--because with Rittz around, you need a straight man just to keep the kid from killing himself. Add in the team's goalie "Gay Chuck," who isn't gay, but everyone calls him that because it gets under his skin, bulky stoical power-player Billy, and an irresponsible Tom Selleck look-alike for a coach, and you've got the team. Storylines involve major matches with such teams as Japan and Australia, travels between games, and the occasional airplane crash spurred by Rittz's hyperactive irresponsibility. Sometimes there are out-of-continuity tangents, like when Rittz kills Santa Claus, or when Santa Claus kills Rittz.
Boxer Hockey. Fun times. Check it out.

And now it's your turn. What obscure comics do you like? Have you stumbled across any hidden gems? Maybe you know of a webcomic by a talented friend or grandmother. Share your favorite small comics with us.