C2E2: Part 1 of Man I Don't Even Know How Many

Joe Dunn and Phil Chan discuss their college-story comic Matriculated in contrast to their gag-format works (Joe Loves Crappy Movies and Another Videogame Webcomic):


I spent the majority of C2E2 conversing with webcomic creators about their craft, their stuff, and all things webcomics. This is a bit of an actual conversation with Joe Dunn and Phil Chan, writer-and-artist team behind countless comics for the Digital Pimp collective.

Most everyone who stopped by the Digital Pimp booth showed a preference for either Matriculated or JLCM, in terms of which Digital Pimp features they read regularly. Story-based comics and gag-a-day strips attract different sorts of readers, when the comic in question updates weekly, it adds an entirely different rhythm to the mix. Contrast a weekly humor strip like Rob & Elliot with, say, The Book of Biff, or consider the pacing of Matriculated itself.

Stay tuned for further words and pictures from C2E2!

11/2: Week in Review

Welcome back, everyone. I hope you had a good weekend, and now it's time to start your week with webcomics. In the tradition of This Week in Webcomics tradition, let's look over the past week and see what's been good.

In Monday's Real Life strip, what starts as an exchange between nerd couple Greg and Liz turns into an exploration of the different forms of geekery. It goes on to expose the face of a prejudice deeper than racial and economic biases: that of nerdism.

Nobody Scores dished out several quality comics this past week, but this update casts Jane Doe's life as a movie, and her circle of friends and acquaintances as the supporting cast. The image of Sara frowning in the playplace ball pen is fantastic, and the riffing on movie trailers is pretty humorous overall. It takes an abrupt and hilarious twist for the postscript, so check it out.

Also, this week I found out via press release that the webcomic SMASH has finished its 12th episode, with almost 140 pages of comic content under its belt. In the Episode 12 finale, ten-year-old superhero Smash faces off against his arch-enemy, an insane mastermind known as the Magus. I haven't had time to check it out fully, but I can tell from a brief read that the creative team of Chris and Kyle Bolton are putting out a quality comic here. The art looks like one part Calvin and Hobbes to one part Marvel Comics, and it's dynamic and well-detailed. You can read the season finale, or start reading from the very beginning of season one. If you like reading offline, you can even download season one in a PDF.

It's been a busy weekend, but when I have the time, I'm definitely going to have to come back to this comic.

A few other comics from this week that I thought were good:

• This week's Matriculated: NEW SHIRT! Between Phil Chan's writing and Joe Dunn's expressive, animated artwork, Matriculated can take the mundanities of a trip to the mall and make something engaging and humorous out of them.
• Unwinder's Tall Comics. UTC has been updating with a vengeance and producing some very funny material since mid-September, so if you're not up to speed, swing by and catch up.
• A surprise visit from Twisp and Catsby at Penny Arcade, bringing the Halloween.

I was going to do a whole rundown of Halloween comics, but instead, let's get a little reader interaction going on. Did you come across a memorable Halloween-themed strip this past week? Drop a link in the comments and share some Halloween webcomic funtimes with us all.

7/24: Week-in-Review in Comic Form #3 (finally!)

Starslip: Monday, 7/20/09


Matriculated: Wednesday, 7/22/09





Creep House: Monday, 7/20/09


Cat and Girl: Tuesday, 7/21/09


Request Comics #85 (date unknown)

Request Comics #8
Ben Heaton's Tall Comics guest strip

Co-written by Jackson Ferrell and Eli Parker; illustrated by Jackson Ferrell
Unwinder appears courtesy of Unwinder's Tall Comics
Abe Lincoln appears courtesy of Thinkin' Lincoln, or maybe just history
(and frankly he'd probably make a more tolerable co-host, disembodied floating head or not)

Well, between the tail end of the hectic holidays, my usual freelance undertakings, and the aforementioned computer troubles, I haven't had as much time for webcomics as usual. Still, I've managed to get in a measure of webcomic reading, and it's funny: sometimes the best webcomics only update one day a week. And sometimes, that day is Wednesday.

I'm referring to Nothing Better and Matriculated, both of which are college strips that are actually about college. They go beyond the one-dimensional stereotypes and drinking jokes of your typical college comic. Their characters are unique people with a measure of depth to them, dealing with college life as it really is.

Nothing Better often deals with the heavier questions of religion (the current chapter opened up with atheist Kat having a nightmare that God sentenced her to eternal damnation), but this week's installment is just your average day at college. Jane is running (literally) late to her first class of the semester, and it turns out that she shares a class with Darby, her friend she met on the first day of school. I like Darby, although I can't help but feel sorry for him about his crush on Jane (who has a boyfriend, as regular NB readers will know). Anyway, NB is intriguing to follow as always, and I'm looking forward to seeing more into Darby's inner world and his relationship with Jane.

Matriculated this week is wrapping up a storyline in which Rebecca does a charity see-saw marathon for her sorority. (storyline starts here). All throughout her marathon see-sawing session, just about every other character from the regular cast has dropped by, ostensibly to keep her company. But it turns out that Dan wants her help figuring out if he's going out with a girl or not, and Steve's also been having girl trouble, and even Janette has the ulterior motive of procrastinating a paper.
So when good-natured guy Jeremy stops by the see-saw and wants to hang out, what could it possibly be a cover for?

So, good installments of good comics that update weekly on Wednesdays. And are about college.

Other news, in brief:

• On Friday, Thinkin' Lincoln finished up its Silly Drawings Week, which I enjoyed, because as funny as Thinkin' Lincoln is, that disembodied-head thing is still...well, you know about me and the disembodied-head thing. At any rate, for a little hand-drawn ridiculousness from Miles Grover, just click the link above.


• CAD continues its current "Ethan McManus: Space Archaeologist" choose-your-own-adventure storyline, with horrific disaster continuing to befall Ethan's right arm. My guess is that he comes out of this mess with bionics. If he gets out alive at all. If you're not following along with this storyline and getting in on the voting, you really should: it is five hundred times more fun than regular CAD. Get caught up with the current storyline starting here.


• Calamities of Nature also posted the results of its guest comic contest this past week. There are some pretty good comics up, so go check 'em out.


• And finally, this past Sunday's Sheldon reminds us that as fun as nerd stuff like video games and webcomics are, nothing trumps spending time with the people you love. Of course, if the people you love are also into nerd stuff like video games and webcomics, so much the better. But the point still stands. And on that note--go get off the internet and spend time with the people you love! You've had enough webcomics for one day. Seriously.

I'll be back on Friday, and we shall talk further about recent awesome developments in webcomics. See you then.

Pseudo-Special Feature: Comics for a Change

Lately I've been running across comics online that, for lack of a better way to put it, aren't just comics. These are comics in the service of something else, some message or information to communicate, or in support of a story told in some other media. Comics are showing up in places you might not expect comics to be, about things you might not expect comics to be about. So, today's post begins with Comics for a Change.

First of all, in his newsblog over at Calamities of Nature, Tony Piro pointed us over to a comic explaining Google's new browser, "Google Chrome"--drawn by Scott McCloud himself. It's cool to see comics used to convey information, something a bit more "practical" than your usual gag strip. The comic can get a bit dull and technical in parts, but still, that's to be expected when its main purpose is to educate rather than entertain. Basically, if you want to learn about the ideas behind Google Chrome, reading a comic about it is not a bad way to go about it.

Next up, socially-conscious alternative hip-hop group The Flobots have got their own comic: "Rise of the Flobots." But the comic isn't about the Flobots. It's about people like you. It's about people who are bettering their communities and improving the world around them. So far there's one story about an ordinary suburban guy fighting for freedom of expression through roadside signs, and another in progress about a soldier stationed in Iraq. It's pretty cool. Start reading here.

Finally, Joss Whedon's low-budget superhero-deconstruction internet musical, Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog, has its own short comic. Brought to you by Dark Horse Comics, it takes the form of a public service announcement from the super-self-absorbed Captain Hammer, urging you to do your part in the fight against crime and be like Captain Hammer. The humor is cynical yet playful, just as you'd expect from a Dr. Horrible comic. Check it out here--it's in the back-issues bar just below the comic viewer, so you may have to look for it a little.

It's cool to see the medium of comics put to unique use: information, social change, and indie superhero parody. If you've come across a comic using the medium in a new way for creative purposes, drop a comment and share it with us! But now, it's time for your usual webcomics rundown.

The Princess Planet, part of the Transmission-X webcomics collective, brought us this gem this past Sunday. A recurring setup is that Princess Christi, its protagonist, poses as a "treasure inspector" to confiscate "defective" treasure. The most recent comic piles one twist on top of another and escalates the treasure-confiscating scam to new heights of ridiculousness. If you haven't checked out The Princess Planet, I highly recommend it: it's colorful, imaginative, adventurous, and above all else extremely silly.

Real Life started up a new storyline this week that I'm pretty excited about. To be honest, when Real Life actually concerns itself with Greg's real life, I don't find it terribly interesting. I started reading because of the metacomic gags and the sci-fi humor; the mundane down-to-earth stuff, I can get that in my everyday life! So in Monday's comic, when an ordinary scene of Greg and Liz watching TV is interrupted by a wormhole spitting out female-Greg and female-Tony from an alternate universe where everyone's gender is reversed, my heart leaped for joy. Except that "my heart leaped for joy" sounds kind of fruity. Still, it looks like things are going somewhere cool, so I'm definitely pumped.

Joe Dunn is probably best known for his movie-review strip, but this week saw a funny installment of Matriculated, Joe's younger stepcomic about college life. In between extended storylines, Matriculated often does a couple of one-off gags, with this past Wednesday's being about the popped-collar fad. Sure, it's familiar territory, but Phil Chan's writing for the comic is clever and injects a little freshness into the topic. It was good for a chuckle.

Our last item for this week: over at Dresden Codak, the Hob storyline has concluded, with humanity evolving ambiguously into...I'm not even sure what they evolved into. Everybody disintegrated, including the Hob. I'm hoping that wherever Aaron Diaz decides to go from here, it's someplace less convoluted.

And that wraps that up. Check ya next week, webcomic enthusiasts.