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.

My Favorite Webcomics: Part 3 of, Apparently, 3

The First Part of the List
The Second Part of the List
Share your own favorites with us!

As I summarized back on Monday, this is the third part of a special series in which I share with you the comics that I check regularly. After losing my old list of favorites to computer troubles, I rebuilt my list of regulars from scratch and learned which webcomics I most enjoy. Let us continue to continue the sharing!

Rob and Elliot: Surprise is a key element of humor, and Rob and Elliot consistently pitches some of the web's most hilarious curveballs. Like this! And this. It's only updated once a week, but it's good.

Three Panel Soul: Also good for a weekly update, 3PS is a clever look at the tension between adult life and one's inner child. It's autobiographical comics from Ian McConville and Matt Boyd, a kind of sequel to Mac Hall. Sometimes in color, but even the black-and-white is some of the strongest, most evocative black-and-white artwork I've ever seen.

Nothing Better: Oh hey, speaking of real good black-and-white artwork...
NB resonates with me personally. It's a college story with a pair of odd-couple roommates and self-discovery, but it's unique in that it seriously tackles the deeper religious and spiritual questions of its characters. It takes religion seriously and gives religious matters an unusually balanced consideration. Good stuff. And if one update a week isn't enough, you can get more of cartoonist Tyler Page with his Page-a-Day.

Unwinder's Tall Comics: What Nobody Scores does for catastrophe, Unwinder's Tall Comics does for bad ideas. Unwinder is a kid who is unable to discern impractical, overly-elaborate ridiculousness from true inspiration, much to the chagrin of his friends and neighbors. Okay, so the art isn't as polished--but it's still really creative, really bizarre, and really funny. And tall!

Cat and Girl: Isn't Cat and Girl just the cutest little deconstructivist metanarrative? Yes it is! C&G is genuinely clever cartooning, and the juxtaposition of Girl's incisive insights with Cat's inspired randomness never fails to amuse. Some of the sharpest, most intelligent cultural commentary I've seen from a comic. Heck--sharper even than a lot of books.

The Princess Planet: Hilarious escapades on a planet where every girl is a princess. It's a crazy blend of mythology and sci-fi. The premise: Princess Christi says goodbye to her cooped-up palace lifestyle and goes on exciting adventures. It's largely humor-driven, but from time to time there are recurring themes, such as Princess Christi's fake "treasure inspector" schemes, threats from evil sorcerers, the great self-important hero Smirkulees, and the Rasta detective Dreadlock Holmes. Oh, and did I mention the fun with puns and portmanteaus?

Honorable Mention:
I don't tune into them for every last update, but I also wanted to mention Calamities of Nature, The Robot is Sad, Dinosaur Comics and A Softer World. These are all good for a daily laugh, and on occasion for a little more probing insight into the nature of the world. I particularly recommend A Softer World: it's sometimes touching and often just plain touched.

And that wraps up what I've pared my reading list down to! I'm still eager to hear more about what's on your regular reading list. Familial holiday activities prevent me from proceeding with my Special Christmas Post as planned. However, if you're jonesing for some holiday webcomics festivities, Larry "El Santo" Cruz is sharing with us some of his favorite holiday-related comics from across the internet, over at The Webcomic Overlook. And there's no sense in replicating his work, right?

Enjoy your holidays, folks, and I'll see ya next Friday.

forgive me for not knowing how to do links on this blogthing

Hello, folkses! This is Alec, Jackson's friend, guest posting for this week's scheduled update of This Week in Webcomics. Now, Jackson and I do read a lot of the same comics, but I read a few others as well, so don't be surprised if some of the ones I'm going to be mentioning are familiar and some of them are not. So let's get on to the details then, shall we?

First off, a few comics you might want to take a look at: Nothing Better, by Tyler Page; and Goblins, by Tarol Hunt. These are both one-page-a-week comics, so they don't fit the TWIW paradigm exactly. A college comic, Nothing Better(1) tackles college life, and is currently wrapping up a nightmare sequence where an angry God confronts avowed Atheist Kat of the cast - and Goblins(2) has been in the throes of a confrontation between our heroes and an entire town of guardsmen and goblin killers for quite some time. Head to the main page of Nothing Better and hit the back button once to see all of the current issue up to this point all at once; for Goblins, I wouldn't start reading any earlier than the third book heading in the archives, or maybe even from the beginning :/

Several prominent webcomics have wrapped up some heavy stories this week: I am thinking of Sam and Fuzzy(3), Dr. McNinja(4) and Penny and Aggie(5), to be specific. Sam and Fuzzy just completed a storyline that was years of regular updates long, a feat rarely seen, and of course this means that new is the perfect time to catch up on this wonderful comic. Head to the Noosehead storyline and see for yourself how well all the pieces have been put together - http://www.samandfuzzy.com, people.

Dr. McNinja's plotline completed just today; the Doctor's final thoughts are available for perusal, and we, the readers, can puzzle for ourselves over what the future place of King Rad in the comic universe may end up being. I, for one, am hoping that there will be a bit more pseudo-medical expertise involved in his next caper - not that I'm complaining overly about the extreme antics of his ex-college buddy during the fight scenes in this chapter overmuch.

Penny and Aggie, an old time favorite of mine, is beginning to step into particularly difficult subject matter for me to grasp - girls being awful to girls, terrible cliques plotting school domination, and the like - but the emotional impact in the final pages of the story closing out this week was completely arresting. I won't say that it's undeniably entertaining or anything so ambitious, but I will say that for those of us who have been following the comic from the beginning and wondering what kind of a friend Penny is really, this was a real eye opener.

One more piece of comic recommendation for you folks: Princess Planet (6). I don't know if you'll all like it, but I do know if you read the most recent update and love it then you should start scouring the archives immediately.

(1) http://www.webcomicsnation.com/tylerpage/nb/series.php

(2) http://www.goblinscomic.com

(3) http://www.samandfuzzy.com

(4) http://www.drmcninja.com

(5) http://www.pennyandaggie.com

(6) http://www.transmission-x.com/_princess_planet/

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.