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.

Here it is! Here it is!

Welcome to December! Peter Metzger here, poking around these parts and guest-blogging my life away...

Let's jump in, shall we?

I've been a fan and regular reader of Real Life Comics for many years now, and after the epic-and-awesome fall storyline brought Tony and Dave back into the mix, I'm glad to see they'll also be appearing in comics actually based on real life! As noted in an earlier post (scroll down to the bottom), Greg and Liz are moving back to California. As a result, they (and hence, we) will be more likely to run into Tony and Dave - which I welcome gladly. The strip remained awesome while the Deans were in Texas, but I think the reintroduction of these two characters will bring back a dynamic that had been fading in the comic and will give Greg more material to draw from using characters we already know.

As a side note, the move back to California has necessitated a few guest strips over there at Real Life, and Monday's strip was provided by none other than our friend and author, Jackson Ferrell! Fun story about that - when I opened up the page on Monday and saw the comic, I thought to myself, "man, this guy draws a lot like Jackson... I ought to send him the link in case he hasn't seen this!" ...and then I scrolled down.


The other comic I've been reading for years, Penny Arcade, continues to fail... fail to disappoint, that is! (ooh, see what I... wasn't that clev... ok, never mind.) This week brought us a nice variety of comics, and as a tech support worker I particularly enjoyed Wednesday's comic. It was also nice to see the return of an old friend in Friday's strip.

On Monday, Gabe announced that last year's culinary contest of dubious artistic value (bottom of page) will return this year... so if you'd like to make some questionable cookies, you have until Monday (Dec. 8) to get pictures sent in.

In other news from the Penny Arcade front, the Child's Play charity is approaching the $750,000 mark in donations, which is 1) awesome, and 2) an amount I have trouble actually comprehending. At any rate, it's really cool that the charity is going to bring some joy to a huge number of sick kids this Christmas.


That's about it, we'll finish up with a quick sweep through a few other towns in webcomicland:

Borderline Boy continued to truck along this week, even with a dead computer! Wednesday's strip reminded me of this video, if only because Jay's coworker's name is Chad... the reference is from 1:30 into the video.

The latest Rob & Elliot was great - clay continues to tweak the artistic style of the comic, and the strip itself felt like a perfect blend of Penny Arcade and Pungirls... which means it was pure awesome.

Speaking of Pungirls, I will take this opportunity to officially continue to bug Jackson to draw a few more of them from time to time... I realize that it's basically a shelved project and that his focus is on Borderline Boy right now, but I love Pungirls so much I can't help but hold out hope for more! ...Also, I promise you Mr. Ferrell had nothing to do with the content of this post.

I just realized that I haven't read Toothpaste For Dinner in about a month, so I went back and caught up - there have definitely been some good ones lately. That's the nice thing about TFD - it's easy to consume them en masse if you so desire. It only took me a few minutes to catch up on a month of comics, while I've been trying to catch up on dinosaur comics for over a year. (I'm about halfway there).


That's all for this post, see you next time I'm conscripted for a guest entry!

-the pedro

Hey, welcome back! Good to see you here. Let's talk about webcomics I liked this week! We can also talk about webcomics you liked this week. But we will do that when we reach the comments section.

First of all, let's get that complicated continuity stuff out of the way. Real Life continues its Plot-Hole/Alternate-Gender-Universe/Government-Agent storyline this week, as the crew escapes the destruction of Tony's space station...minus Tony. I am, of course, sworn to avoid spoilers, so in order to find out what fate truly befell Tony, I recommend that you read this week's installment from the beginning.

In other continuity news, Nobody Scores continues its Ultimate Death Martial-Arts Tournament, where kung fu meets reality TV in a grisly battle royale. This week: Sara's mom drops by to criticize her daughter, and Jane gets masterfully drunk.

And finally, for Penny and Aggie fans who have wondered if Aggie would ever reveal her affections for Marshall, wonder no further. ...Ouch. It's been a hard week for Aggie. I really feel for her.

But okay! With all that continuity and development of ongoing plotlines out of the way, we can turn our attention to standalone humor and randomness!

Let's start off with a few selections from this week's comics at Thinkin' Lincoln. It turns out that to cheer himself up, Lincoln likes to draw turtles having fun. And we get to see his drawings! Hand-drawn elements in Thinkin' Lincoln are always a fun change of pace in my book, in part because I will probably never fully get over that whole disembodied head thing. Abe subsequently overdoes it, however, and we may never see the turtles again.

And speaking of Thinkin' Lincoln, this Dinosaur Comics could have been a Thinkin' Lincoln strip. I know that DC is a major influence on Thinkin' Lincoln, but it's interesting to see the influence extending in the other direction. Frig yes, people.

Continuing on the subject of one-offs and discontinuity: after its recent Emaline-dates-Omar storyline reached a climax with Steve punching Omar Patel in the jaw, You'll Have That abruptly switched tracks on Monday. The comic in question is well-crafted, sweet, and is a thoughtful expression of the cartoonist's religious values without being aggressive or pushy...but its context in the archives is sort of weird. Especially when it's followed by Andy "bringing back the circle game". Still, bottom line is that it's a good strip, and I'm always on the lookout for religion in webcomics, so I figured it was worth mentioning.

And now, let's conclude my part of this entry. Take it away, Update Boxers!

Update Boxers and News Briefs

• Three Panel Soul does what it does best: reflects on the tension between immaturity and adulthood


• Rob and Elliot features cameos from Joe Dunn and Tom Brazelton


• Biff from The Book of Biff throws a webcomics garage sale

I'll be back on Monday with a new post. In the meantime, it's time for your part of the entry. Got a strip from this week that you'd like to share? Reactions to stuff I mentioned? Thoughts on webcomics in general? Share 'em in the comments!

Welcome back for another week-in-review installment of TWIW.

This morning, as I got up and began making the webcomic-reading rounds, my visit to Sinfest was met with this ominous portent. Does this mean the end of Sinfest? I gotta say, I hope not. I suppose we'll all find out tomorrow, but in the meantime, if you've got any insights, please do share them. I'm perplexed here.

(UPDATE: It's Saturday now, and Sinfest continues as usual. I'm relieved, but I also feel kind of silly. Oh well.)

More big news: Dr. McNinja is now in...well, I won't give away the big surprise. Suffice it to say that the awesome adventures of the good doctor will henceforth be even more awesome. Just ask yourself what could possibly make the presentation of this comic even more awesome, and you may even guess what the big change is. Did I mention that it's awesome? It's awesome.

Also awesome is Penny Arcade's latest project. I greatly enjoyed the first two installments in the Fallout computer game series, a tactical RPG series taking place in a retro-styled post-apocalyptic future, so it's a nice treat when webcomics make reference to them. Obviously, then, I was delighted to learn that Penny Arcade is collaborating with Bethesda Software to bring us illustrated Fallout ridiculousness! They've taken the concept of Fallout's Vaults as sociological experiments, put a hilarious spin on it, and now they are delivering on their premise. In fact, they are delivering it every Wednesday. I can't believe I have to wait 'til Wednesday for the next one!

On a related note, Monday's Penny Arcade was one of the funniest I've read in a long time.

And as long as we're flashing back, this is not the most recent Rob and Elliot comic, but I found it exceptionally funny. It features a freshly-squeezed spin on the classic "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it" gag, plus a subtle and implied parody of the Kool-Aid Man. Furthermore, it includes an appearance by the second-funniest land mammal. No, it's not a bear! Bears are the third-funniest land mammal. Get with the program.

For our final exhibit, the most recent Joe Loves Crappy Movies strip demonstrates the power of economy of language in a comic strip. Brevity truly is the soul of wit! And on that note, it's time to cut this entry short.

I bid you adieu, dear readers. Until next week!