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.
Showing posts with label The Robot is Sad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Robot is Sad. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Good morning, everyone! That's right--morning. I've been up since 7:45 AM, and tomorrow I'm going to wake up at 6:30. What could drive a man to get up at half past six on a Saturday? The answer: 24 Hour Comics Day.
Tomorrow, October 17th, people all over the world will be taking Scott McCloud's 24-hour comic challenge, attempting to complete 24 pages (or 100 panels, if working infinite-canvas style) in 24 hours. I will be one of them! Will you? If so, drop me a comment and tell me where to find your comic when it's completed. It'd be cool to read your comic, and if I like it a whole lot, I may mention it in a future entry.
So that's what's going to happen in webcomics. Let's talk about some comics that already happened this past week.
First of all, it's been a guest week over at Dinosaur Comics! Ryan North has had David Malki!, John Campbell, Kate Beaton, Anthony Clark, and Randall Munroe creating this week's comics for him. Ryan, you lazy bum. But in all seriosity, Dinosaur Comics is one of my favorite comics to see guest weeks for. It's fun to watch all the other cartoonists reinterpret the static DC art into their own style. One of my favorites of all time was Aaron Diaz's take on it, DC meets DC so to speak. At any rate, you can catch the guest-comic funtimes right here.
Malki! and Kate Beaton and their ilk aren't the only ones doing comics in someone else's style. This past Sunday's Sheldon was a tribute to George Herriman's newspaper strip "Krazy Kat." I'm only somewhat familiar with Krazy Kat, but Dave Kellett's little homage was an interesting and weird change of pace, with its unusual color scheme, weird phonetic dialogue, and quasi-stick-figure-esque Flaco. The cool thing about guest strips, tribute comics, and the like is that it gives the artist an opportunity to play with art style and do something different.
Of course, we wouldn't keep tuning in if the regular material weren't also good on its own. So let's turn our attention to regular material--like Joe Dunn doing his usual movie reviews.
Last week at Multiplex we saw some heavy religious discussion sparked by Bill Maher's "Religulous," and this week Joe weighs in on "Religulous" over at Joe Loves Crappy Movies. He created a funny, expressive strip, and I really appreciated the sentiment of his review. Talking about bigger issues like religion is hard enough without people launching snarky barbs or belittling the other guy's position with sarcasm. Joe Dunn is a stand-up guy, and I think that really comes out in his comics and movie reviews. The dude sure knows how to draw, too.
On a...less pleasant...note, over at PVP, this week has been Fart Week. Now, fart jokes can be funny, but a whole week of them? That's just oversaturation. And by the end of it, the whole concept is about as humorous as a very small living room after a Texas-style-chili-and-bean-burrito party. Pheu, that's rank! Don't get me wrong, sometimes I enjoy PVP, but after that, I really need some fresh comics to clear the air.
So let's look at comics about Heroes!
For the past two weeks or so, my brother and I have been renting DVDs from the first season of Heroes and watching the crud out of them. For those of you who--like me--spend your life under a rock when it comes to network TV, Heroes is a grisly but compelling live-action-drama take on the superhero genre of comics. It's got an ensemble cast, some of which I find more interesting than others, but Heroes is never a dull moment. And furthermore, it is a source of humor for webcomics nerds! In a comic from this past week, The Robot is Sad gives us a rather silly joke about the time-and-space-bending powers of office-working otaku Hiro Nakamura. Then, an older comic from Left-Handed Toons ruminates on the similarities between the power-sapping serial killer Sylar and the protagonist of a certain video game series. If you've seen any other Heroes comics lying around the 'net, let me know!
Heroes is pretty awesome. So are other things. Thus, it's time to finish things off with another...
Awesome Watch:
If you haven't been keeping up with Real Life's most recent storyline, I highly recommend that you start from the beginning. And on that note, I bid you adieu!
Tomorrow, October 17th, people all over the world will be taking Scott McCloud's 24-hour comic challenge, attempting to complete 24 pages (or 100 panels, if working infinite-canvas style) in 24 hours. I will be one of them! Will you? If so, drop me a comment and tell me where to find your comic when it's completed. It'd be cool to read your comic, and if I like it a whole lot, I may mention it in a future entry.
So that's what's going to happen in webcomics. Let's talk about some comics that already happened this past week.
First of all, it's been a guest week over at Dinosaur Comics! Ryan North has had David Malki!, John Campbell, Kate Beaton, Anthony Clark, and Randall Munroe creating this week's comics for him. Ryan, you lazy bum. But in all seriosity, Dinosaur Comics is one of my favorite comics to see guest weeks for. It's fun to watch all the other cartoonists reinterpret the static DC art into their own style. One of my favorites of all time was Aaron Diaz's take on it, DC meets DC so to speak. At any rate, you can catch the guest-comic funtimes right here.
Malki! and Kate Beaton and their ilk aren't the only ones doing comics in someone else's style. This past Sunday's Sheldon was a tribute to George Herriman's newspaper strip "Krazy Kat." I'm only somewhat familiar with Krazy Kat, but Dave Kellett's little homage was an interesting and weird change of pace, with its unusual color scheme, weird phonetic dialogue, and quasi-stick-figure-esque Flaco. The cool thing about guest strips, tribute comics, and the like is that it gives the artist an opportunity to play with art style and do something different.
Of course, we wouldn't keep tuning in if the regular material weren't also good on its own. So let's turn our attention to regular material--like Joe Dunn doing his usual movie reviews.
Last week at Multiplex we saw some heavy religious discussion sparked by Bill Maher's "Religulous," and this week Joe weighs in on "Religulous" over at Joe Loves Crappy Movies. He created a funny, expressive strip, and I really appreciated the sentiment of his review. Talking about bigger issues like religion is hard enough without people launching snarky barbs or belittling the other guy's position with sarcasm. Joe Dunn is a stand-up guy, and I think that really comes out in his comics and movie reviews. The dude sure knows how to draw, too.
On a...less pleasant...note, over at PVP, this week has been Fart Week. Now, fart jokes can be funny, but a whole week of them? That's just oversaturation. And by the end of it, the whole concept is about as humorous as a very small living room after a Texas-style-chili-and-bean-burrito party. Pheu, that's rank! Don't get me wrong, sometimes I enjoy PVP, but after that, I really need some fresh comics to clear the air.
So let's look at comics about Heroes!
For the past two weeks or so, my brother and I have been renting DVDs from the first season of Heroes and watching the crud out of them. For those of you who--like me--spend your life under a rock when it comes to network TV, Heroes is a grisly but compelling live-action-drama take on the superhero genre of comics. It's got an ensemble cast, some of which I find more interesting than others, but Heroes is never a dull moment. And furthermore, it is a source of humor for webcomics nerds! In a comic from this past week, The Robot is Sad gives us a rather silly joke about the time-and-space-bending powers of office-working otaku Hiro Nakamura. Then, an older comic from Left-Handed Toons ruminates on the similarities between the power-sapping serial killer Sylar and the protagonist of a certain video game series. If you've seen any other Heroes comics lying around the 'net, let me know!
Heroes is pretty awesome. So are other things. Thus, it's time to finish things off with another...
Awesome Watch:
- Dr. McNinja introduces a mysterious new villain: King Radical.
- Nobody Scores! brings us Ultimate Death Tournaments on a secluded forbidden island
- Penny Arcade's Fallout Puppet Saga reaches its inevitable gritty conclusion
- Three words for you: Real. Life. Comics.
If you haven't been keeping up with Real Life's most recent storyline, I highly recommend that you start from the beginning. And on that note, I bid you adieu!
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
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.
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.
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