Yelling About Comics

2011-09-14T16:36:00.004-04:00

Hey, folks. If any of you have stumbled upon this blog after seeing it in my bio in the Conjecture book, welcome! That being said, I'm afraid it's not really in use anymore; the best place to look me up is over on Vox Unpopuli.

Sorry for the confusion; I was lazy and didn't fill out my bio because I was under the impression they would just write in something like "Patrick is a scruffy-looking nerfherder." Instead they did some research and put together some actual information on me, for which I am, in hindsight, quite grateful.

Guilded Age

2011-03-05T09:34:00.000-05:00

Oh hey, y'all. Been a while since I busted out my comics blog, but there is a thing that has been preying on my mind. Specifically, Guilded Age.

Now, GA has been something of an enigma all along, because it has seemed at times like different chapters were advancing out of order. Which is to say, each chapter was advancing in order, but we would get pages from different chapters. Which was odd, but I was okay with it, because it seemed like an interesting narrative device.

Then, recently, it was announced that the artist was departing the project. I cringed greatly, because this has been the death of some good comics in the past, especially game-oriented comics (Cheshire Grin is an excellent example). On the other hand, how many artists has Least I Could Do been through? So it's not inherently bad.

The thing is, and this is kind of surprising in its way, the story has changed hugely since the new artist took over. I say "kind of surprising" because you'd think the story would be the most consistent part. But anyway.

First of all, it would seem that all of the characters have died. All except the jerk who wandered off early and seemed to only exist as the comical reason the good guys didn't get the fabled weapon of prophecy for their quest. And now said jerk is the focus of the story that's taking place in the fantasy world. This is never good.

Except--and this is key--the other storyline currently progressing seems to be revealing that the fantasy world is an MMO, and the characters we've been hanging out with all along are actually the characters of people playing the MMO in some sort of full-immersion living-in-a-tank fashion.

And man, I just don't know. On the one hand, this explains some of the anachronistic insanity that's been pouring out of some of the characters' mouths. On the other hand, I always took that as comic relief. But basically what it comes down to is this: Is Chapter Nine really where you want to introduce a massive conceptual change? I mean, this changes everything, no? Eight chapters in, I don't know how comfortable I am with that.

Now, I'm not saying "it doesn't work." I'm fascinated by any device that actually works better after killing off 90% of the established heroes. And I respect that it is one ballsy sort of move. But man, I just don't know.

PSA: RSS

2010-08-03T10:52:00.054-04:00

This is a public service announcement: Check your RSS feeds!

I've assembled the complete list from my RSS feeds and del.icio.us bookmarks, and it's well over 100. Granted some of those are old comics that are long gone, but it turns out that quite a few stopped updating without my noticing, and some others are updating just fine except I'm not seeing them in the reader.

The latter category includes the usual suspects, Devil's Panties, Bad Gods, and PartiallyClips, and in all cases I'm just going to give up on RSS for them. But I also found Slackerz and What the Duck, and some surprises as well. For instance, I didn't realize Alien Loves Predator was regularly updating again, nor did I know that theWAREHOUSE had moved. (I'm especially confused on that last one; how did I miss that?)

Meanwhile, I found to my dismay that Brinkerhoff is just flat out gone, domain and all, no archives to bed found. Daisy Owl, Brightly Wound, goodbye, foom, My Life in a Cube, The Flowfield Unity, and WE THE ROBOTS haven't updated in periods ranging from weeks to months. Planet Karen and Bear and Kitten are both more than a year since last post, although neither of those is a surprise. And when the hell did Tasty Flesh go on hiatus?

So, yes. Check your RSS feeds. Sometimes it's bad news, a la Daisy Owl, but sometimes you'll have months worth of theWAREHOUSE to catch up on, and that's never a bad thing.

Also, if anyone has information on any of the no-longer-updating comics I've noted, please let me know.

Mr. Rosenberg

2010-07-30T19:19:00.004-04:00

Once upon a time, Goats (by Jon Rosenberg) was an innocent gag-a-day strip about some drunks and a few weird talking animals. I'm one of those people who really misses those days. Goats was always counted among my favorite strips, and it never failed to amuse me. (Well, okay, I hated the Twix Shazam storylines, but I think everyone did.) It fired up clear back in '97, and while I don't claim to have read it from the get-go, I came in pretty early, and I was an avid reader until The Great Change.

In April of '05, Mr. Rosenberg decided he was tired of "the same old bar gags," which is hardly unreasonable. What he did was take the same cast of characters he already had, albeit with some pretty dramatic changes to some of them, and launch a multiverse-spanning adventure about the nature of reality etc etc. I tried very hard to keep reading until ... I'd say June of '06, since that's when I pompously declared on my LiveJournal, "Mr. Rosenberg ... it's your strip, you do what you want with it. But I think you made a mistake."

Despite addressing him by name, it never occurred to me that he would see it, let alone respond, so it kind of blew me away when he commented, "Hey, that's cool. I knew the changes weren't going to be to everyone's liking, and I knew we would lose some long-time folks. Thanks for giving me the chance that you did." I can't link because that journal is long since gone; I'm quoting from my personal email so you'll just have to take my word for it. The point is, it was a very classy response and a damn sight more polite than I would have been in his place.

On a side note, he also told me I might like Team Force Alpha, which was due to launch shortly thereafter. To the best of my knowledge TFA never happened, although the teaser website remains intact.

So I parted ways with the strip for a few years--during which I'm pretty sure I re-read the original seven year run at least twice, sighing longingly the whole time--but eventually I got over it, and was able to pick it back up starting at the beginning of the Infinite Typewriters storyline. (I think technically the new continuity started before that, but that's where you can really tell the difference.) By treating it as a new comic, I found myself enjoying it, and kept up via RSS until a few months ago.

In May, Mr. Rosenberg announced that business was no longer booming, and he cited the transition of the comic as the primary factor. (Well, plus the current economy, which certainly played a part.) Now before anybody goes off half-cocked, I am very much not saying "I told you so" here. Not only did I eventually begin reading and enjoying the new comic, but the final Webcomics Corner told people to go, read the strip, buy merchandise, read more, and then buy more. I hope that's a sufficient show of support to display my sincerity here.

That being said, I do think there are some important lessons here. Webcomics are still very, very new, and we're still sorting out what can and can't be done. To me, it seems like the transition itself was the problem. My analysis is not much different from Mr. Rosenberg's, but I like to talk, so let's spell it out.

I think there is room in the world for a transition of this nature for the cast of a comic, but not for the comic itself. In other words, I think the key issue here is that the comic continued on, presenting itself to the casual observer as one extremely long narrative. It is not. Wandering over there right now, you'd think you'd need to read all 13 years of backstory, which is about as absurd as trying to start from scratch on Sluggy Freelance (and don't even get me started on that bit of sisyphean madness). However, the first seven years or so serve the modern narrative only to establish the characters, and most of that gets thrown out anyway. A cast page would be both more efficient and more accurate.

Basically, I feel like the majority of the problems here would be alleviated by separating the two comics. Because really, they are two comics. If this were something about to happen, I'd say that Old Goats should stay where it is, and New Goats should launch at a new domain. Make a big announcement about the change, build up enthusiasm for the new comic, and create a divide so that we're not evaluating the horrible things happening to our beloved characters in quite the same way.

In fact, there's no reason this can't be done now, to make what's left of the current story a little easier to get in to--move Old Goats to another domain, or even just a subsection of the current site, and most critically, separate the archives. Also, make the "new readers start here" link go to a cast page or something similar. Then, for the remaining two years Mr. Rosenberg projected, new readers will be significantly less intimidated. Plus, people who stumble across (or are linked to) Old Goats can enjoy them as a separate thing, and when they get to the end and find out it's all over, New Goats is not some alteration from the thing they loved, but rather a new project by the same creator, which has a much different feeling.

This would also function very well in combination with Mr. Rosenberg's new project, Scenes from A Multiverse, which seems to be vaguely related conceptually. If New Goats were more accessible, people might well get in to either from the other.

At any rate, I feel like I've gotten way off target by now, so let me wrap up by addressing Mr. Rosenberg, on the theory that he still follows referral links.

Mr. Rosenberg, contrary to what I said all those years ago, I do not think you made a mistake. You took a risk, and while it didn't pay off the way you'd hoped, I still think it was worth taking. And while it's easy to look back and come up with ideas after the fact, I certainly didn't have any useful suggestions back when I was whining about it. So on behalf of the webcomics community (not that I have any authority whatsoever so speak on behalf of the webcomics community but what the hell), thanks. Because as the industry moves forward, it's going to learn from this sort of thing, and that's pretty crucial.

Although I realize being thanked for serving as an example is probably not what you're after. Sorry about that.

In conclusion, everyone who is not Jon Rosenberg, please go forth immediately and read Scenes from A Multiverse. Not only is it funny and well drawn as one would expect, it's based around a new model of audience interactivity. You should check it out.

triumphant return

2010-05-30T11:46:00.003-04:00

So I've been sojourning in the realm of print media for a while, publishing a weekly column called Webcomics Corner in SUNY Potsdam's school paper The Racquette, but I've decided it's time to move on. It's problematic finding new comics during the school year, since I don't have any time to read them, and I'm pondering other columns since, as a student, it's in my best interest to explore blah blah you don't care. Long story short, and as for what this means to you, I'll almost certainly continue to have things to say about comics--in fact, I've got several I've just added to my reading list over the past week that I want to tell you all about--so I'll once again be posting here. I'm sure you're as excited about this as I am¡

At any rate, just for the sake of posterity, here is a list of the columns that were published:

Complete O&M

2009-08-21T20:28:00.003-04:00

Dana Simpson just released The Complete Ozy and Millie in a two book set! This is fantastic news for those of us who adored the series, which is to say "all sane human beings". My only dilemma is this - do I get the paperback, which satisfies my much-worn sense of frugality, or the hardcover, which satisfies my fanboy jubilation? (Not that it's much of a dilemma, the answer is obvious.)

Webcomics Corner 5/8/09

2009-05-08T14:18:00.002-04:00

Webcomics Corner is a column that publishes weekly in The Racquette, SUNY Potsdam's school paper. Unfortunately it does not go live on their website, so I am archiving it here.

Well, folks, it's the last Webcomics Corner of the semester. We've had so little time together, but I know I've enjoyed it, and I'll be back in the fall with more suggestions for you. Since we're going to be apart for a while, I thought maybe you'd like something to read over the summer. So this week, we're going to talk about "Irregular Webcomic!" by Dr. David Morgan-Mar.

"Irregular Webcomic!" is considered part of a much smaller subset of webcomics known as a "photo comic". The name is very much self-explanatory. Dr. Morgan-Mar cannot draw, but decided not to let that stop him, and as a result the strip is painstakingly created with Legos, miniatures and a camera.

There are over 15 separate story lines in the comic, most of them based off parodies of such franchises as Indiana Jones, James Bond, Harry Potter, Star Wars and so forth. Many of the settings are technically the in-character aspect of role-playing games, leaving the door wide open for the occasional meta-humor featuring the omnipotent Game Master character, played by Dr. Morgan-Mar himself. Crossovers are frequent - as the website points out, there are 120 possible combinations, 51 of which have been done so far.

Dr. Morgan-Mar himself is an intriguing figure, with a physics-related Ph.D. from the University of Sydney. (I say "physics-related" because the actual explanation is so far over my head I can barely make it out with a telescope.) He has taught physics and astronomy at a college level, developed several programming languages just as a joke, written multiple books, and is adamant that "Irregular Webomic!" is just for fun.

This last is especially noteworthy. The list of webcomics that has run over 2,000 strips is short. The list of those that ran those strips daily, without missing an update for over ten years, borders on the non-existent. To the best of my knowledge, the number of strips on that list who have not in any way attempted to monetize their site is one: "Irregular Webcomic!" Don't mistake me as implying any sort of shame in trying to make money from your comic, because that's how most comic artists eat. It's part of the business. So it's intriguing, to say the least, that Dr. Morgan-Mar is so set on keeping his hobby just a hobby.

I don't have room to say all the good things I want to, and there's more than enough in the archives to keep you busy all summer anyway. Don't be afraid to start from the beginning. You can find it all at http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/

Oh, and be sure to enjoy the hobbit puns.

Webcomics Corner 5/1/09

2009-05-06T14:24:00.002-04:00

Webcomics Corner is a column that publishes weekly in The Racquette, SUNY Potsdam's school paper. Unfortunately it does not go live on their website, so I am archiving it here.

Welcome back to Webcomics Corner, folks - this week we're going to talk about a fairly popular strip called "Unshelved". Best known as being a comic by librarians and about librarians, the strip takes place in the public library of a small town known as Mallville, and features a small cast of regular and easily recognizable characters.

Though the archives go back to February 2002, and the story since that time is more-or-less coherent, the content of the strip tends to be light enough that one can jump in at any time. Readers who like a little background on their characters can check out the Unshelved Primer, which will fill you in on Mallville's goings-on over the past seven years; or the truly obsessive readers can dive right in.

"Unshelved" is known not just for being a great strip, but also for the community outreach to which the authors seem quite devoted. Even the name of the strip was selected by a reader vote after the original ("Overdue") had to be changed over a copyright issue. For the past several years they have also run a contest known as 'Pimp My Bookcart', prompting libraries throughout the country to trick out their existing book carts in a variety of interesting ways - the winning entries are, of course, viewable on the website.

Another popular feature of the strip is the Sunday Book Club entries. Each week a new book is reviewed in an excellent full-color format, often provided by guest artists, featuring their own cast of characters. The "Unshelved" authors welcome submissions from authors in need of publicity, including small print and self-published books, giving much-needed exposure to other members of the webcomics community.

It is also worth noting that the print compilations are high quality, and make excellent gifts for the librarians in your life - though as I discovered with my girlfriend's mother last Christmas, most of them already read the strip.

Check it out at http://www.unshelved.com/

Webcomics Corner 4/24/09

2009-05-06T14:15:00.003-04:00

Webcomics Corner is a column that publishes weekly in The Racquette, SUNY Potsdam's school paper. Unfortunately it does not go live on their website, so I am archiving it here for the moment.

Welcome to what will hopefully be a regular column reviewing webcomics for your reading pleasure. I can't promise I'll always have good comics to talk about, but in general I'll try to stick to recommendations.

As any fan of the medium knows, a vast number of webcomics are story- and character-driven, requiring that you read large quantities of backstory, or at least Cliff Notes. I'm going to try to ease us in to this with a strip that doesn't have that problem: "Basic Instructions," by Scott Meyer. As the name implies, this strip provides instructions on how to perform basic actions, in a cynical style not unlike the "Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbooks" that were all the rage a few years ago.

Topics published so far range from 'How to Share a Horrifying Experience' to 'How to Call a Relative' to 'How to Avenge Your Brother's Death', and Mr. Meyer never fails to bring the funny. Each of the four panels is usually a joke in and of itself, so the overall punch line feels like icing on the cake.

The strip updates frequently, usually Sunday and Wednesday, with occasional bonus content, and provides an RSS feed for true connoisseurs of web content. If you're bored - or trying very hard to put off writing a paper - the archives go back to July 2006, and I can tell you from experience that plowing straight through them is just as fun as reading a few at a time.

As an aside, it is worth noting that the strip's logo, possibly one of the funniest I've encountered yet, was recently used for a flight suit patch by the Alaskan Command (ALCOM) and Joint Task Force - Alaska (JTF-AK). I think it safe to say that very few comics can claim such distinction.

Check out the logo, and the strips, at http://basicinstructions.net/

what an ass

2009-04-21T07:22:00.007-04:00

Awww, poor Wiley Miller. Still sad that you're running out of newspapers while those little snot webcomic artists are making a decent living from keeping their merchandising money?

PS: Your content is also free ... stupid.

LICD <3 RBHJ

2009-03-30T06:42:00.004-04:00

Least I Could Do strikes again! That can't possibly be anyone but Roland Burton Hedley Jr. This is shaping up to be a week (or more) of cameos from other strips - if they're planning to troll print comics for the whole of it, I foresee a lawsuit or two in the future. (I'm not claiming said lawsuits will be justified, but that doesn't mean they won't happen.)

no reading list

2009-03-28T22:33:00.001-04:00

I've decided to nix the reading list. It hasn't been updated in ages, and figuring out what changes to make - to say nothing of when they should be dated - is the kind of project that just isn't worth the time. So if you know of a comic that I should read, and I haven't mentioned it previously, let me know. Seriously, please let me know - I'm always looking for new things to read.

late to the party: digger

2009-03-28T22:15:00.003-04:00

So ... Digger.

I'm tempted to give my usual "Why didn't anyone tell me?!" rant, but in this case people did. Hell, Websnark mentioned it clear back in '04. At the time, though, I was too poor for subscription services, and over the years I just never got around to signing up for them. In retrospect I wonder if this was the correct choice, but it seems like there's always new comics to read that I don't have to pay for, so why not fund those with donations and/or merchandise orders when I can, and not sweat it?

Anyway, the archives became free ... about a month ago, it looks like. If you have not yet checked this comic out, you need to. I'm not sure I can do it any justice with a summary, but basically it's a comic about a wombat who winds up in the wrong part of the world, becomes something of a pawn in a struggle involving destiny, gods both living and dead, demons, hyenas, trolls, shrews, prophetic slugs, vampiric pumpkins, and ... um. Look, seriously, just go read this, okay? The storyline is compelling, the characters are brilliantly written, and the humor is nothing sort of genius - you won't regret it.

awesome

2009-03-11T06:51:00.003-04:00

You know when there's a plot twist that in retrospect seems incredibly, mind-numbingly, glaringly obvious, and all of a sudden all the little clues - and all the attacks with a clue-by-four - add up and you feel really dumb?

I love those.

TMI just did one, and really well.

(Obviously, starting with today's comic is a spoiler. So start here instead.)

I don't get it.

2009-03-01T14:07:00.005-05:00

So can somebody fill me in on Ten2Midnight? Is it a joke? Performance art? I don't understand what's happening here.

See, it's supposed to be a post-apocalyptic zombie comic. The authors and/or artists - I don't know who is who - keep putting up posts about rewrites and working hard the next page and so forth ... but there's only been three pages posted since 12/26/08. There was a post making excuses for page four back on the 2/5. Page three, on the other hand, was a single panel - five skyscraper tops, a weird looking sun, and a single line of text. Which went live with the wrong line of text and had to be corrected like two days later.

I mean, the site looks fully fleshed out, and the thing got pimped in early project stages by some fairly well known strip (though I can't remember which). So I don't get it - is this being done by comic people and it's my bad for not knowing their names? People with such Whedon-esque cults of personality that fans are drooling at the very promise of content? Or is it some elaborate prank, and they're just seeing how long they can keep this up before readership drops to zero?

If this is a genuine webcomic, by some people with a good idea and no following as of yet, I guess that's cool, and I wish them luck. But I really hope they actually get it together, because right now there's a whole lot of smoke and no fire. I haven't seen this kind of thing since Gone with the Blastwave.

so good it hurts

2009-02-06T11:00:00.008-05:00

I was complaining to a friend recently that it had been entirely too long since I'd found a comic with some really deep archives in which I could just lose myself. (Well, one that's still running, anyway.) So he promptly recommended Girl Genius. Obviously I'd encountered it before, but I always skipped over it because it seemed like the kind of story you had to read primers on before you could understand anything, and because I'd encountered Foglio's work in his little bit pieces in the back of Dragon, and they hadn't really impressed me. (The art, yes. The humor, no.)

Anyway, I finally wound up starting GG a few days ago, and ... wow. I haven't really come up for air since. I am amazed by how good this comic is. You know you're dealing with quality when the act of catching up on a comic is painful because it means there's nothing left to read.

As an added bonus, I now get What's New With Phil & Dixie! I mean, I don't remember any of the content of them, but it always seemed at the time like I was missing some kind of joke with the characters and their in jokes - now I know I was.

I really need to get my hands on these books so I can make my Luddite friends read them - it's that kind of good.

damn and blast

2009-02-01T12:12:00.004-05:00

Recently, someone somewhere linked to Legendary, specifically strip #158. I'd like to be more specific, but I have no idea who, when, or where, because while the comic amused me, I didn't have time to read it then, so I just flagged it in Read It Later.

Anyway, last night I had some time, and it had graduated to the first spot in my reading list, so I skipped back to the first comic and started reading. I was quite amused by what I found, and very much enjoying the story line, so I was incredibly disappointed to find that it had sputtered out some time in the middle of 2007, after which there were a dozen filler strips and then nothing.

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is here except that I really hate how often this happens to me - I caught up on You Damn Kid three days before it ended, for instance, and my finally getting around to checking out a Mitch Clem comic seems to be the kiss of death. (Three times! Sorry, Jayme.)

So I guess what I'm saying is this: Please, for God's sake, don't link to the middle of a webcomic that's been kaput for over a year without warning me. Because if it's good - and if it weren't you probably wouldn't be linking it - it's just going to break my heart. WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE FANBOYS?!

Or I suppose I could just make a point of seeing if a comic is still going before I start reading years worth of archives. But where's the fun in that?

Presidential Legs

2008-12-07T07:20:00.005-05:00

I couldn't help but notice that the final panel of today's Doonesbury features something we may have never seen before: a president drawn as a human being. Back in the day, presidents and their ilk simply weren't drawn - when the big guy was speaking, you would get an outside view of the white house, or the voice would be coming from a television, or perhaps off camera. Somewhere in the 80s, Trudeau got bored with that, and started using icons. Reagan was always presented in caricature as Max Headroom, while Bush Sr. was invisible, represented only by a floating point of light. Clinton was a waffle, Quayle was a feather, and W. has gone from a cowboy hat to a giant asterisk to a Roman helmet. But if you look at the lower right of today's final panel, you'll see a very human pair of legs, casually crossed in a pose that conveys a certain amount of confidence.

To be frank, I don't expect Trudeau to stay in business for a lot longer. He's retired several times over the years, and each time his anger at the political insanity in this country has dragged him back - hopefully now he can kick back and let it slide. But in the mean time, it's nice to see a tipped hat to the new powers that be.

holy crap!

2008-07-02T06:10:00.002-04:00

I am delighted to report that, as was promised to us a few days ago, Brinkerhoff updated this morning! If you have not read the archives, this is an excellent time to do so.

LICD <3 GWS?

2008-05-26T01:37:00.003-04:00

Hi there! I'm all sorts of overdue for a real post, or perhaps a few dozen, so any readers I might have will probably be annoyed by this quickie, but I have to ask one question about today's Least I Could Do:

Is it my imagination, or is that Hazel and Jamie?

Antonyms: appealing, delightful, enjoyable, lovable, sweet, wonderful

2008-04-24T03:57:00.003-04:00

Fleen linked to The Abominable Charles Christopher back in February, and in typical style I just got around to checking it out. I am delighted by what I found.

The art in this strip is beyond description, extremely evocative yet fairly simple, conveying a certain sense of bleak winter even in the midst of sylvan celebration, and I am astonished by the versatility of the mute title character's expressions and the emotion conveyed therein. The dialog ranges from the epic to the absurd - occasionally in a single panel - and although I have no idea where the storylines are going, I can't wait to see how they reconverge. (I'm also very curious about the strip's name. I assume that will be made clear in time.)

The archives are currently short. You should hop on board now. If you don't, you're just going to regret it later.

hmm

2008-04-14T04:45:00.005-04:00

I was poking through the xkcd archives, and I found this. I don't know if I had ever really noticed it before. Does anybody know if Randall was crazy enough to put his own phone number in the comic? After the meetup, I'm inclined to think he might have, but I don't think it would be particularly polite to call it at 4:45a on the off chance it is a valid number ...

Update: D'oh! The comic answers that question. See comments.

insert obligatory tom petty reference here

2008-04-02T05:53:00.007-04:00

A few nights ago I decided to check back in on Freefall. I chose to take a break from it a few years ago, and never quite got around to picking it back up. My original concern was just how slow it was - so slow the strip would occasionally make fun of itself (like the time Florence mentioned her day feeling like it had taken a year and thirty-seven weeks). Because of that, it tended to read a lot better when plowing through large quantities, which I was pleased to note is still the case - I started from scratch, and read all 1500+ strips in the archive in two nights.

For those of you who aren't familiar, Freefall is one of the older strips around, having started way back in '97, and it's also one of the most reliably updated. The basic premise is a hard science fiction universe, set in the far future on a partially-terraformed colony planet where robots outnumber humans by several million. It's the kind of scifi that will take a week to explain theories of orbital insertion, but the strip still gives you a reliable punchline every time, and they're often funnier than the subject matter has any right to be. The primary topic seems to be the evolution of artificial intelligence, both independently and with regards to interactions with humanity, which seems like it would be dry but is handled in an extraordinarily witty fashion.

I should note that this is the only strip I read that is clearly drawn with the furry audience in mind. Sure, I read Ozy and Millie, Brinkerhoff, and so forth, but those are anthropomorphic animals in the more traditional Disney sense (well, maybe the latter would be Warner Brothers, but you get the idea). With Freefall, it seems clear at several points that the author enjoys drawing Florence (a genetically engineered wolf) in various outfits (or lack thereof) perhaps a little more than I would necessarily consider normal, but at no point is there any actual nudity (though there were some amusing 'Censored' bars at one point), and while there is a burgeoning relationship between Florence and her vet (I'm not making this up), it's handled quite deftly with proper deference to the species difference, and considering it's been 'burgeoning' for several years real time and they've only been on two dates, I don't suspect there's going to be much action any time this decade.

So if you like hard science fiction, the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence, funny strips, or anthropomorphic wolves, you should definitely give this one a glance. Well, maybe more than a glance, considering the depth of the archives, but you know what I mean.

words, the eating of

2008-03-29T02:43:00.006-04:00

It has been a good week. Too Much Information has updated twice since my post, Casey and Andy went up Monday, and there was even a new Alien Loves Predator within a week of the previous update. I am shocked. (The C&A thing is especially gratifying since I caved in and read the whole archive the night after I said I wasn't going to do so right away.)

Of course that does mean I was wrong all around. So to Obaki, Mr. Weir, and Mr. Hou: I'm sorry I doubted you. As the kids say, my bad. (The kids do still say that, right?)

i hate this part

2008-03-25T02:33:00.004-04:00

Let me start by saying that I really like Too Much Information (warning: that link is arguably SFW but you might not want to push it). In fact, I have some very nice things I've been meaning to say about it for a while now.

I will not be saying them right now, however, because the author (who goes only by Obaki) is doing something that drives me completely insane right now. See, he got a new job, and moved, and has had some computer problems. Hey, these things happen - sometimes life just wants to smack you around. I understand, and if you need to take a few weeks off from the comic to get things together - maybe with guest or filler art, or maybe just without updates, whatever works - that's just fine with me.

Just don't, please, people, please, don't continually promise updates that don't happen. I don't want to see the same panel popping up in Google Reader every couple days with some different text on it listing off all the excuses you have for not getting the comic done, and promising to have it in a few days, when I know perfectly well that in a few days I'm just going to see this same thing again with different excuses.

If you're a webcomic author and/or artist, here's how my relationship to you as a reader works: You give me content for free, I digest it with fanboyish delight. So if you're busy, if life sucks, whatever, don't update. That's fine with me. But say that, instead of making a bunch of promises you don't follow through on and basically destroying all your credibility. That's all I ask.

I find this particular situation especially disheartening, because most of the listed excuses have included phrases like 'it's not that I don't want to do the comic' and 'I'm not going on haitus, really!' But we all know how that goes, don't we? Alas.

the adventures of

2008-03-24T03:50:00.003-04:00

Speaking of photo comics, this weekend I was linked to the adventures of, which isn't exactly a photo comic, but it seems to be largely photo-based, so we'll go with it. The advantage to a photo-based comic is that you're not stuck with what's in the frame, you can filter and add paintings and do whatever else you like to accentuate the text, which could be considered a good or bad thing depending on how much of a purist you are. (I am not a purist, so I call it good.)

The archive is short - I just plowed through it in about half an hour - but I was fairly impressed. taxi me (#6) had me in stitches, americanize me (#42) is a perfect example of why I like comics of this style, and the falsity (#47) ... well, let's just say that speaks to my experience. This one is definitely going on the reading list.

Sinister Bedfellows

2008-03-24T02:59:00.005-04:00

Last month I mentioned a few photo comics, which lead to being tipped off to a few more, at least one of which I should have gotten around to writing about weeks ago: Sinister Bedfellows.

I did read through the archives (I can't help myself), although like most photo comics it's not really about continuity. On the whole I liked the tone, and a few of them made me laugh out loud. Not every one was a winner, but that's how it goes with that style of comic - a strip that didn't do much for me might hit someone else just right, and vice versa.

I am confused, though, because I could swear I have encountered this strip before, back around 2002. Not just 'a photo comic with text', but this specific author's 'voice', if you will, and the blocky format and the whole feel of the thing. It would have been right around the time Cat and Girl broke format to make fun of several then-new photo strips ... am I wrong about the year, or thinking of a different strip, or hallucinating completely? Anyone?

Update 3/25/08: Different strip entirely. See comments.

'you lack credibility'

2008-03-20T16:37:00.003-04:00

I'm in kind of a hurry, but real quick like, Alien Loves Predator updated! No, this is not a joke!

Also, he's claiming he's going to start updating again! I don't believe him for a minute, but it's nice to know he still tries, isn't it? Delightful.

B.C. Surprise

2008-03-17T23:39:00.006-04:00

Is it my imagination, or is B.C. funny today?

I realize the punchline only works because it's unexpected, what with coming from the creationist-agenda right-wing insanity that is B.C., but I laughed out loud when I saw this in the paper this morning.

closure!

2008-03-15T11:17:00.004-04:00

Thanks to the news post over at Irregular Webcomic!, it has come to my attention that - drum roll please - Andy Weir is going to finish Casey and Andy!

This is fantastic news, because the whole strip was coming to a halt, and he had every intention of wrapping up the final story on strip #666, and instead he just kind of crapped out at #644, with some vague mumbling that he might finish it later if he felt like it. Since it's been well over a year at this point, I had long since given up hope.

If you haven't read any C&A, you might want to consider giving the archives a whirl, but I'm not officially recommending that (nor will I be revisiting them myself) until such time as the strip actually finishes. I'm not attempting to question Mr. Weir's word, of course, but when a strip comes back after a year's hiatus, there's always the possibility that two or three strips will go up and then the whole thing will sputter out again. Here's hoping that doesn't happen.

Goddammit, Sir

2008-03-05T00:52:00.005-05:00

Let's take a moment to talk about Questionable Content. I'm sure you've heard of it, and if you have any sense at all (imo) you love it as much as I do. (Hell, the name of this blog is inspired by it.)

It started as just another relationship comic, or so we thought, and before too long we were all being completely blown away. Robots and kung fu monks and casual crossover-esque nods to Something Positive and Scary Go Round abound, and it felt like the entire webcomic community was waiting with baited breath to finally hear what Faye's dark secret was, and to be perfectly fair, I think it threw every single one of us. Fantastic.

I've also been impressed since the beginning by the updated schedule. Mr. Jacques is very committed to getting comics up on time, and with nearly 1100 strips up, I would be shocked to hear that there were more than 20 times a comic had gone up late - and by late, I mean 'after 10pm the night before the day the update is scheduled for'.

However. Can we talk about the archive?

I understand that Oh No Robot isn't for everyone. Maybe you don't like the software, or maybe for whatever reason you don't want to leave that sort of thing up to your readers but you don't have time yourself. Maybe you just don't want people to be able to search for dialog they loved, although I have trouble wrapping my head around that one. Maybe you have the same objections to tagging the comics with keywords, even.

But truly, folks, is it too much to ask that the archives have dates? All we have to work with is a list of numbers and titles - and the titles are not at all helpful in finding a comic unless you remember exactly which title you're looking for. The comics themselves don't even show dates! The only way to figure out where you are in the archive - aside from doing the math on the number of weekdays back from present, I suppose - is to read the copyright notice at the bottom of the strip, which will tell you what year you're in. This makes referencing specific strips well nigh impossible - it took me the better part of an hour to track down the strip this blog title is a reference to for my first post, and that was only possible because I remembered vaguely when it had happened - and had time to kill. I'm not even inclined to attempt to find the crossovers I mentioned above.

Perhaps I'm just a stickler for functional site design, and all of these flaws certainly won't prevent a casual reader from taking a tour of the archives (which you should do if you haven't already) and reading the comic on a daily basis (which you should do if you don't already). But it's been driving me nuts for a while, and frankly I'm glad I got it off my chest.

'Brink in the stink?'

2008-02-13T04:17:00.003-05:00

Ah, Brinkerhoff. Bastion of cynicism, sarcasm, and mind-bogglingly bitter hilarity. The eponymous hero may well be my favorite comic character ever - his scathing interactions with his ex-wife, his children, his lovers, his friends, his co-workers ... pretty much everyone he meets ... never fail to elicit shocked laughter. When I first found this strip, only a few short months ago, I plowed through the archives with zeal, and I greatly saddened to reach the end. Four panels a day just didn't seem sufficient.

Which just proves I should count my blessings, I suppose. Brinkerhoff has been on hiatus since the beginning of the year, and though I wait with baited breath, updates are not yet forthcoming. The current news posts on the site indicate that the light at the end of the tunnel may be arriving, and in the mean time I might order the compilation of the first few months to tide me over, but it's just not the same.

I don't want to give you the impression that the strip is all about the dialog, either. The art is without question simplistic, with most of the characters (all animals of various sorts) lacking mouths and consisting largely of rounded outlines, but I'm always shocked by how much is conveyed through the eyes of each character. I have a theory that this is why we are unable to sympathize with Mark, as his glasses betray no emotion. I think this is also why the children are such a delight, as their faces are left to our imagination.

So. Even if it doesn't come back from hiatus, which is always a concern when a good strip takes a break, I highly recommend reading through the archives to anyone who enjoys a well-turned phrase. If you start now, with any luck, you might catch up just as updates resume. (We can hope, anyway.)

And finally, I implore you, Mr. Strine - update!

the jury's still out - Punch an' Pie edition

2008-02-12T04:10:00.000-05:00

When I first heard that Aeire (of Queen of Wands fame) was making a new strip, I was overjoyed. That was immediately tempered by the news that the art was being done by Chris Daily of Striptease, for two reasons. One, I always liked the art in QoW. Two, while I also liked the art of Striptease, the update schedule was spotty at the very best, which is a pet peeve. Still, I opted to give it a try. 'It', of course, being Punch an' Pie, the story of Angela after the end of QoW.

To be perfectly honest with you, it seems to have gotten off to a fairly rocky start. The story begins with the kind of massive upheaval we expect from Aeire - within the first few weeks Angela'a life gets turned upside down every which way - but somehow it doesn't have the same impact. Maybe it had been too long since the end of QoW, or maybe I just never liked Angela that much, but I don't feel the same connection that I felt to the primary trio in QoW. Still, I persevered, trusting that things would straighten out after a while, and in fact, they did. Despite the entire week of sample pages from Batdude - and seriously, was that really necessary? - I've found myself in recent weeks starting to look forward to updates, to see where the storyline was going. So of course they chose that very moment to, without warning, switch to an alternate storyline, leaving us wondering - will the characters wind up together after all? Will they occasionally bump in to each other, and the camera will switch focus? Or will it just be two disconnected sets of events? None of these are entirely appealing to me.

Something else about the presentation of the strip bothered me from day one. As I recall, Randy Milholland did the website setup for Aeire, which explains why the format so closely resembles his old site design. That was actually pretty neat - it's a good layout, and felt appropriately comfortable. The trouble is, PaP doesn't seem to be selling advertising. I've seen a few ads up, but day after day there's just been the filler banners, begging for customers. I realize this is part of the game for a new strip, but this one's about a year old, and starting to seem desperate. Even when it wasn't, there was something presumptuous about having this setup from the beginning, which seemed to go hand in hand with the too-sudden appearance of Angela's misery.

Now, despite all these misgivings, I am not saying I am throwing in the towel on this strip. The art certainly doesn't suck, the story might yet redeem itself, and in general both author and artist have delivered solid content before. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's on notice (especially since Colbert would probably sue me), but I am definitely keeping a wary eye on it.

webcomics since been webcomics

2008-02-11T01:42:00.000-05:00

I have a strange relationship with dead comics - I've wound up reading a lot of them over the years, not realizing until I surfaced from thousand-plus strip archives that the comic had stopped updating months or even years before I'd begun. I've also read more than a few that stopped updating just as I finished the archive, or perhaps a week or two after, just when I'd adapted to having them on my daily reading queue.

So I guess it's not surprising that one of my favorite comics has been dead and gone so long you can barely find traces of it on Google - it seems to exist only in dead links from old Geocities webpages and, of course, my memory. The strip in question was Tug House, and it was notable at the time for being rendered entirely by the rather barbaric modeling software of the time - it was the first such comic I encountered, and might well have been the first such comic to gain popularity.

To be honest, I don't remember much about it at this point - several nerds lived together in a house, with an undead puppy they acquired by mistake while attempting to summon some Lovecraftian horror. I can still recall my favorite exchange from the strip: "Do we have a copy of the Bible anywhere?" "Check under the short leg on the coffee table!"

Beyond that, I have only one strip saved to my hard drive, something about the extermination of Pokemon that I found humorous at the time. I have been able to turn up a list that mentions the author as Jeremy Tolbert (probably this guy based on the domain name) but beyond that I can find no information. Does anybody else remember it, or am I all alone on this one?

New Comic: Don't Forget To Validate Your Parking

2008-02-07T04:24:00.000-05:00

I'm a little out of sorts tonight, so I'm going to restrict myself to a single entry, and I'm going to go with one that's nice and easy for me, and timely to boot.

I was linked recently to Don't Forget To Validate Your Parking, a comic by a writer that is, at least in part, about the writer's strike. To date it's a talking head comic; one character either typing into his blog or talking on the phone, but (as one would expect from a writer) the dialog is pretty good. There's a certain self-mockingly pretentious depth to the character that really appeals to me.

There's also something really appealing about the format of release - each individual strip is five panels, all uniformly sized (and essentially uniform in appearance), but each conversation is released in a burst, in one long post containing several strips. I think it's a much more satisfying way to process, because it gives the author the opportunity to make a beat panel out of an entire strip, which seems to really work somehow.

So, will you like it? Read the first entry. If it hits you right, you'll like it. If not, try the recent conversation with Satan. If that doesn't do it for you either, I'm afraid you're on your own.

Spiritual Sequels

2008-02-06T04:09:00.000-05:00

I, for one, was a huge fan of DM of the Rings, and I was sad when it ended. We all knew the storyline was going to end, of course, because it was a screencap comic, so it simply ran out of movie. But early on, when the hobbits left, the author set it up so their players stormed out of the group, with one offering to run Star Wars if anybody felt like playing a real RPG. (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea.) It was indicated at the time that after this project, a Star Wars comic would be the next logical step, and frankly I was quite pumped for this to happen.

Maybe that's why I don't like Shamus Young's new project, Chainmail Bikini. Or maybe, as I suspect, it's just not that interesting. I'm an avid gamer, and I think it's hard to go wrong with a gamer comic, especially one that makes fun of the gamers themselves and the game they're playing, but I was distinctly unimpressed for several weeks and then just gave up. I'll go back in a few months and see if it picked up ... but I'm getting off topic.

When it became clear that Mr. Young had moved in to other things, David Morgan-Mar (of Irregular Webcomic! fame) got together with several others and began producing Darths & Droids. Interestingly, they've gone off in a direction I wasn't expecting. Instead of sticking exactly to the plot, they've gone out of their way to write a new script, keeping the scenes more or less in order but with utterly different reasons behind them. Meanwhile the players have much more fleshed out personalities than I was expecting - I especially like Sally, who makes Jar Jar almost lovable. You should check it out to see what I mean, there's just no way to do it justice in description.

I also adore this comic from a technical standpoint - Mr. Morgan-Mar has proven in the past that he's an excellent interface designer, and while D&D lacks the bells and whistles of IW!, it has included a transcript of each comic in the comments section since day one. This not only allows vision-impaired fans of Star Wars to enjoy the strip, it makes for an easily searchable archive. This is something I'll be ranting about more in the future, but for now let me note that it's a delight to see people taking this seriously enough to address it from the very beginning.

My only complaint about this comic is that it leaves me torn. I can't decide if I want wait and hope they make a Harry Potter comic with the same 'players' after they finish this, or if I should just go out and make one myself.

It's a Creeper

2008-02-06T00:44:00.000-05:00

I read today's Doonesbury this morning at work, as I do four times a week, and I wasn't expecting much from it because the week after an injured soldier bit is usually a softball week. Trudeau's going for the 'Obama is like Kennedy' angle, which is interesting because I was thinking just last week that his campaign was starting to get a Camelot vibe. (This is funny because my only real exposure to Kennedy is, well, reading old Doonesbury strips.)

At any rate, the 'MIT nerds don't understand sports' joke didn't really do much for me, so I just kind of moved on with my day. It wasn't until this evening, as I was standing in the shower, that a lightbulb went on in my head and I realized the actual punchline here. Fairly subtle, which is about the only way he could get away with that joke - I like it.

Statement of Intent

2008-02-05T03:33:00.000-05:00

So I should probably clarify where I intend to go with this blog, since right now it looks like there's just been some ass-kissing of comics with more of the same to come. To be fair, there is indeed more of the same to come - I get pretty enthusiastic about comics I like, and I tend to like a lot of the comics I encounter.

That's not all that I have planned, though. At the snail's pace of one to two posts a day, I plan to 'review' the majority of the strips on my reading list, complain about strips I like that are gone, explain in detail why I don't like the few strips I don't like (which, I'm sure, will endear me greatly to their authors), and rant and rave endlessly about the way comics in general are presented despite having no qualifications as a comic author or artist. (After all, those who cannot do, blog.)

I also may or may not be posting some print comics that really really annoy me and discussing why they really really annoy me, but I have not yet decided if that's just going to look like I'm stealing Josh Fruhlinger's schtick. Is hating on print comics in a hopefully amusing fashion general enough to be a type of blogging, or specific enough that I'll look like a copycat? Please feel free to weigh in on this issue; I'm likely to continue equivocating forever unless someone prods me in one direction or another.

If anybody feels that there's some glaringly obvious portion of the idea of blogging about webcomics that I'm missing - or for that matter doing all wrong - please speak up! Also if you agree or disagree with what I say about a comic, say so! Comments let me pretend that I'm not just shouting in to the void.

Tiny Ghosts vs. A Softer World

2008-02-05T02:59:00.001-05:00

I woke up this evening to find a note in my inbox from an address at the Tiny Ghosts website that said this: "If you like 'A Softer World', you might also enjoy the webcomic 'Tiny Ghosts' which has similar sensibilities." It was unsigned, and the name field in the email address read only 'Author'. Intrigued, I clicked through, and perused the archives.

The comparison to A Softer World is an obvious one; both use photographs of random things in combination with minimalist text to achieve maximum impact, but to judge TG as a relative of ASW is to do it a disservice. ASW seems to me to strive for subversive humor, with depth coming in a close second. TG, on the other hand, is an attempt to tell an entire story in two sentences, with photographs to drive home the mood. My thought as I looked through the first few strips was "Hmm, this isn't very funny." Once I got in to it, through, I realized that humor is only a secondary objective (or rather an occasional side effect) - the purpose of the comic seems to be provoking thought rather than laughter, and at this it succeeds admirably.

Also, while ASW has (in my opinion) gone a bit downhill - every week used to wow me, and these days it's only every so often that I even react - TG seems to have done the opposite, getting better and better as time goes on. I won't claim that every single comic was a hit, but with a project like this they can't all be. I'm sure some of the strips that rolled right off me while I clicked onward for something better would stop someone else in their tracks.

I'm even more intrigued now by the anonymity of the author. It's unusual in this era of webcomic celebrities, and lends a certain weight to the entire project. So too does the author's desire to refrain from advertisements and merchandising - I assure that I would not able to resist their siren call in his/her place.

Anyway, I'm going to advise people to give it a whirl if this sounds at all appealing. I don't think you'll regret it, but of course your mileage may vary wildly.

New To Me: Basic Instructions

2008-02-05T01:07:00.000-05:00

I was in the mood for something light and funny last night. Poking through the pile of comics I've been meaning to read, I noticed one called Basic Instructions that was added not too long ago. Fortunately, it fit the bill perfectly.

As the name implies, each strip is a set of basic instructions on how to do a specific task. Tasks range from How to Share a Horrifying Experience to How to Call a Relative to How to Avenge Your Brother's Death, and pretty much anything else the author can think of. The strip is a delight because there's actually five jokes in each one; the overall narrative plus each individual panel. The humor is dry and brilliantly sarcastic, and while the art seems to be largely cut&paste, the individual tweaks make it worthwhile.

If you like the Worst Case Survival Handbook(s), you should read this strip. (If you didn't, I guess I'm not really clear on how you think anyway, so you're on your own.)

New Comic: Skin Horse

2008-02-04T00:36:00.000-05:00

I realize that recommending a comic by Shaenon Garrity doesn't really go a long way as an expression of individualism, but this one is new enough that hopefully it'll count for something. Skin Horse, the new comic from the creator of Narbonic (for those one or two of you who might be familiar), kicked off a few weeks ago. As expected, the comment pages are flooded with her fans.

On the off chance you are like me, and remained ignorant of Narbonic for so long that you never actually got around to reading it before it ended, you might actually be interested in a few of the details of this new comic before checking it out. So I'll tell you what we have so far: apparently there's a government agency that deals with "the 3000 or so sentient non-humans" in the country. We tune in on a mission featuring Tip, a crossdressing psychologist, Unity, who I think is a zombie, and Sweetheart, a sentient dog, who are dealing with a renegade sentient lion. We have, along the way, picked up Russian-speaking police officers who know Unity from the past, and some killer robots with an interesting speech impediment. There's been a bit of background exposition, but we are mostly in the dark. As for the humor, there isn't a lot of subtlety (yet) but each strip does pack at least one laugh, and for what appears to be a story-driven setup, I'd say we're off to a good start.

Garrity fan or not, if you like complicated absurdism - and if you don't, what are you doing on the internet? - I strongly recommend checking this out.

Inaugural Post

2008-02-02T00:49:00.000-05:00

I have decided, in a fit of questionable wisdom, that I spend so much time thinking and talking about comics (mostly webcomics, but some print) that I might as well go ahead and make a weblog on the topic. That way people who read my regular journals won't be quite so bored by all the webcomic talk, and it can be calmly ignored by the world.

Given the opportunity, I could not resist choosing a name riffing on Questionable Content's music blog, named after the music blog started by Marten in the comic. (This may only be funny to me.)

So. Welcome! Have a cookie.