Webcomics are a difficult phenomenon to get into, not the least because googling “webcomics” turns up a tidal wave of poorly drawn manga and comics that can be described as “adult” solely because they feature naked people. Scraping the surface reveals some material worth showing your friends for a chuckle, but if you’re interested in comics in general, there’s a lot of life to be found online, and usually completely free. Webcomics are built on community with other artists, and they tend to have a bunch of links to artists they like and want to support on their site. There’s a level of experimentation and freedom available online that just isn’t possible in print, and while this can often lead to disgusting or unreadable places, there is gold to be found. (Even so, somehow a lot of really great webcomics still stick to pretty traditional styles.) All that and you won’t have to spend a dime, so put down your electric horn and get out of your horseless carriage! The ones I chose are simply ones I like and have read a lot. They aren’t necessarily better than other good ones, and this tiny list tends almost entirely toward humor. (Don’t get me wrong–there are good dramatic comics, but these are a few I’ve been reading for a long time and helped to fuel my interest in webcomics in general. It’s a personal list.)
(I rewrote this a few times, and I alternated between spelling “webcomic” as one word or two. I think it should be one. Go fly a kite, spell check.)
Dinosaur Comics — this one’s been around for about seven years, which is an epoch in webcomic time. If webcomic time was parallel to real history, 2003 was when those monkeys in 2001: A Space Odyssey yelled at a big black box and killed each other. Apparently ignoring all of Scott McCloud’s optimism about the “infinite canvas”, Ryan North’s comic features strips that never change, except the dialogue between T-Rex, two other dinosaurs, God, and Satan (off-panel). The parallels between this and traditional newspaper comics are begging to be made, but I doubt most newspapers would carry a strip evidently drawn in Microsoft Paint where a tyrannosaurus talks about basically anything, including but not limited to philosophy, language, comics, and sex. But the drawing power isn’t the narrative (which is virtually non-existent) or the artwork, but the frequently intelligent and funny dialogue. I’ve included links to a few strips I think are especially good, which I hope will be helpful, given that there are over a thousand DC strips. Then again, since there are so many, and there’s no reason to start in any given place (except, as usual for webcomics, the first ones tend to be the weakest). But anyway, you could try this one, or maybe this one, or one of these. (A helpful hint to even more fun times: if you hold your cursor over the strip, a lot of comics, including this one, will have some hidden text (alt-text) that’s usually pretty damn funny.)
Achewood — This is one of the best webcomics on the internet. It hasn’t been great the entirety of its run and it seems to be getting weaker as time goes on, but Chris Onstad has created one of the most interesting and original comics, online or no. He has a wildly diverse cast of characters, and while he often took them in surreal directions in the latter half of the strip (which I don’t consider a bad thing by any means) much of the humor and pathos of the comic comes from those characters’ detailed and richly realized histories. This is one that you absolutely must spend time with to appreciate. Achewood follows a core cast of about 6-10 anthropomorphic animals, with countless others coming in and out. The characters Onstad has spent the most time on are Roast Beef, a depressed computer programming cat, and Ray, his business-savvy and incredibly wealthy friend. There are gigantic story arcs that alter the course of the strip, but there are also plenty of one-off strips to start on. Again, the first year or so was shaky, but there are still a few gems hidden throughout as the strip found its footing and began to find a voice for each character. I think this is probably the best place to start, but eventually anyone interested in getting into Achewood should get around to the Great Outdoor Fight. Onstad elevates what had previously been a brilliant strip to a pitch-perfect blend of brilliant dialogue and a fascinating story. Check out the drop-down menu on the site, which conveniently puts you at the beginning of most of the best story arcs. I’d also recommend any of the three or four times Beef goes to Heaven. (James Kochalka did a guest strip once.)
Nedroid Picture Diary — When Nedroid (drawn by Anthony Clark, who also does the color for The Adventures of Dr. McNinja) started, it really was more of a picture diary, but when Beartato and Reginald came into being, it became mostly about them and a few others. Clark is a gifted cartoonist, and manages to achieve a lot with very minimal expressions. (He references this simplicity in this self-deprecating comic.) The “diary” aspect allows him to experiment with alternate versions of comics and other formats that wouldn’t normally be as possible if it was a more traditional webcomic. There are a few short arcs, but for the most part they’re one-shot jokes, so any place is good to start. Here are a few I like. (The last link in that chain is a good example of the freedom to do alternate versions of strips that are occasionally even funnier.) The alt-text is essential. Clark knows exactly how to use them to make a funny joke even better. His humor is unwaveringly silly and child-like, occasionally tempered with the surreal.
Hark! A Vagrant — Kate Beaton has stumbled upon an apparently bottomless well of humor: weird jokes about historical figures. She is a born historian, and can see the humor in fairly obscure events like Kierkegaard’s caricature in Danish papers and people’s responses to St. Francis. Her general tone can be described as sweet and goofy, even when she’s exposing negative characteristics of famous historical figures (like Edison and others’ theft of Tesla’s ideas). Her simple artwork belies a genuinely gifted artist, who has matured dramatically since she started.
K.C. Green — is prolific. His current project, gunshow, has been going on since September ’08, but he’s been making comics online since ’03 at both Bee Power and Horribleville. There are great comics buried in both of those, but unfortunately, (in the case of Bee Power) because they’re older projects, he hasn’t undertaken the task of organizing them beyond an unintelligible index. (Bee Power was worth the effort if for no other reason than to produce this comic.) His sense of humor reminds me of Brian Posehn. They’re both conscious of their geekiness and aren’t afraid to make incredibly juvenile jokes. They both also possess a self-deprecating streak, and weed-induced willingness to laugh at the dumbest things possible, tempered with the ability make it funny even if you aren’t high. There are striking similarities in his art to guys like R. Crumb, who would take earlier humor comic formats and take them in more shocking or profane directions. Another parallel is Horribleville, which was autobiographic and sometimes extremely honest. The only thing I would criticize about Green is his lack of organization. I’d love to see a “best of” archive that compiles his old projects onto one site. Regardless of quibbling web design problems, his work is fantastic. (He also has one of the funniest title pages to a story arc I’ve ever seen.) Here’s a good example. Read the four or five after it, too. Somehow pun after pun on the words “egg nog” starts out dumb and becomes painfully funny.
pictures for sad children — The title doesn’t even hint at the void-black humor of this strip. James Campbell says his comic is about “a bad feeling you get when you are feeling good, or a good feeling you get when you are feeling bad.” The artwork is extremely simple, using stick figures, black lines, and white and gray spaces. This is a fairly common style in webcomics, and its quality depends entirely on the artist. Campbell uses the style’s inherent repetition, uniformity, and simplicity to emphasize the bleak and oppressive world his characters inhabit. (K.C. Green, Kate Beaton, and many others have made pretty great guest comics, at PFSC, too.)
I couldn’t resist making a longer list, so here are some to take a risk on. And really, you’re risking nothing, except a second or two, and what were you going to do anyway?
A Lesson is Learned but the Damage is Irreversible
Return to Sender (I can’t resist commenting on this one. The artist is Vera Brosgol, a shockingly gifted artist who started on RTS when she was in high school (as far as I can tell, she’s about 26 now). It’s a serial instead of a collection of one-shots like a lot of the ones I listed, and has no resolution. She’s said she won’t ever return to it, and understandably s0–think back to the projects you started when you were in high school, and how embarrassed you’d be if people saw them. It’s not incredible, and her work in the Flight anthologies outstrip it, but it’s still a fun read while it lasts.)
Related Posts:
Stephen Hull is roughly a quarter-century old and writing in places like Canceled Forever, Some Experience, his notebook, bathroom walls, etc. He lives around Chicago.
Great comics all, but you forgot my personal favorite, Cat and Girl
http://www.catandgirl.com
It’s phenomenal.
As I was writing it, I kept thinking of more I wanted to add. Actually, my initial reaction to Cat and Girl was that it seemed like it was trying too hard, but since you mentioned it, I took another look. I really misjudged it.
Sixteen Miles to Merricks:
http://somefield.com/merricks_online/index.html
Cat Rackham:
http://www.catrackham.com/
My Cardboard Life:
http://mycardboardlife.com/
boy howdy, do I ever have a hard time understanding some of these comics, but this is a pretty great list for those of us who don’t know any webcomics beyond Achewood.
I feel bad that I haven’t checked in on most of these in so long. I always loved Scarygoround for its quirkiness, well developed characters and surreal supernaturality. Wigu was always great in its prime too. But it’s really difficult for anything to top the camera made with Mexican Magic Realism and the way it portrayed Pat in Achewood.