Nifty for life: Sluggy Freelance

I'm currently reading the entirety of Sluggy Freelance and I don't quite know if I'm strong enough. It is one of the originator strips, 1997 feels an age ago. It's strangely disappeared from the view of the webcomic critical consensus but it has quite a large and established fanbase. I believe a possible reason for this is the size of the archives and the lack of a common, easy meme-worthy image to latch on to. Having not read the strip for seven years I've found it has become its own ecosystem, a black hole of an endless story.

Not to say its longevity is unworthy. As a strip it has done, and hit most of the landmarks, what few webcomics can claim to do. It is self-sustaining where a plethora of webcomics have fallen by the wayside. Niego didn't even pass 200 strips. There's no real equivalent to the monumental depth of the sluggy archives and its been managed without the revamps and reiterations that other webcomic creators have been forced to rely upon.

For example: Sam and Fuzzy effectively directs the reader to a certain point in the archive where the strip really starts as a narrative. John Allison has worked through variants of his fantastical liminal space via Bobbins, Scarygoround and Bad Machinery and likewise David Willis has used his first strips as training wheels. Megatokyo has slowly devolved into an erratic moe derangement with intermittent updates. As for Penny Arcade it is able to rely on the quick stream of video game detritus to stay current if not somewhat glib.      

Sluggy Freelance has done none of these things. It has slogged on in cheerful nonchalance and it utterly ignores the current webcomic ecosystem in favour of its own reality. There are a multitude of intertwined story-lines cascading into a top-heavy over-narrative occasionally alleviated by gags. This mass of interlocking narratives are reinvented with a new skin every few months. It doesn't care that it jerks back between emo and gag of the week goofery because as readers will attest that's par for the course with this strip.


Abrams isn't afraid to be simultaneously dorky and ambitious and as a result the art can quickly move from basic to a hyperactive stylised action scene. The fantasy elements, to be unkind, can appear to be the worst Conanesque high fantasy schlock content to stay in the shallow waters of parody.

I don't know whether I should believe in the central narrative. Going over the archives what I do notice is that the central scenarios that plague the gang reiterate the seemingly eternal evils of Hereti-corp and the vowelless. It's been close to twenty years but no matter the accumulations of details or scenarios that pile up I can't quite take the sudden changes in tone in my stride. It feels like re-polishing and re-purposing glass. I've seen this before and the extra layers, while well-made, never stop my desire for a final endgame. I need some kind of closure for this strip. I need this to end well.