Zhi

Catching up on nachitos : The Walky series

2011-09-07T13:00:00.001+10:00

I'm just getting into the Walky mythos, reading the archives from Roomies, It's Walky to Joyce & Walky, I'd been infected with David Willis's oeuvre initially by Shortpacked and then the mythos remix comic, Dumbing of age. I knew it was a keystone classic webcomic series but the size of the archives scared me off, as well as the fact it spanned 3 comics. I'm glad I did, there's an emotional integrity here that's been rarely matched in my 10 years of reading webcomics. It crept up on me, but even the initial emotional deepening with the Ruth scenario was a very swift right-turn into adulthood and its discontents. These series veer very sharply between goofy antics and human consequences. I should have done this way sooner.

Do over?: Sore thumbs

2011-09-02T03:51:00.001+10:00

Just wondering if this is going to lead to the zinger that shows us what the Sore Thumbs reset is really about, that is, was it just a way to get out of an increasingly garish storyline or just a new spin on Sore Thumbs characters in a bizarro universe? There's certainly not much emphasis on video games anymore, it's transformed into a magical realist morality tale on the foibles of western society with Fairbanks as the screaming cheerleader in a clown suit.

You couldn't really call this a gamer comic, if it ever really was one before straying into bug-out mind jack territory. Now it's a cheerful antic sci-fi strip and this discovery of 'evil Jimmy' looks like it might explain how the reset of the Sore Thumbs universe works, I'm still not sure as to whether it's a glib & knowing deus ex machina deal or just boredom on the part of Crosby. Just want to see if I can get some resolution here.

Nine time's the charm: The Fox sister

2011-08-29T04:00:00.000+10:00

I'm more used to imagining the nine-tailed fox manifestation as typically Japanese but it has roots across most of East Asia, it's a trickster form, imagine Renard the fox mixed in with slavering bloodlust. If my most recent experience with Korean themes resulted in me bugging out then this strip, The Fox sister, is hopefully a decent antidote to that. Having been scared into whimpering submission by Japanese films such as the grudge and the ring series this was welcome respite

Already the pacing is measured between humour and horror, the horrific prologue doesn't make any sense as yet,. in the main storyline we're injected into a typical Korean city, we don't know much about anything as yet and I'm guessing this is going to veer into an initially uncomfortable 'odd couple' set up with our female protagonist and the tall blonde doofus westerner with the dog as the loyal companion / goofball. All we've really got for now is the artwork, the story will make itself known as it gets along, this is more of an introduction to a webcomic that's getting going more than an established strip with an established character.

That said, the artwork here is lustrous and sheeny, just the right side of cartoony without devolving into too much cuteness, this scene with the character's face in reflection in the sword is masterful and this willingness to devote a whole page to set the mood is admirable, it shows is a mature handle on narrative pacing, presumably aiming at a long haul of a story. Maybe best to check up on it in a few months though when it's more established.

Something in the air tonight:Sfeer theory

2011-08-25T03:41:00.007+10:00

If this is a steampunk or fantasy webcomic then it's not easy to place, I don't think I've seen 'Regency-punk' before especially not in an alternate world setting, an alternate nineteenth century magical monarchy perhaps, think along the lines of the meek and you're halfway there. Sfeer theory is a big picture type of webcomic within the context of a wandering magical dilettante called Luca Valentino as a lowly tech assistant at the Uitspan institution. It is certainly not an easy project to have begun.

The linework and colouring are miles ahead of most webcomics, the dappled use of shadows here is unexpected and overall the artwork is cleancut and sharp, sometimes painfully lucid, on a computer's screen it looks crisp in a way that a physical page would easily soften and dull, The style seems to be using an anime influence without the restrictions of its cloying touches, an anime inflection then and consistently good with perspective handled adeptly; this is a well-established style and suits the confidence of the story being told in this strip.

Likewise, the writer Muun's narration here is world-weary, literate and quite assured, I've found the creation of a civilised world takes more chutzpah than the staples of a barbarian adventure, a lazy equivalent would perhaps be Full Metal Alchemist with the application of magic being the centrepiece of the strip.

The use of 'Sfeer' is an underlying emphasis of the mechanics of this world and the reader is slowly getting a handle on it. The vocabulary guide is helpful as the magical terminology is part of a consistent system. Again, like most good webcomics this is more story based than 'slice of life' and looks like it'll be an inevitable 'slow-burn'. So far there's only been an introductory chapter but I'm already hooked.

Now, I'm aware I use the words 'slow burn' as a shorthand for a long term investment of your time, I'm aware that some of my reviewed webcomics such as Family man is quite heavy going but these types of labour-intensive long-term investment strips are what keep me going. As much as I like video games, gamer strips are too anecdotal and ephemeral to last as a webcomic genre to be viewed in the future, they'll just be sad dated relics like juggalos and class distinctions.If my first webcomic crushes like Niego & Butternutsquash have let me down then I'm hoping to read this webcomic for a long time in the future.

I don't like people : Corporate skull

2011-08-09T03:40:00.009+10:00

Jamie Smart was always the hyperactive clown in the coyly dismal array of Slave Labor Graphic's stable. His inclusion into the niche comic publisher that emphasised a gloomy self-consciously Gothic aesthetic seemed at first to be a misnomer but on closer inspection his gibbering violent fables add up into something more than a light-weight goof-off. If Jnonen Vasquez is the sardonic luminary of SLG's roster then Smart's violent and scatter-shot approach in Bear was the antic trickery of the court jester.

Nothing is serious or sacred for Smart and the basis of Corporate Skull stems from extremity. If Bear was a disconnected series of snippets of ludicrous violence then this is an anti-corporate obvious entry point for gen-Y that manages to capture the quiet wretched lower-middle-class desperation of the cubicle-slave.

The eponymous main character, Corporate Skull, is reborn after his mishap and subsequently finds freedom in ignoring all of life's strictures and bringing the motherfucking ruckus. This issues is it's not altogether certain how such a rebellious 'bad-ass' is going to progress into a well-rounded story. As such, there's little internal logic to the transformation to the main character, a knowing 4th wall breakage and if this is going to be implemented as a long-term storyline that might be a problem. The need to guide a story about a 'too cool for school' skull-headed rebel means he'd need to create a long-term schemata for the strip.

That said, I'm always a sucker for a pretty face and visually this strip oozes cool and chutzpah in its frantic disassembling of our addled western lifestyle. The cutified scale of this strip perversely sets it up as a modern-day morality tale by intimating that the world of work is a childish pursuit with most people as status-obsessed imbeciles who obsess about arrant fuckwit shiny nonsense until we devolve into a slurry of greedy abject cuntitude.

So...uh...my obscene gibbering aside, this is a slick and visually gorgeous attempt to mindjack the reader with a political slant and a restless roving eye for dumb-fuckery. Anti-establishment poses are usually glib knowing acts of self-awareness and this is no exception. For all its obvious constrictions this longer format looks like an attempt to answer the questions about human nature Bear occasionally posed in between the congealed blood and inhuman laughter.

Any misgivings aside this is still something different, the initial riff on suicide isn't anything most slice of life or gamer webcomic creators would ever touch and Smart's background in indie 'dark' comics means he can easily manoeuvre around in a wry and bleak moral underpinning to his humour. His background in print tree comics has put him miles ahead of the pack and even if this strip isn't established as a webcomic presence it deserves to be on the ideas present here.

Fey but not coy: Fey winds

2011-06-29T15:53:00.010+10:00

The amount of anime influenced fantasy series has certainly hit a critical mass in the webcomic realm. Now, at first glance what differentiates Fey Winds from other decent fantasy webcomics like Velharthis or Shades of veil is the use of colour, it contains a sort of gleaming intensity alongside a a lightness of touch with cute or 'chibified' versions of characters from frame to frame, a very fluid and lush type of line work meshed in with gorgeous colours. It's a style that encourages goofy antics and dastardly deeds, there's a fourth wall breaking self-awareness here that is quite refreshing. There's also a decent map section (needed in every fantasy webcomic) as well as providing a proficient FAQ and world background.

To be reductive these are the adventures of a maladroit and mismatched gang who are chasing a magical macguffin whilst an ancient evil emerges from the shadows, a standard theme but handled deftly if a not little irreverently. There's a..uh...human fox here but certainly no questionable furry nonsense present, a bloodthirsty knight, a slavering pervoid bard princeling and a gracious and sensible elf round out a team of adventurers in their search for salvation for their fractured world.

While it's not really questioning the boundaries of the 'adventure' trope this strip's self-awareness certainly helps the reader adjust. In the 'about' section it's described as a 'silly fantasy webcomic' and this high energy approach means the main characters act like 21st century twenty-somethings and this underlying wry attitude to cliché is what distinguishes this into a strip that's worth your time, the valentine cards for each character are especially good .

So yeah, sometimes the self-aware goofiness is ratcheted up a bit too much into some knowing pop culture territory but overall this is a fluid and easily digestible fantasy webcomic that doesn't drag the reader down into a dreary neckbeard cheeto-gobbling dungeons and dragons spiel. Its overall strength is some kick-ass kinetic action sequences and it works as a concise introduction into fantasy webcomics that allows the reader to ease into the standard fantasy tropes with a hyperactive whirl.

Caught in a web of your own design: String theory

2011-05-30T21:13:00.003+10:00

At first glance this is not a genre strip; the main point is I'd assumed it was set in our universe or timeline but slowly but surely the other references come creeping in and the emotional range widens out into a slow burning rage. I'd never been so fortuitously side-swiped by a strip this much, what I thought was a cringe-worthy workplace goof ball drama was merely a prologue to a much richer story.

This is a grimy and bleak webcomic, I didn't know seething hatred could be a metier but Beckey Grundy is an adept at creating a protagonist as a vector for bad luck mojo, our anti-hero scientist Herville Schtein mostly choosing the path of least resistance. I just got drawn into this strip as I discovered what looked like our time was not, as the tragic protagonist is only gradually inserted into an alternate future.

This narrative complexity is accompanied by a comparable artistic flowering. As with every webcomic worth following the line-work improves substantially as experience is gained, now it's evolved into a psychedelic swirling of colour, but it's also the little things that work; the doctor's red eyes, the shadows in their characters faces as well, the move from black and white to colour increases the overall texture exponentially.

This world isn't spoonfed to you and this strip gets better as there is an emergence from what looks like a dull mad scientist parody into something more morally weighted. I know the Websnark isn't really a webcomics critic anymore but the term 'Cerebus syndrome' is quite effective here, the first chapter looks like meandering around and after that there's a lot of ret-connning, the characters seem to grow into more substantial roles.

I haven't been so pleasantly surprised for a long time, maybe reading slice of life strips has brutalised my senses because this is a long term commitment that I believe is worth reading just to see how fortitude comes from feckless, needless rage. It's not an emotion that webcomics emphasise, mostly going for glib sweet nothings. This is a richer thematic approach and deserves to be read.

ranga pride 4 life: Red's planet

2011-05-10T13:05:00.003+10:00

First off, I like the cartoony sheen on display here, it's good to see a crisp clean cut work. I know it's a webcomic form of a print comic and again, it shows, the colours present are a vivid luminosity that elevates the page. I also guess as webcomic readers we're used to a 'gen x' adult perspective and this strip comes into the unknown via the viewpoint of a 10 year old redheaded girl called Red as she's abducted by aliens and brought to a fantastical space scape. I'm sold and it's the expressions that really sell this strip (as opposed to Family man, heh and sigh... L.A.W.L.S ), the facial expressions are fluid and fun and intimate a vast universe of trippy sights and sounds.

This is an excursion into an alien landscape that's been injected with fun. It's got the right tone, at first I was wary because of the stylistic touches of the strip, I thought they looked childish. This isn't childish, it's a smorgasbord of alien life and Eddie Pittman has the ambition and sheer skill required to pull off displaying gibbering xenomorphs, robots and multiple appendages without a blink.

The previous experience in animation clearly shows through here and it's a giddy inflection to the strip that makes reading it a joyous experience. Imagine a sleek hyperactive Star Wars universe on LSD and you'd be coming close. This is really only getting started and I think it's a welcome addition to what's out there. I'm definitely going to be investigating the rest of Space dock 7's roster of science fiction focused webcomics.

*Errr.....a 'ranga' is an informal term Australians used for red haired people.

Musical Accompaniment: Klaxons, myths of the near future. Psychosis in musical form, a dystopian ranting mash up with fully sick hyperactive beats.

Animal house: Family man

2011-05-02T15:56:00.003+10:00

If you're expecting cheap thrills, Family man is not going to provide it. If there is a lupine werewolf horror element here it's going to be a long time coming. We're placed into the world of  the eighteenth century, which were boom years for German universities, Prussia in particular emphasised technology and philosophy. We're brought into this new age by the experiences of Luther Levy, part of a lower middle class family of indeterminate social standing, looking for a university post. Their father's conversion from Judaism into Christianity being a key point here. It's an interesting tack as it's certainly a world webcomics have not touched; the cusp of the industrial revolution.

This is another case of beautiful backgrounds and perspective and a more shaky grasp on facial features. It is a strip willing to slow down, letting scenes play out over several pages adding an almost filmic quality. The first image that came into my mind upon glancing at the opening scenes of chapter 1 was the grimy uh...'rococo punk' of Brotherhood of the wolf. The artwork is technically miles beyond the expectations we currently have for webcomics but the queasiness I feel on glancing at the protagonists face is sometimes off-putting (L.A.W.L.S  is another chief offender I think.)

The eighteenth century hasn't really been an epoch that fantasy has touched. Its themes and vistas are hard to transplant outside of earth's time frame. While steampunk and low fantasy can recreate new worlds by virtue of their technology or lack thereof, this period finds itself in limbo as far as the fantastical in concerned. It's too early for steampunk and too late for fantasy. I'm not sure if this strip this lies within my purported remit but its sheer depth makes it a good historical fantasy, the creator is deadly serious about recreating this world and any flaws present are equalled out.

The archives are pretty large and the reader is chucked into a homecoming with lots of exposition given by various characters. It's titled as a graphic novel, and the emphasis on chapters and pages makes it feel like a clearing house for a dead wood comic more than a webcomic per se, that's not necessarily a bad thing, just look at Ellis' Freak Angels, The notes and the FAQ are quite dense and clearly show a well thought out internal world This is a slow burn and there's not a lot of whizz bang adventure or gun fights or hectic adventure.

This webcomic WILL take a lot of reading and the pay-off, even more so than any strip I've reviewed, will be longer than a casual strip. The farewell from Luther's mother shows an undercurrent of emotion that isn't really current in webcomics as yet, regardless of how sophisticated the medium has become. There's lots of lingering stares and 'needless' panels and pages but frankly this is the closest to a novel in webcomic form I've seen so far.

Musical accompaniment: Gravenhurst; The Western lands. coy folk softness and screeching distortion mix up like rosewater and ichor in a foretaste of hell.

I see dead people: The zombie hunters

2011-04-21T18:04:00.003+10:00

First off the bat the name of the strip, the Zombie hunters, has to be the most direct webcomic name I've seen in a while, it's pretty naff. Don't worry though, if the name looks nondescript you'll soon be drawn in by a visually appealing mix of cute banter and slithering undead terror.

The use of colour as in the cartoony character segues look almost manga style chibi, it's a mixture of realism and goofiness in a dreary grey pop-apocalyptic background. It's the humour that drew me in here, when end of the world scenarios crop up they are mostly affecting and stoic epics like Crossed (the first time Garth Ennis has made me cry) and the Walking Dead. Instead, this isn't straight-out humour parody strip but it is a self-aware show of fear induced rage and its affects on people, a dark humour created under duress. It changes frame by frame from harsh realism to kawaii cute and I think it works quite well.

One thing to consider is the emphasis placed on morphology of these munted monstrosities, there's lots of varieties. It's good to see a division between mere shamblers and speed-driven undead hunters with numerous other classes of zombies. In video game terms the Left 4 dead & Deadspace series are the most obvious indicators of this new specialisation of the undead and the categorisation of these monsters is shown in a succinct 'encyclopaedia' section. Where a strip like Dead Winter possibly developed ad hoc, this looks planned from the get go and it's all the better for it. The idea of a group living infected as existing in a social limbo is quite intriguing, the vampire hunters are disaffected killers because there's no other role for them.

Yes, the zombie trope had been done to death (heh), but that's never the point, survival and its associated discontents are the point of the zombie/ post apocalyptic genres. The point of the strip is seeing characters interacting in fear and rage, trying to survive the night. You'll need to go through the archive twice this as there's a bit of interplay between the current storyline & the past, it only started to click together after comparing different chapters. There's no slow build up here, it's all action and anybody with a soul will like this strip.

Musical accompaniment: Gallows, Orchestra of wolves. Shouting, rage, psychosis, aneurysm, rinse and repeat.

Do androids dream of Jersey shore: Ironborn

2011-04-10T13:59:00.004+10:00

This is a strip ostensibly about a divergence between science & magic; but on closer inspection it's more about relationships and identity. From the get-go the strip's heroine, Opal, is suddenly thrust into a maelstrom of shifting alliances & competing ideologies about how the world should function, a basic technology versus science dichotomy. So it's steampunk but not in your face about it, advanced sentient robots co-exist with magic. The set up of 2 cities via a fable-spinner introduction is minimalist but it works for now, Opal's miraculous 'game-changing' situation is the entry point for the reader & the rest of her band of ragtag 'gang'.

The varied shading evident is a nice touch ,at times it feels like a notebook discovered, veering between primitive and textured so if the faces shown can be a bit skeewhif then the backgrounds are some of the best present within webcomics. I think the inconsistency is part of the charm. If nothing else there is a sense of whimsy here, a good sense of pacing and the storyline certainly has been envisioned as part of a long-term consistency. It's a mature and rich ecosystem that's been put in place for readers, and it will take commitment to go through the archives, I believe it would be worth it.

The varying personalities of the robots interest me, it's the little sideways gambits of minor characters, the vocabulary and political chicaneries that serves as a background to Opal's discovery of how her powers work. Opal's numb lack of awareness means her learning curve is more easily followed by the reader.I'm not sure where this is going to go but what I've read so far points toward a decent and measured approach to what could have been bog-standard superhero dross.

Musical accompaniment: Sixtoo, Chewing on glass and other miracle cures. Background malevolence, somebody's watching you, seething distortion and sense of unease.

Love is blind: Oglaf

2011-03-26T19:55:00.005+11:00

Oglaf is a strange sexual beast of a webcomic, at first glance it's a collection of some risqué NSFW jokes based in a fantasy realm. It's certainly a very sleek stylised production with years of skill leading up to it. The archive lists a number of disconnected stories showing the reader what is NSFW or not.

At first glance this webcomic certainly looks like a series of disconnected sexually inflected high fantasy tropes but it has gradually meshed into a world with its own references and peccadilloes. The fact that there isn't a requirement for an ongoing storyline means that the creator can take in as many genre influences and ideas and suit it to the work, as a result there's a very wide scope of themes on display here and lots of fantasy in-jokes that have been re-jigged for a slacker gen-x smirking appreciation.

There still are one-shot one page strips but overall the main storyline of the ever-afflicted apprentice is continuing and may even be heading towards some kind of redemption or reward for his tribulations. The strip seems to be in a sleazy confident , quite sure of itself and the material it is using. If you're looking for a more knowing and perhaps post-modern slant on fantasy then this is certainly a strange place to find it, but this consists of digestible nuggets of sly hyper-stylised japery that is very fluid and readable.

Musical accompaniment: Die Antwoord: $0$. Sexualised crazy, psychotic boasting, what the fuck? See 'Evil Boy' on youtube for jaw-dropping magical realist visuals.

Red Dead Dementia: Emily Carroll

2011-03-18T16:06:00.010+11:00

Emily Carroll's work seems to be simultaneously luscious & simplistic, cartoony & otherworldly. The main hook into her work for me was this ambiguous short story, it feels more like one of Grimm brothers darker fairytales (certainly not the foppish Perrault).

Literature status isn't something we usually see in webcomics with it being more an ephemeral pop-culture buzz obsessed medium, this is a dreamy landscape with numerous influences coming to the fore. Her main website his down but her blog is packed with pictures & links to other stories. There's definitely a folkloric & fable led verve here and the line work can easily veer between sumptuous complexity & 60's style pop art like Shag. If nothing else this story should make you feel a pleasantly unsettling chill for the rest of the day.

Something wicked this way comes: The watcher of Yaathagggu

2011-03-10T16:43:00.007+11:00

I have to say this tongue twister strip, The watcher of Yaathagggu, is shaping up quite well, at first glance it looked like mere riffing on the Cthulu mythos and would be an aimless appendage on an already well-furrowed meme, but the author, Robyn Seale, has a plan here and this looks well thought out. The backgrounds and the shades used give a washed- out dreamy feel which acts as a perfect counterpoint to the crisp, clean line work. The amount of visual information your eyes have to process here is several degrees of magnitude more than your usual webcomic, lots of action and movement. So for 'production values' this is a pretty impressive strip.

The background to this world we're implanted in has been left suitably ambiguous, no clear-cut genre boundaries imposed on the reader, it's semi-modern with lots of squiggle room left for further development. The protagonist watches the seething void of darkness at the edge of town, Yaathaqqqu, a broken fuckery of a place of pervoids and skanks and our hero, Pieta Gaolwynne, is being sucked into something awful.

As for genre, Steam-punk or cosmic horror would be the obvious cop-out thing to say but, frankly, the narrative's open spaces provided and the ambiguity as to what the hell exactly is going on is part of the pleasure of reading this strip. The nameless evil omnipresence feels more like a 'mcguffin' at the moment, and now we're just learning what the mechanics of the world are, what makes it tick. This looks like it we're in for a dense danse Macabre with an injection of gallows humour for piquancy. Good stuff.

Musical accompaniment: Sigur Ros : Takk. Angelic, troubled, wistful and fey. Perfect backdrop to this bleak dreamscape.

Hungry like the goof: Barker

2011-02-20T14:33:00.011+11:00

The thought suddenly occurred to me that the creative team of Chris Crosby & Owen Gieni, the heroes behind Sore thumbs (alongside numerous successful side projects) were genre writers/ creators. Sore Thumbs is more a sci-fi psycho-drama than a gamer strip and has been for some time. Last Blood is a worthy excursion into the morality of vampirism after a catastrophe. If I can be unkind, then Keenspot is a ghetto for some decrepit and decayed webcomics and this creative team and their strips on Keenspot are the only thing keeping that collective viable.

Their new strip called Barker is delving into the symptoms of lycanthrope lunacy. I hate online acronyms but the latest set of strips were so puerile & funny that I did indeed 'laugh out loud'. The inclusion of nonsensical anti-Semitism as a entry point for a gag would break most strips but this strip just hits the ground running and keeps on going. It's the experience here from previous strips that shows through. There are no rough patches, Kaezrer's colourist skills adding a technicolour glitz to the proceedings.

If Last Blood wasn't your average vampire strip then this certainly isn't your standard werewolf strip, a little skewhif sidling into humour amidst the boring stretch of high school in middle America. To be brutally reductive, this is Freak & Geeks vs Dog soldiers. Werewolves are only really implied at the moment as I've caught this about 30 strips in but I'm assuming there will be a decent back story (Hopefully not some wretched Twilight style love dreck where the protagonist chooses between necrophilia or bestiality, meh.) The goof-ball antics between a boy & his inadvertently transformed dog are what drew me in and hopefully this develops into a screw-ball comedy.

This creative team has collaborated to the point that any kinks have been ironed out and the experience in pacing and consistency in artwork certainly shows in comparison to a starter strip. If it's a werewolf strip then it is so in only the most roundabout way, the transformation of a loyal dog into a human is the corollary to the dire 'urban fantasy' being billowed out. If nothing else this is a sheeny type of fun and that's better than 90% of the webcomics out there.

Glare me to death: Scout Crossing

2011-01-28T23:06:00.007+11:00

Speaking of Questionable Content and hipsterism; this strip is a little gem that is still suffering from birthing pains. The first 20 strips are nigh scenester incomprehensible as it moves from snide indie cat-fights into super-hero escapades with nary a blink. That might be part of the problem I had with this strip initially, it was the awkward transition between the 2 states or genres (the Nickleback gag at the start was both funny and close to ruining the entrance into high concept magical fighting).

I say almost because this strip has been hitting the right notes since then, what looked liked aimless angsty wandering about as a slice of life strip quickly became an action strip with a viable background narrative. The superhero tag is the only genre that really fits here; with webcomics being the last place to find an equivalent to the DC and Marvel juggernauts. The webcomic spin on this is a localised and personalised version of the epic battles that the major action print comics deal with an injection of snarky underdog rage into the proceedings.

If Scott Pilgrim is a post-modern love story with a video game sheen then this is a failed suicide girl model slowly picking off her scabs for a mixture of pain and pleasure.

This strip's creator has 2 other webcomics on the go so you can't fault him for sheer ambition, I certainly don't think this has diluted his focus because this strip is pretty groody. It's only really getting started but already as a reader I can sense the kinetic energy in place and the artwork can more than handle the hectic paces Scott Ferguson is putting the characters through as he traverses a strange mutated munted world.

This is self aware/self-conscious blue state indie snickering transitions into superhero antics and morality with the quickness. I don't know how these 2 states of being will co-exist; the humour / anger quotient can be somewhat skeewhif and may take a while to even it all out. We're only just being introduced to the parameters of how this indie / superpowers fusion is going to work and I categorically have great hopes for this rambunctious misadventure.

Musical accompaniment: Blood brothers, crimes. Yeah kinda old but also kinda hyperactive train-wreck high frame-rate psychosis.

'Hey, have you heard of Broken Social Scene?': Questionable Content

2011-01-22T03:27:00.004+11:00

Uh, maybe it's because I'm slightly tipsy but this is just something that got me kind of writhing & orgasmic: the idea of a rest or change in Questionable Content. Admittedly my purported remit is to look at new genre comics but this strip has been one of my staple webcomics for the last 5 years & the idea suggested here in today's strip of bursting out of the whole Dora/ Martin / Faye lust axis is kinda stimulating. I like the strip, it's comfortable, like a stout or a rich sherry in winter's chill. But the idea of a strip that's effectively become part of the webcomic establishment moving its typically slow tectonic plates of narrative into unknown space kinda gets me off.

I want some new characters to aid and abet my idiotic geekboy lust for Penelope & Marigold. Martin's whole existence in the strip has revolved around Faye and Dora and I'm hoping these recent strips that are accentuating the new directions this strip could flow into are the sign of things to come. This webcomic developed from sly inside gags about indie music into a full fledged twenty-something relationship paradigm. Holy fuck, I hope this strip here isn't just a meta-comic witticism about QC's continual pulsating patterns of lust and misplaced hope in Dora's cafe of doom. Considering the exponential increase in artistic talent Jeph has shown in his artwork since he started the strip in 2003, I hope this is a narrative reset, I hope to sweet everloving fuck that this is a new arc in the misadventures of Martin & his pervert anthroPC, Pintsize. Or even a romantic adventure between Martin & Pintsize, one can only live in hope.

Musical Accompaniment: Pavement - Slanted and enchanted, like there was any other choice? Well, uh, okay, to be facetious; maybe Mogwai's raging and bewildering Young Team.

All killer, no filler: Sinfest

2011-01-17T22:12:00.004+11:00

I've always been out of the loop when it comes to webcomics awards, I only found out via the webcomic overlook. The fact that Sinfest has been twice nominated in the 2010 webcomic list awards got me thinking about the attrition rate of the webcomics I used to read. It started in 2000, around about the time I started my addiction & along with Sluggy Freelance and Everything Jake was always on my reading list. Now, if Sluggy Freelance has devolved into a weird cult with its own internal logicSinfest is still somehow fresh. It just took me a while to realise it.

Sinfest was a strip I'd forgotten about. I'd previously thought it had hit a purple patch of recycled jokes then there was a kinetic moment somewhere where Ishida seemed to hit his stride. I'm easily distracted & had put sinfest off my daily read list but it had since hit a metamorphoses moment where it's dealing with issues of faith and morality

Up to about 2005 the strips were gag strips with the occasional bit of continuity thrown in. The one-off jokes were never going to sustain a strip, it's not quite cerebus syndrome but while I was away Tatsuya Ishida tweaked this strip into something steadily approaching awesome. The ongoing Romeo & Juliet dalliance going on between Criminy & Fuchsia is leading into the Devil as an actual villain, the inclusion of the pet comics into the main storyline, it's all meshing together & the continuity is a great attractor for me.

The author has a roving eye for source material and if webcomics suffer from an over-emphasis on the beta male geek ghetto, this strip has developed into far more of a comic meta-filter for the current memes buzzing around, even if it does show a soft liberal/ left bias Ishida is willing to poke fun at his own perceived inadequacies. So if some of it can still be gimmicky; it's always been a tongue in cheek strip. The artwork, of course, is immaculately 'slick' and the inclusion of occasionaly larger full colour pages is where Ishida shines as an artist, working a vein of modern decadence in a post-manga fluorescence.

Gastrophobia

2011-01-08T22:41:00.002+11:00

Gastrophobia is a hyperactive incursion of ancient Greece shunted directly into your corneas. Visually, it's quite arresting. The gags are mainly visual with lots of accentuation and strong, fluid line work, Onomatopoeic sounds (thunk!!!) and way more motion lines than I've seen in years of reading webcomics . This is not a subtle strip, it's an overpowering splatter of pie to the face and is quite digestible.

If the street smart Amazon wonder woman Phobia is the muscular fulcrum of the strip then her son Gastro is the clown prince. The relationship between mother & son is a tad dysfunctional, more like slapstick partners getting caught up in 'wacky' adventures and 'hijinks'. If you want a long term storyline with a consistent canon then this isn't for you.

But don't be too quick to dismiss this strip as its strength lies in its ability to jump quickly from idea to idea, breaking the fourth wall and evading any sort of seriousness. There's no pretence about anything too long-term, more like short connected bites of evanescent humour in an alternate version of ancient Greece. The cutesy/surreal vibe might not be to everybody's taste but the characters are pretty endearing and the pop-cultural references hit with smart bomb efficiency.

A Gothique beatdown

2011-01-07T18:25:00.001+11:00

I have bought myself a new laptop, my Dell was utterly munted and unusable so hopefully my haphazard update schedule will improve. I couldn't bloody type anything so now I've got no excuse at all. There's so many webcomic blogs that have fallen by the way side & I didn't want to become just another un-updated webcomic blog, a desiccated corpse online.

Just a little titbit, found another parody of the infamous cartoonist/ evangelist/ gibbering space cadet Jack Chick's cartoon strips, if the original Cthulu parody doesn't cheer you up then this certainly will or you clearly need some humour reconstructive surgery. Keep it real.

Transitions: Webcomic resets

2011-01-04T18:55:00.004+11:00

A couple of resets in the webcomics I consistently read:

Scarygoround has wrapped up & Bad machinery is the reset option. It's the goofball antics of the younger set, not much has changed but frankly the dry,droll British wit is like a quadruple hit of espresso in a morass of nonentities creating furry obscenity.

Sore Thumbs has come back from the death of one of its main characters by restarting the Sore thumbs universe, though you have to use your knowledge of the central characters to get the jokes here, so not really a reset, more like a re-imagining, Battlestar Galactica would be the best analogy.

It's moved far beyond its original 'gaming webcomic' parameters some time ago, into pure sizzling joyous crazy, so this was probably the only way out, I'm not sure if this is an epilogue or a new beginning though this strip seems to carry its past a lot more than most, so many meandering useless story lines. I'm conflicted, the injection of colour is a welcome gaudiness but overall it looks more like an extended in-joke than a viable long term adventure.

A blood red smile: Lucid tv

2009-07-02T10:47:00.002+10:00

I'm not shocked by much but this strip is particularly cruel, it takes pleasure in its cruelty. There's a certain salience here in trying to 'push the envelope' in displaying the Abuse of power that a doctor can engage in. I guess the best lazy cross-over analogy I could go for would be the gory med horror film Pathology mixed in with the slacker humour of Scrubs. The fqact that one of the doctors loooks suspiciously like Mozza from the Smiths is quite apt. This is horribly amusing, like the slow motion car crash you can't help watching on Youtube, the firsr strip since Sexy losers to make me simultanously cringe and laugh out loud inappropriately. This is a piquent sort of psychosis, veering the non-sequiters through every moral quandry and out the other side, bloody and grinnning. Keogh has created a sick like paeon to surgery and its discontents, bittingly intelligent medical satire is a genre I didn't know I ever needed, just like an extra heart spliced in.

Cthulu is my homeboy: Lovecraft is missing

2009-01-20T09:48:00.007+11:00

H.P.Lovecraft shouldn't need an introduction but I can certainly offer a lobotomy to the fecklesss pikers who disdain our lord & master. Lovecraft was Kafka with the insanity turned up to gleeful abandon. So, a webcomic with a focus on H.P.Lovecraft should be enough to make every horror geek drool an ocean but you would certainly have seen the blatantly overused Cthulu memes online and thought twice about this strip.

Lovecraft is pretty well harrowed ground and this could either be a total munted conspiracy theory overfiend godzilla-with-tentacles goof-up or something exciting. it's more intriguing than anything else, like a slow boil, not dizzying or spectacular but a real good take on the subject. It starts at Lovecraft's career as a amateur journalist & writer in the classic New England setting of his mythos. As the title suggests he has disappeared and the story now continues...

From what I've seen so far in this strip, Lovecraft is used as a symbol, rather than an anti-social punchline. I'm not sure how the gruesome ethereal horror is going to be subtly embedded into this narrative so far but the overall mystery we've seen experienced is by our plucky heroine. At the moment Lovecroft is a character in absentia so it will be interesting to see where this goes. I'm very interested in this strip and if you have even an inkling of gleefull bloodlust in your veins you will be as well.

In space no one can hear you bark: Pug Davis

2009-01-13T10:15:00.009+11:00

Pug Davis is certainly a labour of love, while ostensibly it looks like sci-fi the artwork veers between primitive sketchiness and squidgy detail. This strip is breathaking in its consistent insistance on long-term infinate canvas within its somewhat slow paced strips. Guided by a stoic warped pug dog as its hero accompanied by an uh....odd sidekick, Blouse, there's a tragic back story here that gives what could be a throw-away space opera cowboy bebop riff a certain level of poignance, there's little fables popping up here amidst the minamalist scrawl and they are easily matched by the painterly subtlety on display here. The relationship between the two characters is not outlined at first so this is a discovery and finally this becomes a meditation on growing friendship.

At first glance though this looks like a mishmash of dispirate angles & the off-level sections add to the erratic flavour of this strip, the shading and linework certainly helps the stream of consciousness storylines present here stretch out into the ethereal nothing of outer space. This strip is willing to mix science fiction & surrealist tropes mix-up, there's a lot of wordless emotion here and Rebecca Sugar is quite willing to let the artwork alone convey the narrative, a concise use of silence to direct the action, but more awe and empathy than undercurrents of Pinterersque malice, this is a strip about the occasional downsides and the endless oddity of space exploration .

Cloverfield also caused epilepsy: Blip

2009-01-04T20:24:00.005+11:00

Looking at Blip I'm guessing this is the second generation Japanophile convergence strip that finally works. This strip has enough of the structural/artwork background to qualify as manga influenced but has none of the cultural dependency that cripples a strip like Megatokyo. It is seriously funny though, talkative snide and heartless type of funny and a talking cat that gives lil' Nyet a run for his sordid roubles in debonair ranting.

Blip is also quite rare in that in veers between an emerging narrative & some goofball slice of life strips, the artwork certainly has enough manga in its origin to skip between chibi and serious epic heaven & earth , subtle enough as it progresses from a schlep to a viable long-term narrative strip in a way that Sore Thumbs no longer is.

Don't let the initial cartoony vibe put you off, there is a long term lovelorn storyline here beneath the sarcasm but the manga influences are more than mere skin deep chibi-fetishism, the western slacker vibe is mixed up with with the standard scattergun Japanese epic engagements between good & evil fought by hidden heroes. Luckily the typical schoolyard antics anime & manga chooses has been replaced by a more adult twenty-something world. The title itself is telling, later taking on more significance than one would automatically think, there is a theological basis for this strip and Sage can change from goofy to estachalogical in a split second.

The little angels & demons present here are initial comic relief but overall the pacing allows enough klutzy goof-offs to make this entertaining on a weekly basis, the reason this strip works is because the (decidedly grumpy) heroine, K, is fully grounded in the uselessness of modern western existence and this makes her role within this divided world that gradually emerges , a focus point for all the haphazard craziness, giving the strip more emphasis. Enjoyable and worth sticking with for the long haul.

Hungry like the wolf: Menage a 3

2008-12-29T08:30:00.003+11:00

While I concede Menage a 3 certainly does not lie within my genre-heavy fanboy remit but I also believe that it's sheer fun without being trifling. The narrative drops the reader right into the lustful insanity from Montreal, almost like a mirror image of our world except everybody is a sex-obsessed nut. Gary is the dawdling man-child looking for flat-mates whose life gets a fun injection from the snarky slacker girl, Zii, and a drool injection from the voluptuous Qubecois sex-pot Didi, the main lust object in the strip.

There's a slight anime tinge here but if you're used to Gisele Lagace's sleek artwork then this is more of the hyper-stylised energetic linework, very fluid and well suited to the crazy hi-jinks it describes. While the strip is pretty open about its lust obsession, but this isn't fluff, it is sincerely humour driven craziness and the overreaching obsession with the body frequently delves into blatant perversion but it's more innocent awe than sordid leering.

Losing my religion; Enter the Jabberwocky

2008-09-02T17:47:00.003+10:00

This website is something I've come across in my travails and I've just recently become obsessed with it so I'll have to rant at you about this until you each each review thrice and roll on the floor with laughter and disgust.

I would have to say that as a former Evangelical these cruel dissections of Jack Chick's tracts are the funniest things I've read online for about 2 years. As in laughing out loud uncontrollably for a period of half an hour as each hit went in, it's a snarky and angry grinding down of the blatant idiocies of Jack's theologies (Islamophobia, Homophobia & surreal anti-Catholic & Masonic conspiracy theories that veer into a stratosphere of amphetamine mind-fucked faith).

Bile and contempt drips with every word but there's also a strangely fascinated undercurrent here at a world view that is so disingenuous and warped. It's the best rebuttal of Jack Chick's poisonous addled theology because it's fucking hilarious. Even better than Niego or Hellbound.

Love in a hurricane of blood: Raising Hell

2008-08-15T09:38:00.011+10:00

I came across Raising Hell while looking over Transmission X, a worthwhile and experimental collective I'd found out about via Butternutsquash and if Koala Wallop no longer grabs my attention then this is a far more interesting substitute, no fey cartoony cute meanderings or surrealism masquerading as a plot. This strip in particular leapt out at me, or rather it assaulted my eyes with the virtuosity of the whole bloody confused mess, still, this is no starter strip and there's been some planning behind it and this unified vision makes a nice change (Road Waffles anybody? geeze).

The first thing that hits you is the colour scheme , it's very understated but when it gets violent red is used like a knife in the eyes, you can almost see the hemoglobin sizzle as it encrusts on the walls into a deeper vermilion red. If nothing else, this strip makes mindless violence look exceedingly good.

I think by now you can tell that zombies are my one true vice and this strip delivers a zombie apocalypse in the middle of a Halloween booze-fest and a lover's tiff. There's something very noir about all this while it's grounded in indie disaffected slacker styling (Stuff Sucks, Butternutsquash, Questionable Content) and it feels more adult than these strips, like the Dropkick Murphys dropped in for an impromptu gig at your house and your keg internally combusts out of pure joy while your little brother smashes a beer bottle over his head. By that I mean it feels like there's no computer geek DNA at all in the genesis of this strip, the counter-culture pulp twist is like a slice of lemon in your drink or the last twist of the knife in your back.

I like the motley collection of riffraff & human debris that make up the characters here, an injection of grit, noir and hoodrat sleaze into what is typically a subset of action or horror.There's also some surreal touches where Andy B's line work flexes with the story In the middle of the tempestuous relationship drama the zombie attack makes the drama ricochet. The 'love story' that's the backbone of the story is both ridiculous and touching.

We're not far enough into the narrative to see if the Zombie invasion has affected the planet and whether this will turn into a 'survivor/brain eating Apocalypse' storyline and the origin story for the zombies isn't apparent, but frankly I'm glad that Josh Fialkov has decided to keep everything tight under wraps. Most of the zombie strips I've read so far are purely over-influenced by the genre, this is a webcomic is willing in inject some hipster fun into the mix.

Things to check out

2008-08-04T13:57:00.002+10:00

Is it just me or is Metanoia one of the darkest odes to murder I've seen online? It could have been so specious but it ends up being an apt little murder poem.

Project Rol is is a very stylised work, it's manga with a western substructure, inserted into a future in which 'angels' taunt humanity. Sound familiar? The artwork is pretty dodgy for a Evangelion remake, though. The tricks with colours and speed are not typically seen in webcomic but the bare linework can get a bit grating. One for the Shinji fetishists only.

Sorry about the hiatus guys, I'll be back with a batch of articles soon.

'I'm the freakin' emperor': Sam & Fuzzy

2008-04-06T00:46:00.006+11:00

Sam and Fuzzy's journey into long term narrative has been a rare success story within webcomics, if one compares a Questionable Content strip from 3 years ago, it's pretty much the same structure. Even if I have all these links on the side of my blog, Sam and Fuzzy was a strip would consistently check for daily updates, I suppose, because it was willing to take a risk. iIt was willing to go beyond the staple Sam and Fuzzy we were comfortable with, victim and tormentor, template it relied on for some time. it went all Cerebus and it has actually pulled it off. This strip is the vindication of the narrative that Sam and Fuzzy have been following.

Sam and Fuzzy changed its gag strip structure and upped its speed and went for the real music and all the convoluted plot lines of the last year have led to this, the moment I'd been dreading, because of course Sam is the natural sap, I felt so relieved after reading this strip and ashamed I'd doubted Sam.

Close to Me

2008-03-26T20:27:00.002+11:00

Romantic comedy isn't really the first thing you think of when you consider the ghoulish lichen-stained tastes of a genre freak, I was only drawn to Marry Me by its association with Sore Thumbs. I suppose Sore thumbs is the benchmark by which I judge the rest of the overall Crosby clan. The writer behind this strip is Bobby Crosby, younger brother of Chris Crosby. I'm not sure if this is a safe gambit but this for better or for worse my interpretation of this romantic comedy strip was as part of a family of interconnected webcomics under the same organisation that includes Bobby's co-creation with Chris, Last Blood.

The premise of the strip is a misunderstanding caused by an obsessive fan's lascivious lust for a pop star, she dragged a friend along and in a moment the popstar at the centre of the webcomic makes a strange decision, the rest of the strip stems from this one chance, mad encounter.

After reading Sore Thumbs, the humour isn't as left-field as I was used to, it's far more narrative driven. Of course the basis of the story (Pop star goes insane) Stasia, could be based on Britney Spears at her height (without the paparazzi gash-flash umbrella wielding antics of late) The tools that such a goofball popstar such as Stasia has at her disposal means the strip can effectively go to wherever it needs to. However, it's interesting to see what this strip will become, the gimmick evident in the first twenty strips has to end sometime, the liminal status of the marriage's legality is an obvious silly incursion to extend the strip but it works in a fuzzy-logic kind of way.

So from the start, the premise of the strip is evident in the title, what everything follows from. I'm wondering how it will sustain itself in the long-term. The characters will obviously have to evolve beyond the easy stereotypes that are evident shown in the beginning. What is interesting is the way the female characters work within the strip, the way female power is reconstructed via a popstar's erratic choice. This should come as no surprise considering the artist. The slightly mangaesque artwork of Remy Mokhtar is something I first saw in her delving into female romance & geekdom in No Pink Ponies, a strip I haven't ever really mentioned, but it is a webcomic that drags
me in with its drama and luckily is deflated by the cute geekiness inherent to all its characters. Its smooth fresh linework is an apt compliment to the quick flow of this strip. Here, the reader in thrust in the middle of a popstar's chaotic existence and the protagonist's confusion is the entry point into the strip.

Still, there is a clear effort to build on this, here we are looking at the slurry of lust and the reader is caught behind the glitz of fame lies the problem of how to deal with your emotions in a cultural landscape that completely deflates them with slick disposible easy options. And here marriage becomes an easy disposible option, that's the premise, and how the characters interact after a split second stray decision that will determine how the strip works. It's not roll on the floor funny, but it is aiming at something more subtle, something that is worthwhile even if there are no zombies involved and it shows the range that Blatant comics have on offer.

Soul'd Redux

2008-02-21T22:58:00.003+11:00

I just wanted to advise you guys that Soul'd has completely revamped itself, I think this is a good choice considering the clear change in tone the earlier version went through. One option was to plough but this is quite radical by webcomic standards, a complete revisioning of the original strip, no goofball humour in Hell but a smack down from the beginning, the protagonist's humilitation condensed into a reason to choose damnation.

Of course the artwork has improved, a bit more crisp, not so fluid, the use textured use of colour against white is a good angle, it adds a dreary washed-out look to the whole proceedings, the creator's choice in the reset means a lot of lot of tweaking to get what was a good webcomic easily sidetracked into something more focussed. I'm just impressed by the sheer balls of the idea, you don't often a complete scrapping of 50+ comics, Fred Gallagher would to restart Megatokyo just to get rid of the first 200 strips of the comic and Soul'd restarts just like that? This is a massive burst of effort and i recommend you reading this strip as it slowly rebuilds itself.

Cool for cats: Lackadaisy

2008-02-14T21:28:00.007+11:00

Cats reworking the prohibition, that's the obvious catch here, but it really doesn't matter because Tracey Butler's Lackadaisy is one of the best strips in the last three years, no inane rubbish about 'Furry' comics will have an effect once you read this strip.

Her artwork is amongst the lushest I have seen online, the introductory strip is a mouth-slavering use of dense background that shows attention to detail is not going to be a problem here. She gets the feline slyness of the facial expressions just right, this was a time for wiseguys and hucksters, 10 percenting grifters and speakeasys. This strip easily melds together the chancer's smooth tongue and the forbidden luxury of illicit drinking behind the sly façade of a cat's Cheshire grin.

I don't mean to get all ecstatic on you but the level of linework here is amazing , I might have used the term 'cartoony sheen' before but this is the ultimate sheen. Accompanied with this is the goofiness of the strip, which works for me after perusing a legion of po faced horror strips, Disney would be the obvious reference point to use but you would be totally wrong, the surface sleekness hides along-term narrative. It's an obvious point I make in most of my webcomic reviews but I'm wondering why this strip hasn't garnered the praise it deserves. It's a stand-out strip when so many good strips have dissolved into nothingness, (Hellbound, why have you forsaken me?)

Nobody after reading a few strips is going to confuse this with a furry comic, it merely uses cats as a shtick, and it does not really detract from historical verisimilitude, the grime and liquor of the prohibition, the sheer fun here reminds me why I will continually read strips such as Rob & Elliot and Butternutsquash while Megatokyo is a strip I have lately neglected. Additionally, the narrative is comic lots of visual puns, lots of winking and grimacing, physical humour takes over and forces the strip forward into a well-plotted fantasy.

The attention to detail is what mixes the fantastic with the background realism, the first introductory strip alone is dense with 1920's America skimp on serious about this strip, the update schedule isn';t high but the lush strips make up for it, this work obviously takes more time than Sluggy Freelance to actually be created. It's wordy and clever and even facetious but I seriously haven't has this much fun discovering a new webcomic in over a year, this is in my top five discoveries for this year.

*The title is from the song by Squeeze, just, uh, being pedantic.

I never knew blood was an aphrodesiac: Last Blood

2008-02-04T20:54:00.004+11:00

Last Blood cojoins together vampires, smooth action scenes and zombies. The resulting webcomic is a filmic approach to the genre and it is a crafted and delicate approach to violence. The use of silence in the initial strips shows a rare discipline and this is a strip that is willing to track narrative over a long term basis. The artwork is a grainy ode to gore, its slow motion capture is willing and able to use complex stylised set pieces of violence. In effect violence becomes a means to an end, to create a visual poetics of blood floating in air, lovingly rendered to the last drop of plasma. This isn't mindless violence, it floats off the page as if it were hoping to infect the reader, it certainly deserves to.

This is a different side to Owen Gieni's art I'd not expected after reading Sore Thumbs, the anime influences have been stripped away and instead here there's a love affair with the minitunae of rotting flesh, for the zombie freak this attention to detail is unexpected and is certainly not the smooth goofy facial texture that ST's goofiness required. The texture of the work is what impresses me, the way in which rain is I would say the closest analogy would be Ben Templesmith's haziness (Fell / 28 days of night).

So here's the typical post apocalyptic gig, mindless rotting zombie hordes, the remaining population is stressed and tense and the sudden inclusion of two vampires does not help a fractured scared group of survivors trying to make sense of life after most of humanity has been wiped out.

Admittedly, it can sometimes feel corny like an a bad action film but regardless this is one of the most enjoyable webcomics I've read this year. This is an action strip undercut by snippets of emotion to good effect. Additionally, while their inclusion in the strip might look like a gimmick the skanky vibe of the vampire protagonists adds a bit of zest to the mix and the back story of where the zombies originated from is an interesting gambit to begin with. There is also darkness here, slick bloodlust and ulterior motives, for all the supernatural elements there is far more realism present here than in Dead Winter, and the action scenes are surreal and the main selling point of the strip.

Of walking abortion: Dead Winter

2008-01-20T19:42:00.004+11:00

Dead Winter is a zombie story that doesn't pall as much as you would think, I'm fully aware that it's a genre that's been over with a fine-tooth comb but it's not one that has made a decent show in webcomics, I guess this would be the start because this is a thrilling hijack into the realm of the walking dead.

Including one of the most extensive and acerbic bio pages I've seen in webcomics, even from the first page, the style is a fluid blend of bent snarky retakes on the zombie genre. The main protagonist, Lizzie, is a waitress, a miserable waitress in a horrible diner about to be inserted into zombie bloodlusty abandon. As the epidemic spreads she finds herself instructed by a dream/space that mirrors the chaos of the outside world.

This doesn't feel like a starter webcomic, there's a clear feeling from the start that this has been planned into a long narrative arc.The strip uses the now standard trope of medical infection leading to zombification, (I am Legend, 28 days later, Resident Evil). if the actual origin of the zombies here are ambitious, then they are just one layer in this strip, a menacing background against which our protagonists are struggling against in various ways.

The artwork is complex but overlayered with a fluid cartoony sheen, typically this would be a contradiction in terms but the artwork gells quite well with this hyperactive paean to the zombie misadventure. I've not seen various shades of grey used so artfully and the shadowing used adds a certain background élan.

For once in webcomics the action sequences are credible, hyper-active matrix style scuffling littered with invective, carried out by the character of hitman/sociopath Black Monday Blues, an injection of vigour and pure fun into the zombie proceedings, if nothing else his insults are these adjective driven pieces of slick murderous bile.

Likewise the use of vibrant red in his sunglasses and Lizzie's bandanna are a nice touch against the typical grey used. The dream sequences are something else entirely, the occasional use of background motifs (the stylised skull in strip 42, the near filmic cut scene in strip 84) are again, not something you typically see in webcomics of any genre. There's an underlying complexity here that the reader would be brash to ignore if they merely see the cartoony vibe of the strip.

Black Monday is not alone in being over the top in this strip, there is a lot of melodramatics and clichés present here and a lot of emotional complexity used for what is even in horror a sub-genre seen as particularly shallow. This is an incursion of the real into the slapstick gore of the zombie gig. There are dark undercurrents present here and the nature of the zombie story typically is another take on the survival, looking at what it means to be heroic. Overall, everything is tight, the dialogue can be somewhat corny, but it's a self-aware and sharp approach to the strip. It pulls it off because it doesn't falter in its brief to be a an energetic mix of pathos and pure fun.

*I just had to put in a Manic Street Preacher reference for the title, it just felt so right.

I really need a talking cat: Breakdown

2008-01-14T19:52:00.004+11:00

The premise of Breakdown is self-evident in the title, a young man, Alan, after his car breaks down swiftly finds himself in a landscape driven by his dreams., he immediately goes into a dream-scape and is guided through this landscape by a talking cat, 'Blue', that may have been a childhood companion. The chronicles of Narnia are an obvious starting point, but Mercury hat has created an imaginative work that, if continued, would be a self-conscious and humorous examination into dreams.

The artwork veers between primitive and skilful, there's a sketchiness here, a minimalist black and white, there are some improvements, the beginning of part four shows an increase o complexity in shading and texture. There could have been more build-up, we've seen this type of story before, so the strip has to reach out into with this minimal set-up of this new dream world, maybe, hopefully, there will be more exposition later.

Still, this feels like a start-up comic (aka Nazi High Hellbound ) and thus the writer is writing on the go, letting the story take him and while this is adventurous I can't help thinking of these numerous web-comic dead-ends when the story outgrows the original construct of the webcomic, the presentation and pacing betray a mind searching for ideas.

That said, a little more mystery would have added layers to what is one journey out of the dreamscape. The abupt end to the strip is indicative of how fickle webcomics can be, how many times have we been disappointed by leaving too many questions unanswered to what was at the least an adventurous start to what could be a decent webcomic. (Niego anyone?)

That doesn't mean this isn't a worthy effort, if the landscape of this world is based on emotion, and as Alan as the main character is the force which has authority over it. So the puzzle at the basis of the strip is shown to the reader from the start, how to journey through an emotional state dreams being an obvious vantage point to since neil Gaiman's Sandman, here dreams are a far more prosaic and linear proposition, here they appear as a space to explore with one exit point. 9thElsewhere has perhaps gone over this trope more subtly but I can't help but feel cheated by this promising incursion into the fantastic that ended far too soon.

Phallic metallic: Build your own boyfriend

2008-01-05T18:31:00.004+11:00

The original premise of build your own boyfriend looks at first glance of the title a childish extension of the Japanese robot fantasy, a lecturer at a university dissatisfied with her love-life builds a robotic companion, it's a collection of the worst stereotypes imaginable with only an inversion of the typical male pervert role. From the beginning however, this is a strip that is willing to playfully skewer the robotic genre, there's no real manga background here , just the basis of a low-key yet interesting strip willing to ask questions about romance and human consciousness.

Most of cyberpunk's existence has been posited around questioning what posits essential humanity, a robot with something approaching consciousness fits within that bill, the only fantastic element within a sleepy campus. Gwen Anderson decides to take her love-life into a whole new zone by going DIY. One interesting element is the pretence that Owen is a human and all the lies and half-truths that needs to keep the cover story going.

This is also an in-depth examination of modern gender roles in the west, Gwen has been let down by men, she tells us, ' The engineer in me had to wonder, why not make a better version'. This 'perfect male' is also attractive to other females. Admittedly, the scene where Gwen glowers at her competitor is standard practice in rom-coms, the inclusion of the robot here is a clear twist in the tale. 01 or Owen is not just a pliable sex-slave but someone possessing free-will and this is where the story gets interesting because it veers inadvertently into questions about human consciousness. There were earlier prototypes but Gwen fails to see the point of creating a lover besmitten with her, romance, she tells us, begins with a challenge. This is a short sweet story and there haven't been updates for some time, even so, this is an worthwhile examination of romantic need.

All things must pass

2007-11-06T16:29:00.001+11:00

I've always had a fondness for Brain Fist and now that the end has come it would be an entertaining experience rove through the archives and see how funny a strip that uses a confined template format can be. Obviously it's been done before but I don't think anyone has reached into the recesses of melancholy and created a strip that was worthwhile and sickening simultaneously. These are little parables wrenching out of the murk of archetypes and made into something fucking hilarious and sad. Some of the strips are as close to 'literature' as I've seen within the web-comic stratum. At least the strip *aheh* goes out with a bang.

Another strip that is coming close to an end is the ever bodacious Hellbound, this strip has always taken goofiness to the nest idiotic level but the energy is what sells it as a viable comic, Xepher has managed to keep this paeon to massive infinite canvas storylines and keep it regularly amusing. Even if Stuff Sucks and Sore Thumbs are wrapping up, this is the strip that always tempted me when I shouldn't have been reading wsebcomics.

On the make: Make with the funny

2007-10-06T11:09:00.003+10:00

I have a certain fascination with idiocy, I relish tricksters and magic and the only webcomics that have ever really drawn me in are the whimsical meanderings from geek-bot humour. Make with the funny is an Australian strip that reminds me of Nazi High. You couldn't call it a role-playing/ gaming strip because the interests displayed here are wider than the typical dreary dice fuckery I've seen before. The artwork is stylised and has clear cartoony lines that have improved since the beginning.

This is a deft mixture of slice of life and droll gamer jokes, the Australian bakground doesn't detract for other anglophones, the culture is general western fuckery, making connections between stupidity and everyday life. Where Nazi High kept on the stupid switch far too tight this works because it mixes together all those cliches that work: the gamer drooling over a new pair of dice, the renting game, the average life you lead. I usually keep away from anything an iota close to a gamer strip like the gibbering plague but this is a good mix that introduces gaming as another way to goof around into the surreal. While it occasionally veers into the average too much it certainly works as a good distraction.

Broken bones and broken hearts

2007-08-03T21:16:00.001+10:00

The threads are starting to stitch together: to the few perverts who don't consider Megatokyo a requirement for life (Don't worry, come the revolution you will all be crucified in public) We've finally got some narrative on the relationship between Yuki and her goofball lover. I've been waiting a long time for this space to be filled, (mainly out of hope the schoolgirl-Piro relationship thing doesn't get all skanky on me!)

Yuki is being drawn into a web of intrigue and magic and Miho is the glitch in the system of Megatokyo that typically crosses over between Piro's increasingly shrinking 'normal' world and the chaos of the ningas and the magic girls and the zombie hordes. This dichotomy has existed since Megatokyo began and I believe I can see a tipping point between what Piro sees and what he needs to see to examine the world beyond his romantic meanderings. Finally we will the crossover when the truth seeps out into reality and chaos in the flesh starts smoking a cuban cigar.

Black poison blues: Spoiled

2007-07-27T20:03:00.002+10:00

I have many habits, smoking, drinking and swearing at cats in Hebrew are amongst them, within the context of this blog my worst habit is reviewing strips that have barely started. Spoiled by Luz is only four strips young but I think it has some clear potential. It's a surrealist trip into modern city life. It feels like a very personal exploration of what it means to be human and poetry seems to interweave amidst the words. There's a political motive behind the strip but it hasn't sufficiently emerged as yet. The linework is crisp against a beige monotone and the narrative looks as if it might develop into something quite interesting.

Blurred Vision: Apophenia 357

2007-07-07T18:58:00.002+10:00

Ghastly's Ghastly Comic was the never the most subtle of strips but within its genre (tentacle-pleasure-fiends leering at women) it had a certain cachet. His newer strip Apophenia 357 might have the name of a noxious disease but it is instead an invigorating addition to the plethora of webcomics now current . This is a strip that forces you to think, to make the connections and symmetries where none seem to exist.

In the introduction Ghastly gives the reader a background to the distortion he is created:

Apophenia is the condition where one draws connections between things which are, in reality, unconnected. Conspiracy and End Days theorists often suffer from Apophenia and it is also a common symptom of schiziophrenia. It is also often the way we learn about and interpret new things.

This is a lot darker than Ghastly's previous efforts and the reader interaction recreates webcomics as a possible community as opposed to the author as veritable God for geek-bot fan boys. The reader is forced to create sense out of the strip, Ghastly also states that the narrative of the strips are not determined by him, he is a vehicle for our desires. The artwork is fairly childish and sketchy but the concept behind this strip saves it from being mere chaos. It resembles a series of rebus, symbols forced together, while it's not something you can read and switch your brain off it is an interesting and worthy addition to the web.

Waving not drowning: Mostly Water

2007-06-30T07:30:00.001+10:00

I'll say it then, Journal webcomics are typically utter banal rubbish, well, yeah, okay, American Elf is perhaps an exception, but I like the attitude in this webcomic, even though it's all blogger hosted and primitive. It's the attitude that gets me. There's little flickers of surrealism here, little parts of everyday tragedy and even though in its introductory stages this is a fruitful exercise in everyday static.

Still, it's the usual bullshit, work, music, the way we miscommunicate and given some time this could be a little supplement to read when you need something a little more surreal than Malfunction Junction. This veers into the otherworldly and that's what keeps me reading this. This is hopefully going to be a good injection into the nervous system.

A politically incorrect eulogy: Nazi High

2007-06-24T20:18:00.001+10:00

I can't show you any strips from this webcomic as the site as been disabled. In effect I'm writing a eulogy for this strip. It was pure silliness, it was juvenile chaos in mangaesque style and it was a worthy excursion from dense narratives of the genre webcomics I typically read. It had the same reboot system as Penny Arcade where the joke's the thing and nothing else mattered.

Nazi High was a politically incorrect strip, but then, frankly, most decent webcomics are. The beginning was rather primitive but as it moved into its stride creatively the artwork revealed a smooth sheen to accompany the sickness in the storyline. Only Hellbound has the same attitude towards viscous and vicious violence. One of the myriad of worthy webcomics that lie forgotten.

Updating and dating are overated: Voids

2007-06-13T19:39:00.003+10:00

"I don't know if I love him or despise him; I just can't stand Death Cab for Cutie, that's why I left him, I couldn't take it anymore"
(Overheard in De Biers last Friday night, I swear to God!)

There's one webcomic I've forgotten, a worthy contender for Emo webcomic of the decade, I despise Emos, as an Australian i view them as a slightly uncouth version of an emu, lust hidden by noise and disease. Voids is a webcomic about the vagaries of existence, the secret love you foster, the Ipod failing, the cold winter's wind. Voids is a representation of Reaganomics, voids is the heartache you feel deep inside, Voids is the misplaced love you have for someone undeserving.

It's not a new strip, but it deserves attention, at first glance it's an indie comic transplanted onto the web, the stillness of lonely hipsterism surpasses Questionable Content, the lo-Fi existence is contained here, the zines in the box, the vinyl lying on the floor, the mispent youth with its needless pain, it's all here, the cruel joke you made to your best buddy when you're drunk.

The slow pace drew me in, the artwork is a certain ratio of random emotions contained within good minimalist linework. To be frank, it follows the a storyline out of nothing, just tangled relationships and quips and one-liners. This is the 21st century in all it's ambiguity and I'm glad a webcomic like this exists in the midst of all the furry bullshit and nerdcore fuckery.

Shattered glass: The broken Mirror

2007-06-02T11:28:00.002+10:00

The Broken Mirror is a collaboration between Elanor Cooper and JJ Nas, the style here is of a long term project, it feels far more of a novel than a webcomic, the mixture of tragedy and hope is an adept feature rarely emphasized within the webcomic 'slice of life' fraternity.

The strip balances a near Impressionist use of shading to create an intensity and diversity of colour. I thought JJ Naas was a decent illustrator from Desert Rocks but the addition of colour and shade here are some of the more fully textured I've seen online.

The strip is segmented, the first section has an emphasis on loneliness and teenage alienation. The emotions here are raw, bullying and failed relationships, the little failures and breakdowns. This is offset by the Technicolor childhood shown, displaying a welcome dexterity in tone. I get the impression there will be a series of preludes to the main narrative - The characters have already been formulated and will slowly be unfurled into the main strand of the narrative. I always prefer a long term approach and Cooper is nothing if not ambitious in this attempt at true slice of life. Better ambition than the inane babble emanating from Keenspot.

This is not a genre strip, in effect it is an examination of life looking at the slow construction of existence. Where the plethora of slice of life/college/geek strips so common online deflect the mystery and boredom of human existence into manageable segments punctuated by gags. I know I typically rant on about the iniquities of the majority of webcomics available but it's webcomics such as The Broken Mirror that restore my faith in the medium. It's far too easy to escape into mere surrealism.

This is evidently a long-term project intended to be created in small sections of real time by using silence as punctuation, it allows a meandering 'camera' to follow someone resembles a film. Typically the very nature of the webcomic this affects any reading of any text, the narrative is broken up by the update schedule In order to get an audience it is far easier to aim for the gag strip, the recurring cliche, the flat characters within a storyline that can ultimately be accessed in any place in the archives. This strip is willing to be sometimes boring, willing to pace the narrative to get the right result.

Less than Zero: Zero Hunters

2007-05-05T11:59:00.004+10:00

Garrick is a vampire hunter in Zero hunters, the genre requires hunted and hunted in the same manner a zombie flick is typically a badly designed examination of class warfare. The strip veers between mere genre technicalities, the phrase, 'A unit so top secret, only a handful of people outside the department know we exist' is a trite nothing, The British Tv series Ultraviolet has plumbed the depths of vampire fiction, Buffy practically rebirthed it into popular culture. The Blade series...uh...I don't like swearing online. So, we've seen this before, the trenchcoat, the attitude and the noirish narration. A broken hero all world-weary without anything to lose, the lonesome apartment with its half empty liquor bottle, the newbie 'straight out of the academy' joins the hero on a journey to destroy the seething feeding frenzy created by the undead.

The artwork is a redeeming feature, good tone and texture, there's a reason why there's a long list of collaborators here, the colourist is vital to any graphic novel - compare the first collection of Preacher to the last volume, the decreasing lack of depth was disturbing. This isn't the case in this strip, if the linework is sometimes primitive the backgrounds are well executed.

The anger evident in the protagonist is another step forward. The animality of vampirism here is a direct contrast to the delicate lilac whisperings of Anne Rice, here we find a portrayal of the vampire as a link between mankind and the primordial beast. Still, the strip is a mix of badly phrased prose and some very deep emotions, these emotions curdling at the bottom of this strip, the night the protagonist's wife and child were taken from him. The arch-enemy, Drevald, tells our moody hunter on that night, 'I've given you the gift of hate - and hatred is an amazing thing.' This exposition works because innocents are involved, children, women, affected in feeding rituals in languor by vampires dressed like gothic bondage gear hookers. The violence is unusual for horror webcomics and while the 'lets do this' guff palls somewhat I still found this testosterone-filled horror-show worthwhile. This a good mixture of a webcomic and I'm willing to ignore the cliches evident here and enjoy the dark side for a while.

Darkness creeping into your mind: The Trip, Undead nigh Alpha

2007-04-21T11:28:00.002+10:00

One small addition to realism in webcomics I've been looking at is The Trip, less than twenty pages in its interest is in the use of photography to create a detailed grainy look, no characters as of yet but there's already the hint of horrors to come. I'm hoping there's more of this strip primarily because of the use of landscape and darkness intertwined into something that should be quite interesting.

Undead Nigh Alpha is another sci-fi strip I've become absorbed with; the sketchiness and pallor of the artwork, criminality where future Martian society blurs into cyberpunk surveillance which merges into horror, even if the narration is somewhat overbearing there's still an underlying morality that focuses the story. Not many strips here either but a good edition what could be an equivalent to Saturnalia.

Get yourself Connected: Eye Trauma comics

2007-04-14T17:49:00.002+10:00

One strip that has impressed me is the equivalent of a webcomic short-story, the one-shot, Circuit breaker, takes the spaces were divide our day into and uses them and extends them in this short morality play. The connections the protagonist uses aren't that different from how we normally have processed time since the industrial revolution. The strip uses the premise of a man plugged into various activities, the mind seemingly takes control of physical needs. I'm impressed by the swirling colours and delineated lines. Small, short and bitter, no explanatory notation and no extended Channel Zero style cyberpunk hacker bullocks. Just a brief message about how we're all slaves to something in the end, no matter what the choice.

The other work Damian Duffy and John Jennings have created are also noteworthy, little bitter hacked up coughs of spite in an all too septic world, the various Hole series in particular is a delightful to behold. As with Circuit breaker, there's a moral to the stories and an anger present here making Eye Trauma a disciplined little group dedicated to bringing something more mature online.

The Jetsons redux: Destroy Dystopia

2007-03-31T15:20:00.002+10:00

Cyberpunk has always been at the edges of sci-fi, usually more politicised than the average space opera, typically they are attempts at distortion of societal roles, a vision of a fractured future where public space is infiltrated by corporations and all that's left are the outcasts and rebels.

Destroy Dystopia is one such attempt to translate this into webcomic form, the artwork is a hazy sketchy excursion into the other side of the future. The future is not a series of delineated smooth bliss, here, technology and grime merge, bodies melt into mutation and crime, sin has a metallic aftertaste in one's mouth and this strip for all its simplicity and violence edges into darker territory. The punk in cyberpunk denotes a mis-en-scene where corporate interests have extended from Thatcherite languor to a space where corporation and government are typically one.

If the moody anti-hero/adventurer line is something we've seen before, I was drawn in by the use of shading and tone, it veers from somewhat primitive portraits to dense backgrounds. If Momento Mori is far more sophisticated then the exuberant fun of this strip almost makes up for its lack of intellectual vigour. I like the dirtiness here, even if this isn't at the cutting edge of the genre, appropriating its surface to cover a stock-standard adventure story.

Even monsters have hearts: Eekeemoo

2007-03-24T13:32:00.002+11:00

I have a reprehensible relationship with kitsch and cute things, part of me yearns for gothic monochrome the other part desires I buy a line of stationary called smiggle, it's full of greens and bright blues that probably shouldn't enjoy, but do.

I suppose, Eekeemoo, is a mixture of those desires, I like the monotone and the simplistic storyboard aspect of the strip. Its wordless sense of wonder, set in an nameless world with no internal logic, works on a deeper emotional level than what looks at first like anodyne cuteness. It's almost as if a rebus puzzle has been posted online. The rounded quality of the linework looks deceptively cute but its based on alien geometry and an unknown world so it evens the strip out into something that delves into that tingle of adventure one feels that they are entranced by the unknown. The narrative doesn't make sense, it start in media res and allows the reader to work out what is happening in its particular slow-motion direction. This is a work that borders on the sublime with its lack of words and emphasis on the narrative. Even though it hasn't hit 20 strips yet it is a worthy edition to the worthy fantastical webcomics available online .

Rapid Eye Movement: Popcorn Picnic

2007-03-03T13:00:00.002+11:00

Popcorn Picnic is possibly the first 'Cinema strip' to impress me, it's wordy and doesn't just focus on the standard geek-boy staples of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. It's also wordy and snide (sarcastic is too much energy) and that's enjoyable. Chris is willing to take the swirling morass of pop-culture from his head and transplant it onto the screen. It's intelligent, more of a an examination of movies using characters rather than anything particularly plot driven. It's like a mannerist game that uses the characters as exposition of current films. It still works well as a concept, allowing the reader to fully geek out with the two main characters.

The artwork is smooth and shmik and it breaks the fourth wall in an enjoyable piss-take. Film characters are remoulded into perverse pastiche. Chris Shadoian is taking the piss, playing around with filmic sensibilities and just having fun. This is a fluid and worthwhile strip that has finally filled that film-geek strip part of my brain.

Val Kilmer remade as human: Niego

2007-02-24T15:45:00.002+11:00

Niego is an irresponsible strip, half slice of life, half skanky surrealist pop-culture melange. It worked though, the cheesy gags about Val Kilmer could have gotten old real fast but they didn't. The strip was sometimes crude, but it was an worthy measure of crudity, a joyful silliness that I have missed. Surrealism is a word often bandied about, however, in the case of this strip it is a skilled combination of character driven plots and pure puerile fun. It uses swearwords like a spice, skanking up the mix in a webcomic universe of geek-bot humour. It makes webcomics look like they're created by normal people.

Going over the archives I've been thinking how it's odd that so many webcomics veer on the side of good taste, perhaps Sluggy Freelance as a classic slice-of-life strip has family friendly precursor descending through to the trite bleauggh of You'll have that. So, when Niego came back in December last year I was pleasantly surprised. It hasn't quite hit its stride yet, but it's already showing the irreverence and piss-taking I'm used to reading. This is a welcome return to a stalwart of the webcomic community.

The ties that bind: Netherworld

2007-02-17T13:43:00.002+11:00

Out of the many books I've read the Bible is one that is most scorched into my mind, I was once a Pentecostal, and as a basis for archetypes it does a swell job. I've always pitied the Atheists who were brought up atheists by Liberal parents. The Bible provides so many archetypes, a tapestry of figures, a mythology to mirror and even supass the Norse Eddas or Greek myths. If only as a story the Bible works and it also makes for a good basis for a narrative.

Netherworld is an apt supposition of the mundanity of everyday existence inserted into an off-kilter mirror image of our world (Serenity Rose would be a good comparison). Now, I'm not merely continuing with the theme of the afterlife from last week, this strip is based on our world after a great flood, there's a seediness implicit in the setting here, a land-locked equivalent of the Waterworld universe. The repercussions of the flood are reinserted here, Esperanza is a society just like ours in what looks to be a post-apocalyptic world. If the promise to Noah was predicated upon the fact that there would be no more floods, then faith in the biblical narritive is moribund, Netherworld is created in a world where the covenent that the Christian faith was based on has disappeared.

It's an interesting premise and creates a grimy forsaken atmosphere that I really dig. Elamparo is aiming for an examination of belief here, in the faq he admits to be a promiscious genre-mixing whore. Sometimes the strip seems to be a proxy for E's own examination of faith, though this doesn't create one of those allegory ridden 'novels' that some Christians have plagued us with (C.S.Lewis' Pilgrim's Regress anyone?) The influences are here as a backing, not a catch-all basis for the strip.

In any case, I think the emphasis on the fantastical supersedes the genre boundaries here. If the linework of the characters reminds of you a manga's sharp lines then the backgrounds are a textured and detailed haze. I'd never thought shades of grey could work this well on a webcomic but they do, lending the strip a certain elan. The introduction of colour into the strip adds a bejewelled virtuousity here when used. The dream sequences and the quotations frame the strip as something that is breaking and entering into profundity. I don't know if that's an altogether good thing, but at the moment all these mysteries and clues have got me hepped up and I'm waiting to see what the strip brings in the next bout of updates in the Northern Hemisphere summer.

All of death's a stage: A Divine Dramedy

2007-02-10T12:15:00.002+11:00

(I did a mini-review of this strip some time ago but there was a muck up with Firefox's formating so I had to scrap it.)

Usually when I purchase dead tree comics I focus on the gothic and the strange published by Slave Labor Graphics and Oni Press. I have never felt the inclination to blather over fucking Spiderman and the hordes of spandex clad bogan louts. A Divine Dramedy should follow Agnes Quill and go for a deadwood cross-over once it builds up a sizeable archive because it follows that particularly wry approach to darkness for which I am the target market. This strip examines 3 'friends' as they find themselves in a a graveyard. They're dead, but death is just the begining...(I had to put that cliche in there, I'm sorry.)

In the begining the state of being post-mortem was mined for weirdness and laughs as the central trio of 'friends-enemies?' explored the afterlife and its numerous fluid quirks. It also allows what could be deemed a 'slice of life' webcomic to buck the trend. There are still gags here but these tend towards surrealistic sight gags based upon the afterlife. If the afterlife isn't all that different from the absurdities of breathing there is still the remains of friendships and simmering hatreds from their previous existence.

Recently the strip has been living up to what looked like a coy little reference to Dante's torpid epic to Beatrice. There is drama here amidst the baroque Lethe of death, how to make a living, how to keep up with the jonses. Likewise, from its sketchy origins, the strip has gone for an increasingly realistic vein of linework. Tierney is taking something I'm always in favour of complexity and emo storylines so this appeases my sensibilities. Don't worry, it's not Fall Out Boy Emo, it just looks as if the strip is aiming for examination of the bread and butter problems of human interaction. Still, It's hard to tell so far as Tierney has only just begun to inject some thematic muscle in the storyline. This is going to be hard after he built up the afterlife as an ornate glass menagerie of wierdoes and talking rabbits. Now that we're seeing glimpses of human emotion as opposed to goofing around it will be interesting to see how this is handled.

(Musical Accompaniment: I know I'm lifting this from Jimmy Tierney's profile but I think Interpol's Antics is a good selection for this strip. Far more rougher and angular than Turn on the bright lights, death will never sound so apathetic.)

In space no one can hear you scream: Banished!

2007-02-03T13:27:00.002+11:00

I suppose one can blame the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy in my upbringing but i think Banished is part of a tradition of space opera spoofs that work quite well online. The clearcut linework is refreshing. The first strips are primitive but then there's a progression into something light and succint with depth and colour you don't typically see online with the artist changeover. So, Ryan Smith has created something goofball style playful but it has also segued into a decent narrative that hasn't neglected the strips's strengths.

If the strips orginally mines the absurdities of science fiction then the progression to the strip's most recent updates shows some nous, a lot of webcartoonists merely restart their strip - though this isn't a Cerebus syndrome overly serious venture, the fun is still omnipresent within the upgrade - resembling classic Sluggy Freelance, if a little constricted in its narrative. I like the interplay on genre-specific trends, if gamer comics can burn up cable in their pursuit of Leet jokes then Banished needs far more recognition.

Rak is the long-suffering malcontent anti-hero stranded on Strix 13 and Timbo is the robot optimist and using this dynamic the strip takes on a lacksadaisical adventure. Space Opera can provide a broad canvas for a creative team to look at anything they desire, for better or for worse, Smith and Anderson have not fallen into the trap of mere parody, they use science fiction as a origin, not a destination, and they have come up with a rather silly character driven webcomic that is consistently enjoyable.

(Musical Accompaniment: Be your own Pet - self titled - Raucous energetic indie spazz-out rock - perfect music for the monotony of a spaceship ride)

Some Velvet Morning: Flatwood

2007-01-14T16:16:00.002+11:00

I neglected this strip when I first came across it some time ago, even now going through the archives, Flatwood looks too cartoony at first, a weird chibified experiment, but, then, typically the first 30 strips of any webcomic contain dodgy artwise. This sketchy linework later coalesces into something distinctly sinister and smooth. The animation above the strip with the blinking eyes and the black background creates an all-over aesthetic for the strip that is quite welcome. The outlines of the panels are fluid, melding into the ever-present darkness, this is a reading experience with a design in mind.

If the narrative is strictly linear than at least its direction is that of discovery not gag driven cycles that infest the gamer and slice of life strips that make up the majority of webcomics. It resembles adventure more than horror, in fact, the ambiguity present about identity and place put forward something close to a dreamlike state, magical realism or speculative fiction with the addition of horror elements. This sense of disorientation is heightened by as the strip has turns of surrealism and sometimes segues into pure streams of consciousness. Lately this trend has created a webcomic that has increased in both levels of artistic merit and surrealism, resembling a well made rebus puzzle.

The young man who awakens in Flatwood has a number of questions about identity, whether this is a stage of death and the little critter he finds is a goofball version of Virgil in Dante's inferno or a denotion of the evil that is all around him, I like this wayward aspect of the strip, it ignores the usual trends in favour of the narrative. I still don't know what's fully going on but I've accepted the rules implicit in the strip in order to access the spine tingling senseof adventure in this distinctly morose landscape. This strip will take time to process as you go through it but Zac's emphasis is on the lengthy portrayal of how identity is unravelled amidst chaos. This is a solid example of the ignored genre webcomics that deserve your support.

(I did have a post about the Broken Mirror but for some inexplicable reason that website has been hacked - why? Do Islamic terrorists like good story-driven webcomics?)

Cutmarks are just so passe: So Common, so Cheap

2007-01-06T15:54:00.003+11:00

'I wish my lawn was Emo - then it could cut itself': A slurred quote from Jojo Eildelberg, the local drunk

Emo kids have taken over from Goths as being representative of sordid teenage angst and unrequited lust and misery. They usually get a bad rap from the outside world so it's interesting to see a webcomic that deals with the subculture, written by an obsessive Emo kid and funny to boot. So, if Indie gets Questionable Content and Punk gets San Antonio... then Emo's webcomic presence consists of this relatively unknown strip called So Common, So Cheap.

So Common, so Cheap, is an examination of High School through the eyes of Kyle, an Emo kid with a lot of problems. I can't tell you why I like this strip, the artwork certainly helps with its thin lines and mangaesque sweetness and light. Kyle could be any number of Emo kids you see skulking about in the city, however, what this strip does is take the ennui of that existence and stretches it about into something that reaches entertainment value through its high octane tunnel vision. Admittedly, it does rely on a lot of Internet 2.0 Social networking kind of stuff - MySpace and such, but then you carried away by the internal logic of the strip. It takes the piss out of the plethora of identities on offer today.

Certainly, the sole creator, Ziggy, sometimes suffers from the constrictions of the viewpoint of the genre but primarily this is a wider examination of the various youth culture tribes in the western world. Moreover, it's a self-aware strip that plays around with the current fluid uncertainties of pop musical genres and is able to give an honest and informed opinion about a subculture most of us jeer at. Sure, this will date easily but it will also stand as a testament to the tenacity of humanity in its ability to mix self-mutilation and supressed eroticism.

Musical Accompaniment: The Cure: Disintegration. The closest thing I've gotten to really mopey music and angst.

Dead Tree blues: Estancia

2006-12-23T15:10:00.002+11:00

I never thought I'd see the day I'd reject a dead tree version of a webcomic but after yesterday I have come to that bridge and crossed it, gnashing my teeth all the way. Some strips are meant to be adapted to print, the Megatokyo website is merely an online holding point for the books, but Estancia, I am very much afraid, is not one of these strips.

Estancia looks like smooth anime on a computer screen, it looks good, smooth and fully shmik on screen, on paper it looks dull and childish, I like scrolling down as I watch the puzzles play out. It's a consistently good mystery/fantasy strip that works well online. I can see what Hammock are doing - they're trying to expand their empire, but from a reader's point of view it isn't much chop. if they had used callandered paper it might have worked better, it's just hard adapting of course, maybe it's just angst that one of my favourite strips has become more popular than I wanted. If you like drawn out - over the top - cyberpunk strips drawn in pure anime then I recommend looking at this webcomic.

Some kind of pickpocket chic: of Rogues and Robbers

2006-12-17T16:20:00.002+11:00

If crime it has not had a noticeable presence within the realm of webcomics in the way that it is in print fiction it is because of the gravitas evident within the hardboiled mien, the murder can look absurd in a webcomic. Typically online strips are gag driven and slice of life strips aimed at perusing the everyday, crime doesn't seem to translate well.

That said, Of Rogues and Robbers is a fairly intense examination of relationships within a crime fraternity. Jack Vincenzi is a top-level pickpocket who feels the heat when newcomer, the rather gauche Warren, intrudes on her spot within the crime gang detailed here. There's no Sin City malice crunching down into your frontal lobe, what this strip does do well is show a story behind crime, this story is predicated on crime's normalcy as a business and the relationships that are created in a crime gang - the tensions implicit within any organisation or venture. There's a complex world of families and concerns operating within this world and once I was drawn into it I was pretty well hooked.

While Verardi Famiglia has more of dense sketchy look the artwork here has a stylised lightness that at times looks too simplistic for the subject matter but it grows on you, I like the confidence that Charlene Fleming has, she doesn't care what anybody else is creating online she's found a niche and she's starting running with it. (Plus she likes Pulp - always a plus in my book) I like the complexity of intent on display here, even if the plot is plodding along, there's a reason for all the narrative - So, yeah, I like this slow near sensuous strip and all I'm waiting for is more updates.

***Return to sender that includes you as well***

(Musical accompaniment: I agree with Ms Fleming - I like the Libertines as well and Up the Bracket has that scungy mod-punk style fun vibe that suits this strip.)

The colour of magic: Fantasy Realms

2006-12-10T12:05:00.003+11:00

Fantasy Realms was always going to be a difficult proposition for me, I prefer the margins of genre fiction, the liminal spaces that erupt online. Well, there's no genre fusion or bells and whistles in the narrative here. I typically don't read textual fantasy (speculative fiction and magical realism is more my bag). I admit that at first glance this looks like an embarrassing webcomic transplant from all those horrid fantasy novels written by Welsh chainsmokers who are convinced they are the descendents of half-Elves from Lorien.

That is belied by the supremely delicious linework because the use of texture and colour is astounding. The pacing can be a little slow, the chapters are small but the background information is gradually becoming more apparent. The reader arrives in media res and your first inclination is to probably opt out of what looks like a childish RPG Zelda-lite mash-up but once you get past the first couple of chapters, I found something developing here that will stand apart due to the self-confidence of the creator.

Yes, the characters certainly look childish in a stunted mangaesque way and the story follows that sense of wonder to its logical conclusion. This strip is not a stickler for Errant Story style realism but within its boundaries the reader is given a definitive world, something most fantasy strips are unable to do, there's no trimmings steampunk - sexual inuendo - RPG - grue munches your toe style nod-nod-wink-wink - nada - nothing. This is just pure unfiltered genre fiction written as sequential art without a glitch. This is a serious long-term project and I applaud the Lore section for codifying information about this new vast world. A worthy (if somewhat overly sensible) addition to fantasy in the pixelsphere.

Archetypes and bloodlust: Hector

2006-11-25T19:41:00.004+11:00

(This is my Opera is totally munted and I have been forced into minamalism post)

Hector is a new approach to myths in the real world. The artwork is a form of print comic super hero realism which is oddly refreshing. Its use of realism is a welcome antidote to the cartoony mush current in webcomics. Yeah, so, perhaps, the pacing is overblown, it's about myths, I can excuse that, at least it's an effort. I like the wide range of ideas here, for the new reader it can sometimes be too fast and fluid in its application of tarot card archetype schematics but better that than another fucking tepid Harry Potter parody from motherfucking Sluggy Freelance.

The trickster and the warrior are teamed up here in what at is at first a confusing world. There's a seething energy here that can seem confusing if you refuse to give into the internal logic of the detailed fantasy world on display. It's fun, energetic and the central conceit behind it is enough for me to keep reading to see how it is applied to this steampunk version of our world. The bios and extras are amazing and once again an example of what to do...
***cough*** Megatokyo **** cough

(Honorary mention, Mulberry Gallows for making the succinct point that French Canadian mimes will always be second rate, yeah, not a genre strip, but more on this strip later...

Violence gets sexy: The Whogirl

2006-11-19T15:57:00.002+11:00

This bastard spawn of Tankgirl and Transmetropolitan is probably best served by taking it with a grain of salt. Steven Henry's, The Whogirl, looks at first to be a bland Spicegirls rip-off on too much sugar. Typically I prefer my dystopias to be a slice and dice of evil and vice. Schism perfects this stylised world, it's a morass of secrets and a search for redemption. However, I also think there's a place for this strip and its mixture of goofball humour and study of corruption.

You'll notice the silly sloganeering at first, 'I am the girl that all girls wish they could be', ignore that, ignore the hyped up mid-1990's rave wear the heroine wears and ignore the Mozza style hair on the Emo looking kid. If you don't like manga this won't convert you but if you let yourself look at what Henry is doing here with this jokey brand of speculative fiction then all that silliness is an apt accompaniment to a world gone sour. Carpe Diem with bad haircuts.

The energy concurrent in the strip can be a bit off-putting, the first fifty strips haven't yet mediated between post-feminist braggadocio and the background of a dystopic state. Once this is resolved Steven Henry has matured the strip into something approaching an alternate darkness. Looking at the artwork, yes, perhaps there is a certain cartoony roundness evident but once you understand the narrative and its inherent darkness the spirit of the silliness and antic violence starts to make sense.

Musical Accompaniment: Fun Lovin' Criminals, Loco. This album is my dirty secret, I guess you could call it Afghan Whigs lite but really I have got the jonses for this album because of the dark skanky froth within that makes sense emotionally, an album for a cynical drunks in a decaying city.

The Devil is our energy resource; Scary Go Round

2006-11-04T20:43:00.002+11:00

I'd been getting worried about Ryan from Scarygoround for a while now, he's a key character in the series, the slouching goofball with tastes in Americana, who listened to Gomez then moved on to Richard Buckner, the easy-going guy in the bunch, the Everyman to Tim's steely spirit of the Enlightenment.

John Allison has killed off characters in the past, the interstice between life and death seems to fascinate him. So the supernatural and the fantastical have become is bread and butter, it's a fantasy strip set in a British Provincial city. He likes fairytales just as much as Andrea's No rest for the wicked, except that he coats them in a modern glaze of noughties irony.

Whereas Allison's trainee strip, Bobbins, started out as situational comedy, it slowly developed into a more surreal experience for the reader, characters took on the form of various archetypes and memes. Now with the welcome return of the skankalicious duo, Rachel and Tessa, the long-term reader is reconnected to some characters we'd assumed had fallen by the narrative's wayside and it's a clever twist to bring these two dashing malingerers back into our lives.

Hell, they were always too cool for school and now that evil has some sassy
new handmaidens I can sit back and relax.

I really want to own a flying cat!: Errant Story

2006-10-21T14:38:00.002+10:00

Fantasy has always been a despised genre in the pixelsphere, thankfully it has been influenced by manga which maintains a certain levity where fantasy novels are typically torpid sub-Tolkien travesties (Eddings, Dragonlance, we are looking at you.) I had previously neglected Errant Story because I’d assumed it was a mere continuance of Exploitation Now with its screw ball comedy. It has progressed considerably since I’ve last seen it.

What interests me is the use of the intertwining narratives that adds complexity to the narrative as a whole. This is a strip more than willing to indulge in flashbacks and large chunks of narrated back-story. It surprised me because I’d always though of Poe as a one trick pony with crudely proportioned mangaesque art and stale jokes regurgitated into a pop-culture stew.

However, the subsequent development of Errant story shows me what I’ve been missing, I’ve been going through the archives and what I see impresses me. The mixture of a twenty-first century magicised Tokyo and an outside medieval world denotes a flair for genre-mixing. There are slight cyberpunk/steam punk touches and Poe’s artwork has improved measurably into a far sleeker and more mature mangaesque style.

The inter-species warfare and religious intolerance evident in the backbone of the story bares everything else along with it. If half-elves are supposedly insane then the rest of this fantasy world doesn’t look any saner. Here, Poe is tackling the interactions between technology and faith as well as nature versus nurture. Meji’s adventure started off as something specious but the story has progressed into something more mature as parts of it have been slowly fleshed out.

Of course the mixture doesn’t always come off, there are moments in which Poe is unable to contain either pathos or badly paced humour, these moments have been getting rarer though and the strip has meshed these disparate forces together, becoming far more serious in its intent. The strip is aiming at a serious examination of what it is to be human and that’s probably it has been mostly neglected by an audience needlessly happy with ‘slice of life’ and fantasy in-jokes.

Burn down the disco and hang the DJ!: Ornery Boy

2006-10-17T09:33:00.002+10:00

Uh, is it just me or is the latest from Ornery Boy's undead MC Brian just pure heat? It's like the Beastie Boys actually got some talent in their veins after the dribbled mess of To the 5 Boroughs, sort of as if they'd continued in the vein of Paul's Boutique.
Here's some quotes from Brian's mad flow,

Like all good MCs he gives props to his DJ:
Cuz he's doubleplusgood when he gets in a state
Gets you all riled up for the two minute hate

With his hands on the decks in a Mad symbiosis
He's like Gregory House, he's got the diagnosis

And there's no point in being an MC if you don't have the arrogance of Easy E:
Writin' rhymes in my books like Atrus in Riven

Open the covers and y'all get imprisoned

Cuz the words I write are just so damn fresh

gorg-eous-ness and gorge-os-ity made flesh

Lalonde has really impressed me with the evolution of his strip, it's sometimes the closest thing to slapstick in a webcomic. This is good because most webcomic humour is based on puns or half-hearted attempts at jokes. He isn't scared of Hip-Hop either and that's quite rare in the webcomic realm. The geek references don't hurt so it's almost as if Buck 65 stopped fucking about with his dismal folk experiments and went back to being a Science Major and a top geeky MC. Good stuff.

Sweet dreams are made of this: Harker

2006-10-14T13:11:00.002+10:00

The tropes evident in Harker have been used before, the main character Harker represents science and the enlightenment and he is suddenly plunged into a world where the supernatural palpably exists. Before you notice the vampires you'll see that there is a charming primitivism evident in this strip, both in narrative and the artwork.

Harker delves into fairy tales and then examines their macabre underbelly. Vampires and Werewolves are the order of the day here and the story exists in a landscape of castles and heroines; good and evil are intertwined in an eternal battle. Unlike the botched genre-mixing of The league of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the simplicity of the narrative here brings us back to classic archetypes.

The artwork interests me because my original interest in comics stems from Herge's Tintin, not the tripe from Marvel or DC. I can detect the use of Herge's Francophone art style, Ligne Claire (straight line) evident in this strip. This pleases me, aside from Johnny Crossbones, I can't think of many webcomics using this style.

As for the background in which the tale is set, the first adult novels I ever read were Jules Verne and Conan Doyle's, so this excursion into Victoriana pleases me, the story is foremost on Lars' mind, not gags or ineffectual fourth wall cop-outs. You don't see many adventure webcomics unsullied by fantasy or science fiction and this is a good, consistent webcomic.

(Audio accompaniment: The Decemberists, Castaways and cutouts: scurvy seadogs, legionaires and rogues hustling together, the perfect soundtrack.)

Speak of the devil: Soul-D

2006-10-07T21:22:00.003+10:00

The main way in which I discover webcomics is via the link-pages of strips I've enjoyed, this creates an interwoven stretch of sequential art largely untouched by the various ranking systems and Soul-D is one of the great strips I've discovered just in the last month or so, it's under the radar and because it's not part of a boutique collective like Dumbrella you'll probably have not seen it before.

The myth of the struggling jazz player who sells his soul to the devil is reinterpreted here as a young woman's hopeful struggle to become a singer is intertwined with the machinations of Hell's internal power struggles. I like the depiction of underachieving twenty-something misery displayed here, there's so good characterisation involved and even if it is all surrealist there's enough going on in the narrative to keep it all stuck together.

That said, the pacing isn't much chop and it can seem that it is only slowly joining the strands of the story together. The artwork is a smooth mixture of pastels and soft lines and the constant soft cartoony vibe is a pleasant change to all the grim dystopic webcomics I've been reading on-line. Overall, regardless of all the diversions this is a great story using an archetype that translates well to an age overly devoted to fame.

Hopping out of the nest

2006-10-02T14:27:00.001+10:00

The Kea's Nest is closing down, this saddens me as there hasn't really been an antipodean presence in webcomic criticism. I didn't read it for too long but I consider it to have been a consistent comicblog with a wry sense of humour. The Kea states that the blog took too much time and I can see what she's saying.

Likewise Weekly Webcomic Reviews is also on hiatus. I think the reason behind the faltering of comicblogs is that they are is usually a sideline for people, a way to embellish their fanboy/girl fervour and in times of stress it's usually the first thing to go, you notice a lot of gaps in updates in comicblogs because sometimes it can all be too much, there are too many webcomics to view as opposed to five years ago, I've looked at The Webcomicker's Piperka list and it is quite long.

A long webcomic list has become a bragging rite, showing everybody how much you read in order to prove yourself as a critic. Then it's not about pleasure anymore, it's about keeping up the list. So, I think once you start up a blog some of that innocence gets lost.

Maybe Fred Durst will now front Noosehead (Sam and Fuzzy)

2006-09-29T19:32:00.002+10:00

I'm really enjoying the direction that Sam and Fuzzy has been taking lately, if there was any strip that deserves to be congratulated for pulling off a 'Cerebus syndrome' well, then S&F deserves that prize. Sam Logan has subtly positioned the strip towards a continually evolving narrative without losing the humour. This recent Noosehead subplot could have turned into some bloated 'Oceans Unmoving' psych-out but the balance evident here shows us what a good webcartoonist is capable of doing.

Sam and Fuzzy has never really had a gimmick to separate it from the rest of the pack and the strip could have continued in the relatively shallow and amusing vein of the first hundred strips but slowly and surely surrealism and tragedy have melded together into a consistently good webcomic.

What lies beneath: Victim 12 & Schism

2006-09-19T09:49:00.002+10:00

If you read slice of life strips you probably won't like this dystopic excursion, I find that most of the better webcomics I've been reading have either been mangae styled or come from a genre fiction background. Here are two examples of cyberpunk's contingent online:

Victim 12 is an examination of memory loss and underlying conspiracies, there's not much there yet but it looks like a narrative that's ready for the long haul, there's not much action as of yet but the narrative is a stand-off between two varying forces. This is a classic conspiracy theory/dystopic narrative that bodes well to my perverse sensibilities.

The artwork is mangaesque but not noticeably so and the lightness of the line work is a welcome change to a lot of the heavy-handed inky sludge online. The background to the story is also relatively profuse, a good sign in a comic-verse of piss-poor background management. We haven't really delved beneath the intro but it's showy enough to keep you coming back for more.

Schism is a different kettle of fish altogether, the story is far more attuned to the regularities of everyday life, but underneath it all of this a mystery. This is quite a dense strip in terms of the background information delivered and its primary aim is to distil a sense of paranoia in the reader. It has gathered together much more of an archive and there is far more use of personal background present here in this dystopic harsh realism.

If you're so inclined you'll find hints of the Matrix series here but it's clearly more of an old school cyberpunk anti-authoritarian narrative. The use of colour is clever, it isn't overbearing, more of a bruised smear than a bright intensity, more chiaroscuro than pastel blandness. I like the intent shown here and the sensibility that mixes family and corporate mismanagement together, an enthralling read.

Fun in Babylon: Girls with slingshots

2006-09-19T09:26:00.002+10:00

I feel guilty about finally looking at Girls with Slingshots, it's the hidden webcomic that I've neglected in favour of reading genre strips. Sometimes its easy to lose one's faith in slice of life strips, the parameters centre upon what 'life' mean and they can become mere humour strips that are sugared with sentimentality. GWS is a strip that deals with externalities of average sexed-up twenty-something American life.

The current link to Wapsi Square on the site is quite telling because the scheming girls that are the central characters remind me of something that's a rarity in Webcomics: a female-centric strip.So, it's a slice of life strip and I can't shake off the resemblances to Butternutsquash, but the difference is there's an underlying jaded slacker vibe that's a welcome change. A lot of the time humour strips only deal with the geek world view, it's why I can't stand gamer strips such as PVP or Penny Arcade. I'm not willing to make the mental leap to pretend to laugh at inane binary jokes.

The opposite happens where a hipster strip like Questionable Content lays on the indie music cred as a conversation piece, it dates easily and Jeph Jacque's taste in music is a narrow kind of indie. In opposition to this, GWS is general enough in its parameters to work on numerous levels. There's angst, a talking Irish cactus to operate as a mascot, boy trouble and enough non-sequitur humour to lift this up from drab predictability. It's a subtle substrata of unmined existence that gives us something joyous and chaotic. Check it out.

Shadows out of the corner of your eyes Elsie Hooper

2006-09-11T09:42:00.002+10:00

I prefer darker webcomics and genre fiction in webcomic form, Elsie Hooper delivers this to me quite well. The protagonist Ridley is searching for his sister Elsie Hooper through the deserted town of Campbell falls, their hometown. 'Shadowmen' have taken her and as Ridley engages in this quest he encounters other people who have survived the vicious enslaught.

Elsie Hooper is also a first for a webcomic as it has been optioned for a film, it uses small succinct strips and black and white is usually de rigueur for good horror strips, there's a dark new wave feel to this strip. The smallness of the beginning strips are offset by an attention to detail. An interesting point is that the 'shadow people' were created after a particularly harrowing hallucination the creator Robert Krzykowski had while he was ill. The pacing for this is very good, you can certainly see the filmic influences here, there's a lot of stream of consciousness evident that elevates this strip from mere action or adventure. The gore level is pretty high, Robert K does murky blood splattering very well!

(Audio accompaniment: New Order, Ceremony, your lead singer Ian Curtis has just died, well, do you give up or do you go on and make a killer record?)

Zelda gets an upgrade: Myraclice

2006-09-05T09:53:00.002+10:00

I have been drawn in against my will into the world of Myralice, I'm usually not a big fan of fantasy strips but Myralice is a good example of a mangaesque strip that I think can translate well for a mainstream audience. The cross-over using a video game as an entry point into a fantasy world brings back memories of The Chronicles of Narnia. The artwork is just sublime, it's a soft deft touch of ink on the page, the colouring is so subtle that it revokes my preference for black and white manga.

So, Myralice is a video game world created by Sarah Nevers and a team of friends. As with most manga and mangaesque strips there's also some goof ball humour here amongst the game developers. That takes the shine off the fantasy webcomic's biggest drawback, plodding exposition and dullard serious characters with noble goals and hopes of conquest. Myralice deflates this tepid genre-standard by inserting modern scepticism into this wondrous dream-world.

Your goofball gothic fix for the week: Hellbound

2006-09-04T09:46:00.002+10:00

Hellbound feels like a throwback to Sluggy Freelance before Abrams went all mopey and overly narrative-rich. It's the adventures of Guy and a ragtag bunch of antagonistic goofballs and their inane adventures. There's not a lot of webcomics that cause me to laugh out loud, I mean, I like Rob & Elliot and Butternutsquash but with those strips it's more a series of chuckles.

Hellbound takes pacing causality and really mixes it about until it totally implodes, it goes off on to tangents that shouldn't work but they do. Guy's uncomfortable pauses are really good and filmic.

Usually 'funny' webcomics go all 'Cerebus syndrome' because their idiocy was a ultimately forced silliness that gave way as narrative concerns emerge. The only way to really avoid this is to include a planned mixture of comedy and some cogent narrative structure from the start of the strip. Sore Thumbs does this and so does Hellbound, it's a hard equilibrium to force together and Hellbound has created a good consistent strip.

Mitch Clem's New Tangents

2006-08-29T13:27:00.001+10:00

Okay, so maybe Mitch Clem hasn't been updating Nothing Nice to say as much now but I think San Antonio Rock City is a far better vehicle for his talents. It uses a far smoother style, more fluid, it's a clean start and I think NNTS was Clem's 'trainer strip' and SARC is the culmination of his warped vision of existence. Mitch Clem has always been about slice of life and here he evades the usual rut journal webcomics fall into by some welcome self-deprecation. There's some music trivia referenced here but it falls into the background of daily life.

Crazy Train: Paper.Eleven

2006-08-28T12:41:00.002+10:00

Finally someone has created a worse train ride experience than Estancia. Paper.Eleven is part of Daniel Kim's Clone Manga series which is a great dark slab of surreal manga with some of the most delicate linework I've seen online. When you see the ammount of quality manga he's done you'll think the bloke is a living marvel. I like the gleaming darkness evident here and the sheer scale of the micro-detail is above and beyond the call of artistic duty. I think using black and white (and shades of grey inbetween) adds a constriction that forces the artist to work harder. The puzzle of a narrative also quite tickles my fancy.

There's so much unseen experimentation happening on the fringes with mangaesque webcartoonists that is typically ignored. If a mangaesque webcomic does break free from the pack (aka, Megatokyo) the webcomic critical community doesn't understand it and the rules of the genre and josh it as mere emotive trash. Visually, this is one of the best webcomics I've seen this year and the minamalism present in its storyline pleases me greatly.

(Audio Accompaniment: DJ Signify's Sleep no more, dark noir beats with both Sage Francis and Buck 65 on the mike, totally ace.)

Mysteries and hysteria

2006-08-28T09:33:00.001+10:00

I don't know why but against my better judgement I really like the Minus strip on Kiwis by Beat, there's a childish simplicity here, it's like Counting Sheep done right, with lots of magical realism added to spice things up. It's a hard genre, the 'childlike simplicity' gig because it can often devolve into mere simplistic whimsy. Instead of going down this track some of the comics here are laugh-out-loud funny.

There's also the sadness present that is implicit in a lonely childhood that Ryan Armand truly understands. Boundless imagination is on display here and frankly you don't get this feeling from a lot of webcomics.

The use of shade is interesting as well, the colours aren't really copperresque intense but within its metier it works. It's filled with lots of pastels swirling around on a white background so there's no colour overload, just a softness floating on the screen.

(Audio Accompaniment: The Grates; Gravity won't get you high, heh, all that high-spun energy, florid colours and punky shouting, perfect.)

My MegaTokyo dilemma

I'm unsure as how to grade this latest strip from Megatokyo. This is either the Lovegirl mafia's first open move or Gallagher has really warped with the consciencespace/realworld continuum and decided to finally go buck wild on us. I think it is really the first option though, the world in which Megatokyo functions works in two streams, Largo's sci-fi Zombie/Zilla hyperactive world and Piro's introspective romantic comedy world. Gallagher hasn't ever fully melded these two streams together and I don't think he intends to do so. The inclusion of the CEA Sera into the real world would completely change the dynamic of the comic and make it far more chaotic, so I'm eagerly awaiting what this all means.

Some old School humour
Usually I try to stay away from printcomics on Zhi but I think that Barnacle Press is a good portal of old American comics that anybody with an interest in the artform should check out as a part of their visual education. (Unless you're a lame gamer freakazoid who drools out Leetspeak and other sub-vocal mangled rubbish.) As my childhood comic background is in TinTin and Asterix; it's a good eye-opener into the basics of American sequential art.

Now, milquetoast from The Timid Soul is not a word I have often used before but I think it will be now. T he American Heritage Dictionary lists it as part of an ongoing osmosis between comic culture and general pop-culture:

The first instance of milquetoast as a common noun is found in the mid-1930s. Milquetoast thus joins the ranks of other such words, including sad sack, from a blundering army private invented by George Baker in 1942, and Wimpy, from J. Wellington Wimpy in the Popeye comic strip, which became a trade name for a hamburger.

Now if only 'sad girl in snow' became part of the general lexicon, then that would show me that webcomics have truly engaged with the general public's imagination.

Blood trickling through the canals: Verardi Famiglia

2006-08-22T09:53:00.002+10:00

I think I'm going to enjoy Verardi Famiglia's particularly vicious brand of violence. Set in Venice, its emphasis on the misadventures of Valerio as he navigates life after betraying his mafia 'family'. Admittedly, it is hard to tell if this is going to be a great webcomic as there's less than twenty pages now written, however it looks as if Sires has a masterplan already set up. The addition of some Italian into the script is also a nice addition, it makes the strip less whitebread. There's a lot of complex perspectives here and some very clean linework. Hopefully it will develop into a consistent and violent Noir-style webcomic.

(Aural accompaniment: You know that really dodgy Ja Rule song, 'I think the rain is calling murder, I think the rain is calling muuurder!', the filmclip has Patrick Swayze as a corrupt cop and Irv Gotti trying to play hard as a gangsta, anyway, I think a corny song like that would really help because of all the violence in this strip.)

Darkness at the edge of town: Either way, Blue Zombie & Jump

2006-08-21T09:50:00.002+10:00

I don't know why I'm attracted to horror and supernatural themes, I was raised as a Pentecostal so there must be some kind of nascent spirituality underneath all my neurotic agnosticism. I seem to be attarcted to genre fiction because all that slice of Life Stuff out there isn't really good for webcomics in my opinion. Lately, horror webcomics seems to be a good springboard for emotional intensity in a way that fantasy hasn't been able to do so far. So, here are three webcomics that use horror as a springboard for something else.

Either Way made a false start but I quite like the look of the artwork and where the story could be heading. It uses the supernatural as a backdrop to various dramas and it adds some sly humour to what can be a particularly dour subject. The level of cross-hatching is pretty heavy and I think Nekko started off with Blacklight Twilight as a trainee comic and moved on to this one once she was confident enough to do so.
I'd seen her around on comic genesis and I'd been put off by BT but I think this webcomic is good enough to launch her into something different. The creator's emphasis is on how horror impacts on real life, so it's traumatic thriller and a slice of horror on the side and enough self-consciousness to drag it out of mere genre-fiction status.

(Audio Accompaniment: horror and weepy tendencies, so, The Arcade Fire: Funeral)

Blue Zombie has a lot more back-story to it than what it looks like at first glance. It's mangaesque without overtly showing any influences, it's also able to transform blue into a gothic colour and I also like the clean level of shading here.

It also keeps on alternating between bleak streams of consciousness and goofball adventures. It's an alternate version of our world with all its real-world problems with the intricacies of magic and demons added to make things just that little bit harder.

Also, the character section is essentially a how-to for upcoming webcomicker's, it's really dense with information, now if only Fred Gallagher was willing to learn some new tricks...

(Audio accompaniment:um...really ashamed to say this...Portishead; Dummy, mellow depressed menustrating women, yep, bet all you blokes are really uncomfortable now...)

Of the three horror webcomics I've been looking at, Jump, is probably the bleakest in terms of narrative texture. It's also the most stylised artisically and the one more in keeping with the conventions of the horror genre, but if you read through you'll see some sinuous sleek magical realism hidden underneath, it's dark and seething with neurotic desires. Even if you have to wade through the pencil sketchy style at the begining, the lushness of the colour added later on adds some Wildean glamour to a narrative filled with the tropes of sin and redemption.

(Any thing by My Red Cell for some really psychotic violent tendencies)

I wish my cat was as cool as Mr. Pickles!: Lola, Wasteland, The Dreamwalker Chronicles

2006-08-08T11:11:00.002+10:00

Victoria Smith has pulled off an unnoticed coup in creating Lola, the strips are somewhat self-contained but also lead on to a continuing narrative, obviously I've been entrapped by the gothic meanderings of Lola's existence but it's the slow subtle build-up of the story that really impresses me. It uses a bleak style, all black and white and very minimalist. There's hints of an anime fluidity here but I like the fun behind all the gloom, Lola's just trying to work things out, if the story-template is gothic then Smith veers away from that pretty well, it's more a journal of an alternate version of Smith's teenage angst years. It's very successful in its balance between kitsch and deliciously morose teen ramblings.

(Aural accompaniment: this is one webcomic that is able to take the playful moroseness of the Smiths, so, The Queen is Dead.)

The Dreamwalker Chronicles is a narrative concerning a small boy who finds himself in the woods and some distorted fairytale version of our world. The use of colour reaches a Copperesque sheen and the fantastical logic behind the story really impresses me.
It's as if all of childhood's creepy darkness has come to us in sequential art form and we have to decode it! The inclusion of native American mythology also adds another layer to what could become a dense and subtle work. The monsters have climbed out from under your bed and are now getting proactive about catching you! Delightful stuff!

(Aural accompaniment: So dreamy and melodic, The Coral; Magic and Medicine.)

You probably haven't heard of Wasteland but this is a good example of psychological distress and sexy sketchy mangaesque mystery. There are so many tangents here that I don't know where to fully start! It retells a crime scene from a number of angels, it's full of fortellings and dour murderous dreams and pale fey youths moping about, It's like a guilty pleasure and the artwork is a sketchy black and white style, there's so many red herrings but I guess I prefer chaos to a petite narrative. I still have no idea about what's fully going on after the end of chapter two but I 'm truly enjoying putting the pieces together.

(Aural accompaniment: Emo sad, crazy linework, screaming ex-Can member crazy, Sixtoo; Chewing on glass and other miracle cures.)

Horror comics get vicious: Agnes Quill and Revenger's tragedy

2006-08-01T09:38:00.002+10:00

I only occasionally look around at all the decay that the webcomic community has to offer and it occurred to me that my viewing habits weren't as broad as they could be, we always put up various biases between ourselves and new experiences and it's sometimes hard to get out of a webcomic rut, so I went looking...

The multi-authored approach to Agnes Quill creates a sense of the underlying character, the artists that Dave Roman works with all operate using a lush template that suits the particularly baroque world-view of the writer.

I usually don't read adventure webcomics, even though I was brought up on various Francophone Ligne Claire style adventure comics I've felt that nothing has ever lived up to Tintin and I thereafter neglected the genre. Either that or I saw the usually shit selection Keenspot has and that turned me off for life (That or Everything Jake got way too emo and tainted me for life.)

But AQ doesn't use the usual static clean lines I'm used to and regardless of the artist, there's always a sense of movement here. The artwork is a stunningly rendered black and white rendition of a complex world and the creator's own cartoony version set out in story-lines such as , 'Invite only', add another dimension to the strip. So, it's horror and mystery mixed up together and once you get past the initial unsettling acceptance of the undead then it becomes a good plot-driven read. Slave Labor Graphics is putting out a AQ anthology and I'm going to try to pick it up if at all possible.

The gothic aesthetic in webcomics usually exists in a morass of linework and that's usually a good thing, thus, I additionally like the way Revenger's Tragedy uses various typefaces, for example:

As it stands, horror seems to add an edge to artwork, it adds vistas that would otherwise be unseeen, it can also go all Poe and stifling on us but the majority of horror webcomic writers look like they know what they're doing, horror might not have the cachet of arthouse webcomics like Cat and Girl and a lesson is learned... but these two webcomics impress me mightily. RT takes off where Dante's Inferno left off, it's an ambitious examination of how an underworld would work in practice and if Smith isn't as crash-hot at human bodies, his backgrounds have an expansive feel to them that carries the whole work, his artwork doesn't look like anything else, it's sometimes more like art connected to a story. It sometimes looks sketchy but sketchy can be good sometimes, some webcomics have too much of a polished sheen to them. The early exposition is heavy but you can hardly explain the geo-political scheme via pictures, overall, a good solid webcomic.

Busting up da flow: Combustible Orange

2006-07-24T10:31:00.002+10:00

I'm not a real big fan of Penny Arcade and I don't think Becky and Ben from Combustible Orange are either. As for lyrical analysis: it looks like Tycho is going all 1992 west coast on us, the rhyme scheme is basic but the clothes are skankily wiggerlicious. The bling is pretty good though, if you're going to front on the bling you have to go hard or go home ( I mean, Flava Flav rocks his clock like a drunken telemarketer and everyone loves him.)

I really dig the clean design of the CO website and after the 'reboot' the linework has become more mature and the humour has become far more subtle. It's essentially a dig at the comic industry, thus, the Jhonen Vasquez piss-take was also pretty apposite (heh, stabbity stab!)

Does the bandage on the face mean he's a shit rapper like Nelly?

2006-07-18T11:25:00.000+10:00

As an Australian I'm proud to see some antipodean influences on an American dominated internet. Anyway, it looks like there might be a new webcomic collective coming up! Koala Wallop is going to collect together a number of webcomics that I'm currently excited about.
It will contain webcomics such as:
Dresden Codak New surrealism and beautiful, evil science.
Perfect Stars Bitchy fashion and Wildean languor shouldn't work in a webcomic...but this does.
I am a rocket builder Really clever use of hyperlinks.

(Seriously, Nelly goes platimum or whatever and Bun B gets the consolation prizes? Make it stop...)

Dirty pixels: In the webcomic ghetto

2006-07-18T08:54:00.001+10:00

Abstract: This is an examination of how a webcomic's popularity stems from its friends.

If you look at the structure of webcomics today it's clearly the smaller collectives that are the most visible, Keenspot still continues to lumber on, dutifully creating a monochrome slather of unconnected webcomics. The boutique collectives such as Dumbrella, Boxcar, Blank Label and Dayfree Press, all band together, it's a team effort that pays off via goodwill.

A number of the more popular webcomics based on these collectives are the result of years of work, they're more established and they're the product of 'trainee strips', John Allison could only start on Scarygoround after Bobbins, really. The trainee strip isn't a conscious decision, the web-cartoonist merely moves on from it when they realise it is not flexible enough for their new ideas.

The first hundred strips are pretty tough for the web-cartoonist and sometimes painful for the reader, just look at the first unsophisticated 100 strips created in Questionable Content or Sam and Fuzzy. Persistence wins, If Bobbins started now in this new competitive environment do you think it would be as popular as SGR?

There's a whole skanky underbelly of unloved webcomics out there and sometimes I feel guilty for sticking to the comics created by the more experienced webcomic creators. I guess my 'discoveries' section is my way of assuaging my guilt. The collective webcomic critical consensus has already created a canon of webcomics and a number of webcomic in that canon are on the boutique collectives. I know they're dependable but I'm wondering how the next generation is going to get through the undergrowth.

Elephants beware! Girly: Part one - The Sidekick

2006-07-15T19:25:00.000+10:00

I copped this last week, it collects the first 122 Girly strip and gives them a thematic wholeness that you might not otherwise perceive. This is a good thing because Lesnick has always added a moral proportion to his characters and I guess Girly is his attempt to create something of emotional intensity after his 'trainee strip' Cute Wendy ended. He does chaos well and the fluid mangaesque style creates a comic that can easily move between joyous and sorrow in an eyeblink

Reading through these strips as a whole, one can see that there's also a sense of moral proportion underneath all the hijinks and japes. Aside from some additional art in the margins there aren't that many extras and at first it feels odd to read two strips per page but once you get over that,you'll be reminded why you fell in love with this hyperactive strip. If you're not a convert then this is a good way to get into a crazy adventure. (and not in the juvenile Neo-Soul-coffeetable Gnarls Barkley style either) adventure.

Print/web comic crossover: Flight 1

2006-07-10T10:22:00.000+10:00

Okay, perhaps I'm a little late here but I think that Flight 1 is perhaps one of the slickest print trade paperbacks I've read in some time. The paper is callandered really nice so the colour really shines through to create something fully shmik. It also got me back to looking at Kazu Kibuishi's Copper and I appreciate that. It's a fusion of print and web comics, Kibuishi has edited the collection and if not completely thematically in tune, it shows a sense of adventure that most comics don't possess. Ideas swirl around and there's no bog-standard fuckwit gamer comics here, just the fantastical and the magical.

Most of the artists have art-sites as opposed to webcomics or otherwise write strips intermittently. Interestingly, Scott Mccloud is also present as a mentor and isn't as pretentious as he usually seems. A good introduction to some talented artists that are somewhat unknown.

Sad without the Emo: Neilcomics

2006-07-03T09:57:00.002+10:00

I recently discovered Neil comics and I think it's a good source for print comic gossip. Okay, maybe overall the archives might be a little small but I like the melancholic disposition displayed here. Most of Neil's comics are on Girlmatic and this is essentially a clearing house for news and gossip.

It's a little photo-heavy and is filled with industry chatter but I'm a convert because the stuff he did for Flight is pretty amazing. Look under 'Stories' for his comics, he makes up for the small amount produced by his sincerity.He's also pretty funny as well, the Sacco and Zetti stories are the visual equivalents of summer. Now, if only Jhnonen Vasquez were so upfront instead of putting up hack websites with no content.

One black heart broken in two: Stuff sucks

2006-06-29T17:37:00.002+10:00

Stuff sucks has 'it', this fantastical Amsterdam inhabited by English speaking ex pats is a weird place. The 'it' is the whole sluttish mix of different characters. If the artwork somewhat resembles Return to Sender, then the narrative is a free-flowing haze of emotion and japery. (Though Zemi is like a skankalicious version of Colette) I like the looseness here and the willingness to explore sub-plots. It's also what the strip doesn't do that makes it stand out. Liz Greenfield could have added in the goldfish as a talking mascot goldfish but she didn't, she showed restraint.

Heh, this strip has the emo kid, Adam, twisting the whole Emo vibe around. He should be a recurring character.Usually the Emo kid gets a bad rap, Nothing nice to say uses the usual stereotype.I mean, I hate Emo kids, All American Rejects makes me want to hit frogs with a hammer, Dashboard Confessional makes me want to bring public crucifixions back as a spectacle. But I think the Emo kid is good in this strip, Liz Greenfield didn't go down the obvious route and that's always a good thing.

Discoveries: Edwitch

2006-06-26T17:41:00.001+10:00

I first found out about Edwitch via Scarygoround as Josh Rosen did a strip for Scarygoround idol.I like the sketchiness of the artwork, it gives the strip a looseness that is quite welcome. There's a sense of childhood moving onto twenties and thus it's a charming read because I usually am converted to a strip based upon its evocation of a fantastic world, it's mis-en-scene as well as character interation. Gaming comics don't usually provide this, instead it's usually in-jokes and bumble-fucked misogyny. I prefer the liminal spaces between normalacy and the fantastic and Edwitch easily provides that.

The gothic is also a preoccupation of mine and Edwitch would not look out of place on the Slave Labor Graphics roster. It's the gothic crossed with slice of life humour. Usually gothic visuals are accompanied by varied lush backgrounds. Here, the minimal backgrounds gives the strip a sense of space and lets the characters perform as themselves, I like that.

Changes in the scenery: Webcomics vs. Print comics

2006-06-17T19:44:00.001+10:00

So, I was skulking around my local comic store, Minotaur ,on Thursday and I picked up a trade paperback copy of the first volume of Stray Bullets and the trade paperback copy of Next Exit. Minotaur is a large pop-culture/comic store in central Melbourne. As I was going through them, I was luxuriating in the finality of a collected work.

I’d already collected all the single issues of Next Exit and as I read the first volume I could see the master plan emerge. The first six issues were always intended as a thematic whole as a graphic novel instead of disparate parts. I could now put the story together it is a whole. Yet when I look online all I usually see are gag strips and even the longer narratives are disconnected and formulated around jokes.

I think the medium of the internet is against the webcomic functioning as the equivalent of a graphic novel. A single issue comic that is collated later into a graphic novel has a length that allows a thematic unity; in opposition to this the webcomic is usually punctuated by the necessity of daily or weekly updates. In order to get to the stage of a graphic novel, it’d a slow trawl through the story and thus ‘slice of life’ comics prevail because the webcomic is if nothing else an immediate artform.

Even longer narratives such as Something Positive are usually constructed around a joke at the end of each strip. The medium that supports the webcomic makes it far harder to create graphic novels. Webcomic viewers want instant gratification; each strip has to make sense on its own. If you don’t like it you can just skip to the next webcomic, hurry, hurry along. So, a webcomic doesn’t have the luxury of a continuous narrative that is encapsulated even in a single issue print comic. The demands of an online audience creates narratives broken up into updates or snippets of narration.

Thus, a comic like Fell wouldn’t work online because of its slow-burning narrative. Things can build up where a webcomic usually is required to possess a thematic whole with each strip, it can’t afford not to be. This retards overall narration. Stray Bullets online would result in outraged noobs on the forum asking for the punch line, it’s an interrelated narrative and that works better in printed collected work, not in an archive of disconnected strips in a webcomic.

If you do try and buck the trend you get accused of overextending yourself, the clearest culprit in webcomic critical circles is Megatokyo. Perhaps Megatokyo isn’t a good example because as the Webcomic examiner stated in their roundtable on the history of webcomics, it’s a print comic that’s found itself online. The complaints that ensued when Rodney Caston was edged out were indicative of an audience that preferred gaming gags to long term continuity.

Even a webcomic stalwart such as Sluggy Freelance is lop-sided because of the continual need for jokes to keep the audience reeled in. Abrams only attempts emotional complexity in the adventure sequences such as Fire and Rain and more recently in the technically brilliant Wayang Kulit storyline. It seems outside of fantasy sub-plots, characters in SF are not allowed to fully express their emotions. This makes reading through the archives a distorted reading experience as normalcy comes back after what should be moving forward.

I’ve seen and purchased the print editions of Megatokyo at Minotaur, I’ve also seen print versions Penny Arcade and Sinfest there. The move of the more successful webcomics to print versions was perhaps inevitable. PVP and Megatokyo are the most popular, there are smaller variants of this, Sam and Fuzzy has printed up some of its strips but only on pre-order and not in a more thematic whole in the way ScaryGoRound presents its archives.

I’m pretty sure most print versions of webcomics are peripheral to the main enterprise, usually purchased by the converted as an add-on. Print versions of webcomics, with the exception of Megatokyo, aren’t graphic novels, they are collections of individual strips, as already stated, they could hardly be otherwise given the internet’s ferociously fast attention span. They are a way of adding physical form to what you love and are far easier to read that to trawl through years of archives.

Yeah, okay, nothing beats the thrill of looking for comics online but I think the printed versions are usually a luxury reserved for the more successful webcomics and will continue as such, there might be a crossover into print comics but nobody I know in the comic stores even knows about webcomics. That’s not to say they’re inferior, I wouldn’t be reading webcomics and writing this blog if they were, webcomics have weaknesses compared to print comics but the strengths outweigh them.

Webcomics are more fluid and energetic than the majority of print comics. The top of the field in print comics is supposedly Marvel and DC’s superhero wankery; the top of the field within webcomics is far more exciting artistically and supports far more interesting work.

Quality usually prevails because in order to survive or move up to being funded by your artwork you have to attract more people. There’s no company funding you, it’s fully freelance. The biosphere in webcomics is far more complex and forums force together a sense of community that you rarely see in print. The webcomic creator talks to (rants at) you via messages each update, (e.g. Sore Thumbs and Questionable Content). Yeah, I get a thrill from both print and webcomics but only webcomics gives me that rush as I check each day for a new update.

Reconversion: Goats

2006-06-09T15:43:00.001+10:00

I'd drifted away from Goats around 2001, my first analysis was that it was merely another Slice of Life strip with some vaguely 'quirky' fantastical touches. It has...uh...changed since I'd last visited. At first glance its been transformed into a Sluggified series of Multiverses. Rosenberg has called this a 'reboot', he's also provided the reader with a copious series of cast pages and narrative guides. The comic has changed genres and I think that's a brave move. The previous version depended a continuity behind all the surrealism, the bar always existed, the same snide fratboy humour spurted out on cue after all the distractions from the outside world.

So, originally Goats was slice of life with surreal on top, now the parameters have changed. The craziness has become implicit within the strip, not just as a stop-over. The format of the comic looks more shmik as well, more streamlined. It's a good form of evolution and I'm happily surprised.

Part of my slow deconversion from Sluggy Freelance was the underpining normalacy that caused all the adventuring into a sidenote, the underlying characters remained. The serious 'F + R' version of Oasis jarred with the structure of the rest of SF. Goats has avoided this malaise by plunging into the instability of an alternate universe. I'm glad I rediscovered Goats and I'm glad someone is taking risks.

Changes in the scenery

2006-06-01T00:09:00.000+10:00

Joe Zabel has recently written an examination of the perceived 'webcomic community' in the Webcomic examiner. It’s interesting and lucid and five years ago it could not have been written. I think it’s an example of the current cultural validity of webcomics.
I think however that the perceived webcomics community never was a concrete entity. I think the main change is a consistent critical analysis of webcomics. When Sluggy Freelance and Penny Arcade began the vast web of webcomic criticism wasn't present. The super-structure of webcomic criticism that has emerged can tend to canonize webcomics, sometimes deservedly so. This stabilization has created order and online webcomic communities have become contact points to cross fertilise each other.

If the more popular multi-authored webcomic blogs such as Fleen and Websnark are slightly gossipy, then the content peripherals such as webcomic collectives have taken on more importance. With the advent of new boutique webcomic collectives such as Boxcar and Blank Label, Keenspot seems to have lost its direction. Aside from Sore Thumbs and Sinfest, I can't think of a first rate webcomic on the Keenspot roster that bucks its genre specifications, the emphasis is broad, there's no real brand identity to the community, no real sizeable crossovers.

The increase in webcomics has forced together a form of unofficial quality control. Consistency in output is preferable, Road Waffles is on its third vague disconnected storyline, Niego opted out and Shaw island went half-arsed serious.

Still, I prefer convoluted narratives that span a number of years, so weekly updates is fine with me. So to me, Megatokyo doesn’t look like some half-arsed Manga-ka project in training, it looks like a viable webcomic. It’s also an example of the shift towards the print format that a major webcomic such as ScaryGoRound has also followed. This isn't a betrayal, it's moving on.

'Step off! I'ma set you up the bomb!' : How Hip-Hop should be portrayed in a webcomic

2006-05-03T21:34:00.002+10:00

I have become a late convert to Orneryboy, I had presumed it was a simplistic strip but as I read through the archives the storyline escalated into something special. The best strips are, of course, the zombie Brian's efforts as an emcee, Lalonde could have truly fudged this up but he's made it work. This is perhaps the best strip where Brian shows his inner Hip-Hop backpacker geek.

It is a clever addition to what is primarily a comic that relies upon stylised visual gags. The humour follows a 'Punch and Judy' template and what started out as a one-off joke has become an ongoing motif for the strip. Michael Lalonde has actually put some effort into Brian's flow and I appreciate that.

If punk has, Nothing nice to say, and ska has 21 Dead monkeys as webcomic presences, well Hip-Hop doesn't really have a good presence within web-comics. In fact, the only print comic I own connected to Hip-Hop is Jim Mahfood's Felt. If it is represented within a web-comic it's usually within a negative or condescending light. I think a prime example would have to be Comet 7's use of the talking water cooler with the 'bling', which is not a particulary clever modern representation, he even doesn't rap! It looks more like snide fuckwitery to me, its the usual inane response to Hip-Hop: The bitches, the 'yo!' and the gold chain. If I were fifteen it might be moderately amusing, for three minutes.
I don't mind David Tekiela taking the piss out of Hip-Hop, God knows it needs it with all the idiocies commited in its name ( Ja Rule & Murder Inc, we're looking at you) It's just that Gangster rap is an easy target and Comet 7 uses it to make up a stock character when it could use it for so much more.

Hyperactive pixels: the webcomic community

2006-01-29T14:12:00.002+11:00

Webcomics are an addiction of mine, however, I hadn’t realised that there was a whole cottage industry of Webcomic criticism. Of course I’d heard of Websnark, but sites such as Fleen and the Webcomic Examiner were new to me. I enjoy the way that the Examiner has put together a consistent examination of various Webcomics and it also examines the industry that holds them in place (e.g. From Keenspot to Blank label)

Tastes in webcomics obviously do change, I once was completely enamored of Sluggy Freelance, I think the general consensus is that he has tried to pull too much off. I usually ignore gamer comics as monomanias, I for one am glad that Megatokyo has been transformed into something far more mangaesque and it fits together better in its print form of course. Unlike the Websnark I quite enjoy the convoluted narratives, it makes the comic feel like a serial Victorian novel. Admittedly the extras that usually accompany a webcomic (Character notes, background) are flimsy, but once you’re hooked that doesn’t matter. I like the ambiguity present between the two realities that exist in MT, Largo’s and Piro’s, and unlike the general consensus I think that Gallagher has assimilated the ‘craziness’ of co-creator Largo’s viewpoint into something that is his own.

As for recent discoveries, Nazi High, is one of my guilty pleasures, apart from the usual teething problems that usually afflict Webcomics in the first hundred strips it has developed quite well. Artistically, it uses a fluid style that suits the silliness of the narrative.