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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. The 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

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

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

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

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

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?

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...)