Things to check out

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.

Hopping out of the nest

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.

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.

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...)

Dirty pixels: In the webcomic ghetto

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.

Hyperactive pixels: the webcomic community

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.