Cool for cats: Lackadaisy

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

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

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

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 or 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 dream-scape. The abrupt 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

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 pretense 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 be-smitten 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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.