| Wednesday | July 14th | 2010 |
io9 contributor Lauren Davis writes a lovely review of Evan Dahm’s Order of Tales, which wrapped up its 700+ page story last week. Next up for Dahm? Another Overside tale (in color!) titled “Vattu.” Stay tuned.
| Thursday | July 8th | 2010 |
This is about a million years old, but it doesn’t get any less funny! Oh, Snake, you and your Metal Gear cake.
| Tuesday | July 6th | 2010 |
EVAN DAHM drew Janelle Monae! So cute.
| Wednesday | June 16th | 2010 |
via www.rice-boy.com
This sumptuous image is a teaser for Evan Dahm’s next huge comic project. Order of Tales will finish very soon this summer, and it looks like Dahm will be humming along straight to his next epic tale. Can’t WAIT.
| Thursday | May 13th | 2010 |
How long has it been since we’ve talked webcomics here? Couple of weeks, now? Too long!
Let’s talk The Meek, by ambitious web comicist Der-shing Helmer. Helmer is not only a trained biologist, a tutor, a student and a self-taught artist, but is also undertaking the daunting task of mounting a fully colored graphic novel online with a tightly set schedule. Also, he’s all of 24 years old.
How is that graphic novel? Aside from being sumptuously colored, emotively written and cleverly plotted, it’s also damned compelling. The Meek follows a young woman raised in the wilds who has been sent to the world of powerful men and vast kingdoms to save her world.
Granted, that’s a little vague as far as synopses go, but thus far we’re only two chapters into the story. Still, those two chapters are uniquely intriguing and gorgeously wrought, and have certainly hooked a sizable—and vocal—fanbase in just a few months. For the impatient, Helmer has posted the Meekipedia, which is (you guessed it) a searchable encyclopedia of characters, terms and events in his fantasy world. Helmer has clearly spent an inordinate amount of time building this world and plotting the tempestuous events that will unfold deeper into The Meek, and his care should be applauded.
With so much on his plate, Helmer occasionally misses updates or posts pages late—and quite understandably so. Knowing that the comic updates rather slowly is useful: it’s a good strategy to wait a few weeks and months and read the story a few pages at a time, rather than piecemeal. Things are ramping up and getting quite exciting, so head over and see what The Meek is all about!
| Wednesday | February 10th | 2010 |
Since we’re speaking of webcomics tonight—and, really, when are we not?—I thought I’d mention that February 1st was 2010 Webcomics Hourlies day. Hourlies are journalistic comics drawn every hour to record an artist’s day—no matter how trivial or weird that day was. All over the internet, web comicists recorded every hour of their personal Feb 1st with a mini drawing, then posted them. I’m always amused by how even the most mundane activity (eating cereal! taking a shower! shopping for groceries! inking!) can seem funny and glamorous when depicted via comic.
The most successful are those drawn by artists who excel at dry, observational humor. Which ones stand out this year? Why, John Allison’s of Scary Go Round, Kate Beaton’s of Hark! A Vagrant!, Meredith Gran’s of Octopus Pie and Yuko/Ananth’s of Johnny Wander. Do check out John Allison’s, at the very least—it is excellent. Two hours of his day below:
(Hourlies hourlies hourlies. That just gets weirder and weirder to read and type.)
Do the names Ananth Panagariya and Yuko Ota mean anything to you? They should, if you’ve ever perused the techy happenings of Applegeeks or read the wonderful and varied vignettes presented on Johnny Wander. But everyone—the uninitiated included—should head immediately to Dark Horse Presents, where the comicking duo has just posted a short comic that is by turns mysterious, wry and creepifyingly excellent. (Click the fourth story on the menu, because, surprise!, their handy “link directly to this story!” link doesn’t work. Dark Horse, you fail in some many ways.)
Their combined sense of humor tends to combine the very cutesy with the very morbid, to often hilarious effect. This piece is a bit darker than their usual fare, but ends with a signature twist. Yuko’s artwork seems to have jumped light-years ahead in the past year or so—especially on the stellar “Delilah and the Basilisk” and “Girl with the Skeleton Hand” shorts on Johnny Wander—but this is another level entirely. Do yourself a favor and check out “Callie Eats Feathers” on DHP, since these two are definitely going places!
And, confidential to Dark Horse/MySpace Presents: why on earth would you set your pages to automatically scroll to the bottom when they load? Do you—the self-styled harbingers of new webcomic talent—not understand that the punchline of a comic happens in the last panel? On the bottom of the page? That place where my browser is forced to go when the page loads, thereby previewing the final panel of every new page before I can read the top of it?!
| Friday | January 1st | 2010 |
Potential Deductions (via lunchbreath)
Lunchbreath posts entertaining graphs, charts and pithy explanations on his flickrstream. And I laugh at them, as they are usually brilliant.
Additionally, I am now considering filing taxes with the anthropomorphized face of my kitchen sink as a dependent.
| Saturday | December 26th | 2009 |
Dante of Surviving the World is right.
And it’s true. After a season of endless family gossipin’, gorgin’, deckin’, candle lightin,’ dreidel spinnin’ and present overloadin’…isn’t it time to sit in one place and read the 700 page archive of that one webcomic you’ve always meant to get into? Yes. But which are worth your precious time?
| Wednesday | December 16th | 2009 |
Well, this is an interesting twist. Fantasy web comicist Evan Dahm (creator of Rice Boy and Order of Tales) has implemented a money-making strategy I haven’t seen before in an online comic. While his two grand opuses are completely free to read, he has begun to post several short narrative comics that take place in the same world. However, these have a catch: he won’t post a new short until he receives a certain amount of donations from readers. No money sent, no short story posted. Readers are rewarded for their donations with extra content, but not penalized for withholding, as the main story remains free. An interesting concept, and one that I think I like.
Each time a comic I enjoy suddenly closes up like a clam with a “pay to read” format, I abandon ship with a sigh. I don’t begrudge the author some money for their efforts: I, and other friends, have been known to finish a free, online comic and immediately plunk down money for a hard copy (and that includes this particular author’s finished work.) However, not every web comicist will actually finish their story/novel/opus—even with a paying audience—and you end up paying for something that peters out into “sorry guys, I just got bored with it/didn’t plan all of it out/need a break.” Or worse, something that began as a creative romp ends up being a drag for the creator, who only continues because of the money coming in.
This format, though, is quite clever; 1) the stories are very short, at 10 to 15 pages, and therefore can be finished and posted in their entirety for immediate audience satisfaction, 2) the author can gauge how much interest his audience has and how much money they are willing to put up for his work.
Of course, the obvious catch is that even readers who don’t contribute a dime can read the resulting paid-for work, which may result in the same group of people paying for the stories each time. But there is a sense of altruism there that I rather like, trumping the ‘read for pay’ system in a nice way. The first two stories have been paid for and posted, if you’d like to read them, and the next is 1/3rd paid for. We’ll see how excited Dahm fans are for more content, especially after his current major story wraps up!
| Thursday | December 10th | 2009 |
Do you like milk? Think it’s epic? Think aliens might like it? (You’d be wrong on the last one). Nobody Scores! has some things to say about milk, and most of them are funny. Don’t you need a comic about milk today? YES.
| Tuesday | October 27th | 2009 |
The first webcomic I ever read was a slightly messy, totally lovable black and white affair, painstakingly drawn every week by a college student with a chronic case of carpal tunnel. It was about vampires in the French Revolution.
Don’t laugh! Or do, as it was utterly hilarious. That was back in 2000, and while Bite Me! has lain completed since 2004, Dylan Meconis’ poor wrist is still taking a beating.
Ten years later and she’s still at it—this time sans vampires, and hopefully sans carpal tunnel. Her current opus-in-progress is Family Man, which concerns the life of a fictitious German theologian as he travels Europe in 1768. When Luther Levy finds employment in a university filled with eccentric professors and a mysterious librarian, he begins to wonder where Reason will lead him after all.
What, that doesn’t sound funny? It’s not meant to be. No daily punchlines, no anachronistic references, and the only puns are those on Christian theology. In German. Nevertheless, it is one of the most audacious, illuminating and entertaining pieces I have ever had the pleasure of reading (online and otherwise). Granted, that’s coming from a history geek, but the sumptuous art and underlying mysteries should be tempting enough for any reader to jump on board. Wagon. Carriage. Whatever.
Exhaustively researched, skillfully drawn and intelligently written, Meconis is slowly unveiling her vision of the Age of Enlightenment through her rain-washed art and crackling scholastic debate. Even her research notes sparkle with wit and energy; whether she’s lamenting a dearth of accurate carriage designs on the web or apologizing for depicting a prop that wasn’t invented til a decade later.
Updating only once a week, Family Man isn’t a marathon comic: there are a grand total of two full chapters thus far, and once you’ve read them the wait seems interminable for the next page. However, when you recognize the detail she puts into her work (one notable example above) you can appreciate why each page takes a full week to come to completion.
But, if Bite Me! was any indication, this artist has the tenacity and vision to take us along on the journey all the way to the end of her epic. Read up on Spinoza and Voltaire, savor the artwork, and join a loyal readership as they follow the stately progression that is Family Man.
| Thursday | October 22nd | 2009 |
Seems like Dirty Projector’s album Bitte Orca (mentioned just this week on the blog) made quite the impression on the creator of fabulous webcomic Octopus Pie. Hanna is looking mischievous as always, and Eve a little worries (as always). When good music and good webcomickry collide!
| Monday | September 14th | 2009 |
As of last week the venerable Brit comic Scary Go Round officially ended its long run. Therefore, it’s the perfect time to hop on the ‘round and read its archives, which stretch all the way back to 2002!
Scary Go Round follows the quite supernatural happenings in the town of Tackleford, England. A large cast of characters encounters all sorts of phenomena, including devils, witches, portals to nether worlds and creepy bald children who predict the end of the world. But these Brits never lose their cool: Scary Go Round is more a wacky comedy with supernatural elements than an X-Files retread. John Allison’s artwork occasionally calls to mind the super-attenuated characters of Edward Gorey, but his neon bright palette allows his monsters and ghouls to bounce and boo rather than slink and moan.
The series is broken up handily into chapters, most of which deal with a new mysterious threat to the blithe citizens of Tackleford. Switching occasionally from computer drawn to hand drawn art, Allison also mixes up his cast of characters from time to time, dropping folks along the wayside and bringing others to prominence.
Grab your flashlight and a scone and follow the intrepid mystery solvers of Scary Go Round as they deal with zombies, monsters, super spies, ghosts and the perils of dating.
| Tuesday | July 14th | 2009 |
It’s ancient history in Net Years (circa 2007), but The DM of the Rings is a fantastically funny read. Using screen captions from all three LOTR movies, author Shamus Young imagines Tolkien’s plot as if it were being played as a D&D campaign.
Noble causes? None. Clever plots? Nope. Remembering basic information? You wish. Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas go off in search of booty, babes and notoriety, wreaking havoc on NPCs all across Middle Earth, leaving their hapless DM to grind his teeth and consider “lightning rolls.”
Leif writes words, music, code and bug reports; somehow he's still sane.
Nickherder is a science and engineering kind of guy, but we forgive him for it.
SaRRa is using her fancy university degree to blog.
Legal Drug makes the coffee, eats the food and drinks the booze.
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Posted by various vapor, assembled. on Wed Jul 14th at 2:33PM
