Webcomics special on Chez Geek

Post by **weemadando** » 2003-08-01 09:54pm

I'm seeking submissions from people on their favourite webcomics and why.

If you want include your entire reading list.

This will then become the focus of a special on NEXT weeks "Chez Geek" on EDGE Radio.

Hasler · Post by **Hasler** » 2003-08-01 09:56pm

1. Mall monkeys. Any comic that will put the phrase "Blacktastic" in a comic has my vote.

2. Ctrl Alt Delete it is just hilarious

Post by **Beowulf** » 2003-08-02 01:23am

Megatokyo
Real Life
Kevin and Kell
Sluggy
Something Positive
Machall
Ubersoft.net
Errant Story
General Protection Fault
Ozy and Mille
User Friendly
Angel Moxie
8-bit Theatre

Um... I think that's all of them...

Alex Moon · Post by **Alex Moon** » 2003-08-02 03:00am

Megatokyo
Errant Story
Something Positive
It's Walky
Sexy Losers
Day by Day

SeebianWurm · Post by **SeebianWurm** » 2003-08-02 04:16am

Simply put, how can you not mention Penny-Arcade?

Alex Moon · Post by **Alex Moon** » 2003-08-02 04:42am

SeebianWurm wrote:Simply put, how can you not mention Penny-Arcade?

Penny-Arcade sucks.

Honestly, I never could get that interested in it. Sure, there are some strips that are funny, but it's not one that I read even infrequently.

Post by **Dalton** » 2003-08-02 04:54am

The Top!
Sluggy Freelance - one of the very best and longest-running comics ever, with some deep plots and excellent threading. Pete Abrams is a true story-writing master, a pun demon and a veritable fountain of nifty. mew

Schlock Mercenary - Simply the very best hard sci-fi strip out there with lots and lots of comedy. On the down side, the art could use work - one only has to look at author Howard Taylor's early strips to see that. Even so, his drawing ability has increased dramatically over the years.

Megatokyo - Done in true manga style, with intricate plots. Unfortunately there are a lot of filler strips. Fred Gallagher/Piro seems to be fond of angst and sad girls in snow. The former co-author Largo seemed to be responsible for most of the humor in the early strips, but Piro seems to be holding his own quite well.

Penny Arcade - THE BEST gaming comic out there, as well as one of the best "vignette" strips (vignette meaning one story, one strip). Gabe and Tycho know the score and know how to identify with their core audience in a way that's not often seen, and also know their subject matter extremely well.

Errant Story (and by association Exploitation Now) - Michael Poe is an extremely talented artist while at the same time an extremely talented writer, and someone who knows how to inject bawdy lewdness into a serious storyline without wrecking the mood completely. Errant Story is IMO better fare than EN simply because he started right off with an actual plot with actual drama.

Angels 2200 - A little-known offering in my experience, chronicling the adventures of a squadron (six in this case) of fighter pilots in a future where most of the men died due to a gender-specific virus. Mixes CG with damn good art, with the occasional bit of cheesecake thrown in. A sort of "Valkyries in Space" thing where most of the Valkyries appear to be lesbians. The author, Nathan Savio, is extremely good at character development and dramatic action.

8-Bit Theater - Simply put, the very pinnacle of sprite-based comics. Brian Clevinger is one of the funniest writers I've ever seen doing a strip. 8-Bit theater is always hilarious and never angsty - though we do see some interesting thought-provoking strips scattered here and there hinting at a deep underlying ability for some serious drama.

Mac Hall - Another vignette strip that's pretty far up there. Focusing mostly on gaming and college life, Ian McDonald and Matt Boyd draw and write a very good-looking and well-written strip that's almost always guaranteed to evoke a guffaw or two.

RPG World - Ian J. takes every RPG cliche you've heard of and turns it on its ear. The lovable Hero evokes the sort of innocence we see in 8-Bit's Fighter, but like Carrot from the Discworld stories there is a deep and troubled past behind this character - and behind others. Ian is very good at mixing serious nuggets of plot with gut-clutching humor and some VERY revealing outfits.

Honorable Mention
Polymer City Chronicles - Chris Morrison seems to be in a bit of financial trouble these days, but in a manner similar to EN his almost ten year old strip evolved from gaming, mad science and big breasts to some truly serious plotlines. With big breasts. Unfortunately, he scrapped it at the climax because he thought it just wasn't funny anymore. It has since declined in interest to me, but the art is still simple and yet magnificent, with liberal applications of humor, tit-jokes and sexuality.

Bob and George - Once a bastion of sprite-comics, the quality and humor of Bob and George has declined over the years. David Anez had something good going a while back, but constant server outages and a lot of sabbaticals, not to mention really odd tangents into unrelated storylines and single excursion into a hand-drawn strip, have really negatively impacted this strip, but it seems to be slowly recovering.

Oldskooled - This lost sprite comic once resided on Disflux.net, which disappeared a couple of months ago. The comic is still up at Keenspot, but it hasn't been updated since April. It showed a lot of potential, but the author abandons his strip for long periods.

Warp 9 to Hell - A pleasantly offending strip, Usagi and Mofo had some of the most seriously fucked up plotlines I've ever seen in my life. Unfortunately the site hasn't been updated for well over a year now and I fear for its continuation.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2003-08-02 05:03am

Ctrl+Alt+Del is my favorite.

Mall Monkeys as a distant second.

Montcalm · Post by **Montcalm** » 2003-08-02 11:04am

Another occasion for G publicity

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2003-08-02 12:31pm

Schlock Mercenary, as mentioned by Dalton. The artwork has increased dramatically from poor to par, but it's very well written, consistantly funny, and my personal favorite.

"Think of it as proactive target acquisition."

Jadeite · Post by **Jadeite** » 2003-08-02 02:53pm

http://megatokyo.com

http://somethingpositive.net

http://nuklearpower.com

Singular Quartet · Post by **Singular Quartet** » 2003-08-02 03:22pm

Dalton wrote:Bob and George - Once a bastion of sprite-comics, the quality and humor of Bob and George has declined over the years. David Anez had something good going a while back, but constant server outages and a lot of sabbaticals, not to mention really odd tangents into unrelated storylines and single excursion into a hand-drawn strip, have really negatively impacted this strip, but it seems to be slowly recovering.

Actually, there were two incurions into Hand-drawn comics, but both were towards the begining of the strip. A rather disproportionate amount of the humour is about time travel plots, but it's fairly good. He has been having server troubles (finally got that fixed, though) and he's oinly taken one sabbatical recently.

Other bits of oddness...

The Lounge: A comic about a woman who's tkane over her sick father's comic book store. Havoc ensues with the new hires, her old life catching up with her, and dealing with her assistant manager.

Jack: Life in Hell. A strange mixture of black humour, serious plot-lines, and character development, its the story of a man named Jack, who has become the sin Wrath, and as such, acts as Death, taking souls to the Pearly gates to be judged. He must deal with his fellow Sins and watches the stories of the people he once walked amongst, while he attempts to find out who he was, and what his lost memories, his punishment in hell, were. Weird and disturbing, and not for the faint of heart (Lt. Hit-man with drawing skills at times)

Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire: Minus the far to many puns (trust me, they're real groaners at times) it has an engaging storyline, tries to add a minor bit of humour daily (whether black humor, puns, or clever use of illusion spells) and manages to keep them balanced.

A Shadowlaner's Dream: Now that con season's finished, Kat's finally gotten back to updating on scehedule (and has, in fact, made updates a bit more routine) It covers a rather large portion of seriousness, and is, in fact, almost entirely serious in nature. So just read it, because its good.

Jadeite · Post by **Jadeite** » 2003-08-02 08:21pm

Jack: Life in Hell. A strange mixture of black humour, serious plot-lines, and character development, its the story of a man named Jack, who has become the sin Wrath, and as such, acts as Death, taking souls to the Pearly gates to be judged. He must deal with his fellow Sins and watches the stories of the people he once walked amongst, while he attempts to find out who he was, and what his lost memories, his punishment in hell, were. Weird and disturbing, and not for the faint of heart (Lt. Hit-man with drawing skills at times)

Wow, that is morbid and depressing. How often does it update?

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2003-08-02 08:43pm

http://www.rpgworldcomic.com/
See other people's words but I'll add my bit, Its got plot!

http://www.adventurers-comic.com/
Despite its server often being down the Addventure series is down right fucking hilarious(And RPG planet's cast has done cross overs with them)
For example what other Hero would after getting inchs away from level resort to trying to talk the Party Mage into letting him slay him(And resserect him of course) so he can get that level
Or when goes into a Dueogon and finds a block moving puzzle openly jumps for joy
That and there are around 12 memebers of the main party all of which have a sub-plot going on with the man bad guy's Lt's or the main bad guy himself

And their bad guy?
Quote from him
If at first you don't succed, use more giant lasers-Khrima

http://www.clanbob.net/
Another webic comic with plot, take one Half Vampire, one Half Succubus, One fucked up in the head Super powered Teenager, one Mentant, various baddies, Demons and Angels(Of the decidedly non-christian kind), random stupidity and you have the setting for a very and drawn out but pretty damn funny on the whole comic
Not to mention during the course of events, the fate of the world rests on the out-come of a paint-ball game

LT.Hit-Man · Post by **LT.Hit-Man** » 2003-08-02 08:55pm

College Roomies from Hell
http://www.crfh.net/

It's fucked up but funny

Post by **haas mark** » 2003-08-02 08:56pm

http://ohmygods.timerift.net ~ just a play on paganism and christianity. Incredibly funny, and easy for me to relate to. And they added legs to the characters finally!

~ver

YT300000 · Post by **YT300000** » 2003-08-02 10:01pm

1. Dilbert
2. Garfield

Post by **Dalton** » 2003-08-03 12:33am

YT300000 wrote:1. Dilbert
2. Garfield

WEB comics.

Post by **weemadando** » 2003-08-03 09:45pm

sluggy
inktank - AT & WW
pvp
penny-arcade
real life
megatokyo
something positive
scary-go-round
death march
machall
flem
8-bit
mall monkeys
schlock mercenary
goats
life of riley
forcemonkeys

Those comics have all been approached and I am eagerly awaiting responses.

As an in-studio guest I will bring in one of Tasmania's own web-comic artists.

Post by **Gandalf** » 2003-08-03 11:02pm

Dalton wrote:
YT300000 wrote:1. Dilbert
2. Garfield
WEB comics.

They're both on the net.

http://www.dilbert.com
http://www.ucomics.com/garfield

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2003-08-03 11:08pm

Of course, Schlock Mercenary has run continously, *never* missing a single day in over 3 years of existance. Very few other webcomics have had that sort of reliability; even PVP has missed days.

Post by **Dalton** » 2003-08-04 12:26am

Gandalf wrote:
Dalton wrote:
YT300000 wrote:1. Dilbert
2. Garfield
WEB comics.
They're both on the net.

http://www.dilbert.com
http://www.ucomics.com/garfield

They originated in newspapers before the Internet was big. Therefore, they are NOT web comics. Web comics are defined as strips that are shown exclusively (or primarily) on the Web.

Post by **Dalton** » 2003-08-04 12:30am

sluggy
--See my reply,

inktank - AT & WW
--AT is an amusing vignette comic, very cleanly drawn. Breast factor is quite high. Has the requisite talking animals. And ninjas too! Never read WW though.

pvp
--Never read. Not fond of the art style.

penny-arcade
--See my reply.

real life
--I've seen bits and pieces. A very good geek comic from what I've seen.

megatokyo
--See my reply.

something positive
--Something I just might decide to read.

scary-go-round
--Never read it, but the author's stint as a guest-Sluggy artist sucked balls.

machall
--See my reply.

8-bit
--See my reply.

schlock mercenary
--See my reply.

life of riley
--Read some. Not fond of the art.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2003-08-04 12:35am

Something Positive was once funny, but no longer.