Yelling About Comics

Complete O&M

2009-08-21T20:28:00.003-04:00

Dana Simpson just released The Complete Ozy and Millie in a two book set! This is fantastic news for those of us who adored the series, which is to say "all sane human beings". My only dilemma is this - do I get the paperback, which satisfies my much-worn sense of frugality, or the hardcover, which satisfies my fanboy jubilation? (Not that it's much of a dilemma, the answer is obvious.)

Webcomics Corner 5/8/09

2009-05-08T14:18:00.002-04:00

Webcomics Corner is a column that publishes weekly in The Racquette, SUNY Potsdam's school paper. Unfortunately it does not go live on their website, so I am archiving it here.

Well, folks, it's the last Webcomics Corner of the semester. We've had so little time together, but I know I've enjoyed it, and I'll be back in the fall with more suggestions for you. Since we're going to be apart for a while, I thought maybe you'd like something to read over the summer. So this week, we're going to talk about "Irregular Webcomic!" by Dr. David Morgan-Mar.

"Irregular Webcomic!" is considered part of a much smaller subset of webcomics known as a "photo comic". The name is very much self-explanatory. Dr. Morgan-Mar cannot draw, but decided not to let that stop him, and as a result the strip is painstakingly created with Legos, miniatures and a camera.

There are over 15 separate story lines in the comic, most of them based off parodies of such franchises as Indiana Jones, James Bond, Harry Potter, Star Wars and so forth. Many of the settings are technically the in-character aspect of role-playing games, leaving the door wide open for the occasional meta-humor featuring the omnipotent Game Master character, played by Dr. Morgan-Mar himself. Crossovers are frequent - as the website points out, there are 120 possible combinations, 51 of which have been done so far.

Dr. Morgan-Mar himself is an intriguing figure, with a physics-related Ph.D. from the University of Sydney. (I say "physics-related" because the actual explanation is so far over my head I can barely make it out with a telescope.) He has taught physics and astronomy at a college level, developed several programming languages just as a joke, written multiple books, and is adamant that "Irregular Webomic!" is just for fun.

This last is especially noteworthy. The list of webcomics that has run over 2,000 strips is short. The list of those that ran those strips daily, without missing an update for over ten years, borders on the non-existent. To the best of my knowledge, the number of strips on that list who have not in any way attempted to monetize their site is one: "Irregular Webcomic!" Don't mistake me as implying any sort of shame in trying to make money from your comic, because that's how most comic artists eat. It's part of the business. So it's intriguing, to say the least, that Dr. Morgan-Mar is so set on keeping his hobby just a hobby.

I don't have room to say all the good things I want to, and there's more than enough in the archives to keep you busy all summer anyway. Don't be afraid to start from the beginning. You can find it all at http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/

Oh, and be sure to enjoy the hobbit puns.

Webcomics Corner 5/1/09

2009-05-06T14:24:00.002-04:00

Webcomics Corner is a column that publishes weekly in The Racquette, SUNY Potsdam's school paper. Unfortunately it does not go live on their website, so I am archiving it here.

Welcome back to Webcomics Corner, folks - this week we're going to talk about a fairly popular strip called "Unshelved". Best known as being a comic by librarians and about librarians, the strip takes place in the public library of a small town known as Mallville, and features a small cast of regular and easily recognizable characters.

Though the archives go back to February 2002, and the story since that time is more-or-less coherent, the content of the strip tends to be light enough that one can jump in at any time. Readers who like a little background on their characters can check out the Unshelved Primer, which will fill you in on Mallville's goings-on over the past seven years; or the truly obsessive readers can dive right in.

"Unshelved" is known not just for being a great strip, but also for the community outreach to which the authors seem quite devoted. Even the name of the strip was selected by a reader vote after the original ("Overdue") had to be changed over a copyright issue. For the past several years they have also run a contest known as 'Pimp My Bookcart', prompting libraries throughout the country to trick out their existing book carts in a variety of interesting ways - the winning entries are, of course, viewable on the website.

Another popular feature of the strip is the Sunday Book Club entries. Each week a new book is reviewed in an excellent full-color format, often provided by guest artists, featuring their own cast of characters. The "Unshelved" authors welcome submissions from authors in need of publicity, including small print and self-published books, giving much-needed exposure to other members of the webcomics community.

It is also worth noting that the print compilations are high quality, and make excellent gifts for the librarians in your life - though as I discovered with my girlfriend's mother last Christmas, most of them already read the strip.

Check it out at http://www.unshelved.com/

Webcomics Corner 4/24/09

2009-05-06T14:15:00.003-04:00

Webcomics Corner is a column that publishes weekly in The Racquette, SUNY Potsdam's school paper. Unfortunately it does not go live on their website, so I am archiving it here for the moment.

Welcome to what will hopefully be a regular column reviewing webcomics for your reading pleasure. I can't promise I'll always have good comics to talk about, but in general I'll try to stick to recommendations.

As any fan of the medium knows, a vast number of webcomics are story- and character-driven, requiring that you read large quantities of backstory, or at least Cliff Notes. I'm going to try to ease us in to this with a strip that doesn't have that problem: "Basic Instructions," by Scott Meyer. As the name implies, this strip provides instructions on how to perform basic actions, in a cynical style not unlike the "Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbooks" that were all the rage a few years ago.

Topics published so far range from 'How to Share a Horrifying Experience' to 'How to Call a Relative' to 'How to Avenge Your Brother's Death', and Mr. Meyer never fails to bring the funny. Each of the four panels is usually a joke in and of itself, so the overall punch line feels like icing on the cake.

The strip updates frequently, usually Sunday and Wednesday, with occasional bonus content, and provides an RSS feed for true connoisseurs of web content. If you're bored - or trying very hard to put off writing a paper - the archives go back to July 2006, and I can tell you from experience that plowing straight through them is just as fun as reading a few at a time.

As an aside, it is worth noting that the strip's logo, possibly one of the funniest I've encountered yet, was recently used for a flight suit patch by the Alaskan Command (ALCOM) and Joint Task Force - Alaska (JTF-AK). I think it safe to say that very few comics can claim such distinction.

Check out the logo, and the strips, at http://basicinstructions.net/

what an ass

2009-04-21T07:22:00.007-04:00

Awww, poor Wiley Miller. Still sad that you're running out of newspapers while those little snot webcomic artists are making a decent living from keeping their merchandising money?

PS: Your content is also free ... stupid.

LICD <3 RBHJ

2009-03-30T06:42:00.004-04:00

Least I Could Do strikes again! That can't possibly be anyone but Roland Burton Hedley Jr. This is shaping up to be a week (or more) of cameos from other strips - if they're planning to troll print comics for the whole of it, I foresee a lawsuit or two in the future. (I'm not claiming said lawsuits will be justified, but that doesn't mean they won't happen.)

no reading list

2009-03-28T22:33:00.001-04:00

I've decided to nix the reading list. It hasn't been updated in ages, and figuring out what changes to make - to say nothing of when they should be dated - is the kind of project that just isn't worth the time. So if you know of a comic that I should read, and I haven't mentioned it previously, let me know. Seriously, please let me know - I'm always looking for new things to read.

late to the party: digger

2009-03-28T22:15:00.003-04:00

So ... Digger.

I'm tempted to give my usual "Why didn't anyone tell me?!" rant, but in this case people did. Hell, Websnark mentioned it clear back in '04. At the time, though, I was too poor for subscription services, and over the years I just never got around to signing up for them. In retrospect I wonder if this was the correct choice, but it seems like there's always new comics to read that I don't have to pay for, so why not fund those with donations and/or merchandise orders when I can, and not sweat it?

Anyway, the archives became free ... about a month ago, it looks like. If you have not yet checked this comic out, you need to. I'm not sure I can do it any justice with a summary, but basically it's a comic about a wombat who winds up in the wrong part of the world, becomes something of a pawn in a struggle involving destiny, gods both living and dead, demons, hyenas, trolls, shrews, prophetic slugs, vampiric pumpkins, and ... um. Look, seriously, just go read this, okay? The storyline is compelling, the characters are brilliantly written, and the humor is nothing sort of genius - you won't regret it.

awesome

2009-03-11T06:51:00.003-04:00

You know when there's a plot twist that in retrospect seems incredibly, mind-numbingly, glaringly obvious, and all of a sudden all the little clues - and all the attacks with a clue-by-four - add up and you feel really dumb?

I love those.

TMI just did one, and really well.

(Obviously, starting with today's comic is a spoiler. So start here instead.)

I don't get it.

2009-03-01T14:07:00.005-05:00

So can somebody fill me in on Ten2Midnight? Is it a joke? Performance art? I don't understand what's happening here.

See, it's supposed to be a post-apocalyptic zombie comic. The authors and/or artists - I don't know who is who - keep putting up posts about rewrites and working hard the next page and so forth ... but there's only been three pages posted since 12/26/08. There was a post making excuses for page four back on the 2/5. Page three, on the other hand, was a single panel - five skyscraper tops, a weird looking sun, and a single line of text. Which went live with the wrong line of text and had to be corrected like two days later.

I mean, the site looks fully fleshed out, and the thing got pimped in early project stages by some fairly well known strip (though I can't remember which). So I don't get it - is this being done by comic people and it's my bad for not knowing their names? People with such Whedon-esque cults of personality that fans are drooling at the very promise of content? Or is it some elaborate prank, and they're just seeing how long they can keep this up before readership drops to zero?

If this is a genuine webcomic, by some people with a good idea and no following as of yet, I guess that's cool, and I wish them luck. But I really hope they actually get it together, because right now there's a whole lot of smoke and no fire. I haven't seen this kind of thing since Gone with the Blastwave.

so good it hurts

2009-02-06T11:00:00.008-05:00

I was complaining to a friend recently that it had been entirely too long since I'd found a comic with some really deep archives in which I could just lose myself. (Well, one that's still running, anyway.) So he promptly recommended Girl Genius. Obviously I'd encountered it before, but I always skipped over it because it seemed like the kind of story you had to read primers on before you could understand anything, and because I'd encountered Foglio's work in his little bit pieces in the back of Dragon, and they hadn't really impressed me. (The art, yes. The humor, no.)

Anyway, I finally wound up starting GG a few days ago, and ... wow. I haven't really come up for air since. I am amazed by how good this comic is. You know you're dealing with quality when the act of catching up on a comic is painful because it means there's nothing left to read.

As an added bonus, I now get What's New With Phil & Dixie! I mean, I don't remember any of the content of them, but it always seemed at the time like I was missing some kind of joke with the characters and their in jokes - now I know I was.

I really need to get my hands on these books so I can make my Luddite friends read them - it's that kind of good.

damn and blast

2009-02-01T12:12:00.004-05:00

Recently, someone somewhere linked to Legendary, specifically strip #158. I'd like to be more specific, but I have no idea who, when, or where, because while the comic amused me, I didn't have time to read it then, so I just flagged it in Read It Later.

Anyway, last night I had some time, and it had graduated to the first spot in my reading list, so I skipped back to the first comic and started reading. I was quite amused by what I found, and very much enjoying the story line, so I was incredibly disappointed to find that it had sputtered out some time in the middle of 2007, after which there were a dozen filler strips and then nothing.

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is here except that I really hate how often this happens to me - I caught up on You Damn Kid three days before it ended, for instance, and my finally getting around to checking out a Mitch Clem comic seems to be the kiss of death. (Three times! Sorry, Jayme.)

So I guess what I'm saying is this: Please, for God's sake, don't link to the middle of a webcomic that's been kaput for over a year without warning me. Because if it's good - and if it weren't you probably wouldn't be linking it - it's just going to break my heart. WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE FANBOYS?!

Or I suppose I could just make a point of seeing if a comic is still going before I start reading years worth of archives. But where's the fun in that?

Presidential Legs

2008-12-07T07:20:00.005-05:00

I couldn't help but notice that the final panel of today's Doonesbury features something we may have never seen before: a president drawn as a human being. Back in the day, presidents and their ilk simply weren't drawn - when the big guy was speaking, you would get an outside view of the white house, or the voice would be coming from a television, or perhaps off camera. Somewhere in the 80s, Trudeau got bored with that, and started using icons. Reagan was always presented in caricature as Max Headroom, while Bush Sr. was invisible, represented only by a floating point of light. Clinton was a waffle, Quayle was a feather, and W. has gone from a cowboy hat to a giant asterisk to a Roman helmet. But if you look at the lower right of today's final panel, you'll see a very human pair of legs, casually crossed in a pose that conveys a certain amount of confidence.

To be frank, I don't expect Trudeau to stay in business for a lot longer. He's retired several times over the years, and each time his anger at the political insanity in this country has dragged him back - hopefully now he can kick back and let it slide. But in the mean time, it's nice to see a tipped hat to the new powers that be.

holy crap!

2008-07-02T06:10:00.002-04:00

I am delighted to report that, as was promised to us a few days ago, Brinkerhoff updated this morning! If you have not read the archives, this is an excellent time to do so.

LICD <3 GWS?

2008-05-26T01:37:00.003-04:00

Hi there! I'm all sorts of overdue for a real post, or perhaps a few dozen, so any readers I might have will probably be annoyed by this quickie, but I have to ask one question about today's Least I Could Do:

Is it my imagination, or is that Hazel and Jamie?

Antonyms: appealing, delightful, enjoyable, lovable, sweet, wonderful

2008-04-24T03:57:00.003-04:00

Fleen linked to The Abominable Charles Christopher back in February, and in typical style I just got around to checking it out. I am delighted by what I found.

The art in this strip is beyond description, extremely evocative yet fairly simple, conveying a certain sense of bleak winter even in the midst of sylvan celebration, and I am astonished by the versatility of the mute title character's expressions and the emotion conveyed therein. The dialog ranges from the epic to the absurd - occasionally in a single panel - and although I have no idea where the storylines are going, I can't wait to see how they reconverge. (I'm also very curious about the strip's name. I assume that will be made clear in time.)

The archives are currently short. You should hop on board now. If you don't, you're just going to regret it later.

hmm

2008-04-14T04:45:00.005-04:00

I was poking through the xkcd archives, and I found this. I don't know if I had ever really noticed it before. Does anybody know if Randall was crazy enough to put his own phone number in the comic? After the meetup, I'm inclined to think he might have, but I don't think it would be particularly polite to call it at 4:45a on the off chance it is a valid number ...

Update: D'oh! The comic answers that question. See comments.

insert obligatory tom petty reference here

2008-04-02T05:53:00.007-04:00

A few nights ago I decided to check back in on Freefall. I chose to take a break from it a few years ago, and never quite got around to picking it back up. My original concern was just how slow it was - so slow the strip would occasionally make fun of itself (like the time Florence mentioned her day feeling like it had taken a year and thirty-seven weeks). Because of that, it tended to read a lot better when plowing through large quantities, which I was pleased to note is still the case - I started from scratch, and read all 1500+ strips in the archive in two nights.

For those of you who aren't familiar, Freefall is one of the older strips around, having started way back in '97, and it's also one of the most reliably updated. The basic premise is a hard science fiction universe, set in the far future on a partially-terraformed colony planet where robots outnumber humans by several million. It's the kind of scifi that will take a week to explain theories of orbital insertion, but the strip still gives you a reliable punchline every time, and they're often funnier than the subject matter has any right to be. The primary topic seems to be the evolution of artificial intelligence, both independently and with regards to interactions with humanity, which seems like it would be dry but is handled in an extraordinarily witty fashion.

I should note that this is the only strip I read that is clearly drawn with the furry audience in mind. Sure, I read Ozy and Millie, Brinkerhoff, and so forth, but those are anthropomorphic animals in the more traditional Disney sense (well, maybe the latter would be Warner Brothers, but you get the idea). With Freefall, it seems clear at several points that the author enjoys drawing Florence (a genetically engineered wolf) in various outfits (or lack thereof) perhaps a little more than I would necessarily consider normal, but at no point is there any actual nudity (though there were some amusing 'Censored' bars at one point), and while there is a burgeoning relationship between Florence and her vet (I'm not making this up), it's handled quite deftly with proper deference to the species difference, and considering it's been 'burgeoning' for several years real time and they've only been on two dates, I don't suspect there's going to be much action any time this decade.

So if you like hard science fiction, the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence, funny strips, or anthropomorphic wolves, you should definitely give this one a glance. Well, maybe more than a glance, considering the depth of the archives, but you know what I mean.

words, the eating of

2008-03-29T02:43:00.006-04:00

It has been a good week. Too Much Information has updated twice since my post, Casey and Andy went up Monday, and there was even a new Alien Loves Predator within a week of the previous update. I am shocked. (The C&A thing is especially gratifying since I caved in and read the whole archive the night after I said I wasn't going to do so right away.)

Of course that does mean I was wrong all around. So to Obaki, Mr. Weir, and Mr. Hou: I'm sorry I doubted you. As the kids say, my bad. (The kids do still say that, right?)

i hate this part

2008-03-25T02:33:00.004-04:00

Let me start by saying that I really like Too Much Information (warning: that link is arguably SFW but you might not want to push it). In fact, I have some very nice things I've been meaning to say about it for a while now.

I will not be saying them right now, however, because the author (who goes only by Obaki) is doing something that drives me completely insane right now. See, he got a new job, and moved, and has had some computer problems. Hey, these things happen - sometimes life just wants to smack you around. I understand, and if you need to take a few weeks off from the comic to get things together - maybe with guest or filler art, or maybe just without updates, whatever works - that's just fine with me.

Just don't, please, people, please, don't continually promise updates that don't happen. I don't want to see the same panel popping up in Google Reader every couple days with some different text on it listing off all the excuses you have for not getting the comic done, and promising to have it in a few days, when I know perfectly well that in a few days I'm just going to see this same thing again with different excuses.

If you're a webcomic author and/or artist, here's how my relationship to you as a reader works: You give me content for free, I digest it with fanboyish delight. So if you're busy, if life sucks, whatever, don't update. That's fine with me. But say that, instead of making a bunch of promises you don't follow through on and basically destroying all your credibility. That's all I ask.

I find this particular situation especially disheartening, because most of the listed excuses have included phrases like 'it's not that I don't want to do the comic' and 'I'm not going on haitus, really!' But we all know how that goes, don't we? Alas.

the adventures of

2008-03-24T03:50:00.003-04:00

Speaking of photo comics, this weekend I was linked to the adventures of, which isn't exactly a photo comic, but it seems to be largely photo-based, so we'll go with it. The advantage to a photo-based comic is that you're not stuck with what's in the frame, you can filter and add paintings and do whatever else you like to accentuate the text, which could be considered a good or bad thing depending on how much of a purist you are. (I am not a purist, so I call it good.)

The archive is short - I just plowed through it in about half an hour - but I was fairly impressed. taxi me (#6) had me in stitches, americanize me (#42) is a perfect example of why I like comics of this style, and the falsity (#47) ... well, let's just say that speaks to my experience. This one is definitely going on the reading list.

Sinister Bedfellows

2008-03-24T02:59:00.005-04:00

Last month I mentioned a few photo comics, which lead to being tipped off to a few more, at least one of which I should have gotten around to writing about weeks ago: Sinister Bedfellows.

I did read through the archives (I can't help myself), although like most photo comics it's not really about continuity. On the whole I liked the tone, and a few of them made me laugh out loud. Not every one was a winner, but that's how it goes with that style of comic - a strip that didn't do much for me might hit someone else just right, and vice versa.

I am confused, though, because I could swear I have encountered this strip before, back around 2002. Not just 'a photo comic with text', but this specific author's 'voice', if you will, and the blocky format and the whole feel of the thing. It would have been right around the time Cat and Girl broke format to make fun of several then-new photo strips ... am I wrong about the year, or thinking of a different strip, or hallucinating completely? Anyone?

Update 3/25/08: Different strip entirely. See comments.

'you lack credibility'

2008-03-20T16:37:00.003-04:00

I'm in kind of a hurry, but real quick like, Alien Loves Predator updated! No, this is not a joke!

Also, he's claiming he's going to start updating again! I don't believe him for a minute, but it's nice to know he still tries, isn't it? Delightful.

B.C. Surprise

2008-03-17T23:39:00.006-04:00

Is it my imagination, or is B.C. funny today?

I realize the punchline only works because it's unexpected, what with coming from the creationist-agenda right-wing insanity that is B.C., but I laughed out loud when I saw this in the paper this morning.

closure!

2008-03-15T11:17:00.004-04:00

Thanks to the news post over at Irregular Webcomic!, it has come to my attention that - drum roll please - Andy Weir is going to finish Casey and Andy!

This is fantastic news, because the whole strip was coming to a halt, and he had every intention of wrapping up the final story on strip #666, and instead he just kind of crapped out at #644, with some vague mumbling that he might finish it later if he felt like it. Since it's been well over a year at this point, I had long since given up hope.

If you haven't read any C&A, you might want to consider giving the archives a whirl, but I'm not officially recommending that (nor will I be revisiting them myself) until such time as the strip actually finishes. I'm not attempting to question Mr. Weir's word, of course, but when a strip comes back after a year's hiatus, there's always the possibility that two or three strips will go up and then the whole thing will sputter out again. Here's hoping that doesn't happen.