Webcomics.

  I’ve been meaning to do a post about webcomics and the particular ones I read regularly, and since I can’t think of anything else to write about right now I suppose this is a good time.  My taste has become varied since I first started reading a long time ago – but still if anyone reads this who is already familiar with webcomics you’ll probably find no surprises here.  I first got into webcomics through Penny-Arcade.  Penny-Arcade is a webcomic that revolves around gaming news, which doesn’t sound particularly fantastic but they were the first to do it right and be successful.  There have been a lot of imitators since they rose to the top but no one has been able to duplicate what Gabe and Tycho do.  The nice thing about Penny-Arcade is there are actually two creators – one excels at art and the other excels at writing.  When you mix those together you get some content that really has value to it.  I’ve grown to love Penny-Arcade so much over the past few years that I now look forward to Tycho’s usually lengthy and wordy blog posts just as much as the comic itself.  I say "blog post" because that’s the only term I can think of to describe it, but what he writes is really much more than that.  Perhaps it could be considered an essay.  Tycho’s a true wordsmith and he’s able to craft awesome posts which are related to the comic’s subject.  This adds a whole second dimension to Penny-Arcade which is why they’re still my favorite.  You can look forward to new strips every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Penny-Arcade became a sort of gateway drug to a couple other comics – PvP and Control-Alt-Delete.  I don’t really read Control-Alt-Delete much anymore, but PvP is a worthy bookmark.  Although it started out as a gaming comic too it has since evolved in a sort of sitcom of a webcomic with an awesome cast of characters that are the true focal point.  PvP’s creator, Scott Kurtz, is constantly striving to better himself and you can really tell from looking over his archives that he’s made some giant leaps since he first began.  He’s a great story teller which keeps me coming back every Monday through Friday.  As far as Control-Alt-Delete goes, it’s another gaming webcomic that is purposefully cut from the Penny-Arcade cloth.  The two comics are much too similar and Penny-Arcade is better on many more levels which makes reading CAD kind of pointless.  It seems to be the same gag over and over and yet there are still a ton of CAD fans out there.  If you’re one of them I mean no disrespect, I’m just not a big fan of Tim Buckley’s art or comedy style.

Then finally the one I just started reading recently is Starslip Crisis.  Starslip’s creator Kris Straub teams up with Scott Kurtz of PvP quite a bit so I found out about Starslip through PvP in a way.  The two have a joint website together called Halfpixel where they post a lot of collaborative content.  They’re a great team, but that’s not to take away from Straub’s solo work.  Starslip Crisis is a sci-fi comedy strip which again has very memorable characters and a lot of laughs.  I’m sure there are a lot of other sci-fi webcomics out there but this is the only one I’ve ever come across and I really like it because it represents a unique genre compared to my other favorites.  A new strip’s up every Monday through Friday – just like PvP.

A couple other strips that may or may not be worth a look are Sheldon and Evil Inc.  I haven’t really had much time to read these two webcomics but I’ve listened to their two creators in podcasts and they seem to have a lot of passion in their craft.  They’re also funny which can’t hurt.  Sheldon’s creator Dave Kellett and Evil Inc’s Brad Guigar do a podcast called Webcomics Weekly along with Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub that’s pretty interesting to listen to.  At first I didn’t think it would be for me because it was advertised as a serious "shop talk" type of podcast about comic creation but I listened to the first episode and they really have a lighthearted approach.  A lot of what they talk about can be applied to a lot of other types of content creation, plus you’ll always find some laughs along the way even if you aren’t interested in the advice they’re giving.

So that’s it, that’s what I used to read, what I’m currently reading, and what I may read in the future.  It’s funny – before I wrote this post I was sort of scrambling for something to write about and now that I look at this I think it might be one of my longest posts ever!  I guess that just goes to show how much I value those 5 minutes a day I spend reading webcomics.

Currently Listening To: The Pogues – Waxie’s Dargle
Currently Playing: Project Gotham Racing 4, Orange Box, Puzzle Quest