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jazzfishMostly this past month I read a bunch of webcomics.
I enjoy the combination of 'ongoing plot' and 'daily gag'. Plot with no gag just gets frustrating, same as most serial media: I want the rest of the story now dammit. Gag with no plot is fine, but I appreciate the sense of building towards something. And if I'm on an archive binge, well, mixing humour and gravitas is a time-honoured storytelling tradition. Like in Hamlet, where, on his way to duel his best friend and hopefully kill his father, Hamlet and his buddy Horatio stop to trade one-liners with the gravediggers.
Anyway, at some point this year the awareness that the comics I currently read will eventually end, or at least trickle off into near-nothingness, started to permeate. So, hey, why not pick up some long-running comics from the Golden Age of Webcomics (roughly, the early 2000s)?
R. Stevens, Diesel Sweeties
For reasons that are pretty much opaque to me, I started here. Diesel Sweeties is way over on the gag-a-day end of the spectrum. It's got a gigantic cast of characters, most of whom are quickly recognisable through various personality quirks ("Indie Rock Pete!"). It's not always terribly original; in a lot of the early strips the gag is either "and then they go have sex" or "they just had sex". But it's still fun, and the occasional surprising bits of plot are maybe more effective for their rarity.
Danielle Corsetto, Girls With Slingshots. Read on Erin's recommendation. Enjoyable but I find a lot of it's dropped from my memory, which is awkward since it's ongoing. (Well, kind of; the original black-and-white run was 2004-2014, and then it immediately went into reruns and got colorized.)
Jeph Jacques, Alice Grove. Excellent skiffy comic; some really great worldbuilding. The ending sort of peters out, but the journey is worth it.
Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content. Back in, um, 2005, I actually read all of the extant QC (up til around #600, I think). The end of my binge happened to coincide with "Marten gets a job at a library full of polyamorous lesbians," and for some reason it felt weird to read a comic about a (usually) single dude and his horde of female friends. I am pretty sure that 2005 Tucker had more male friends than Marten did, which is saying something. Anyway, I recalled bothsorcyress and James Nicoll reading it, and I figured maybe I had overreacted.
So I read the 4000+ archive strips over a couple of weeks.
I'm glad I did. It's a fun ride. There still aren't a whole lot of dudes, but there are a few. And it's got what looks to me like pretty good representation across the board.
Rich Burlew, The Order of the Stick. Explicitly fantasy, set in an explicitly D&D-esque universe. OotS is I think my favourite of the batch (Alice Grove might have tied it if it had stuck the landing). It's got a strong plot arc, and good character arcs for all the PCs. And it does the thing where a universe that appears to be just a stage full of scenery made of painted boards turns out to be boards that were deliberately painted that way by someone in-universe, for a reason, which I can appreciate. I'll be sad when it ends in six or eight years, but I also expect to feel good about the ending.
I enjoy the combination of 'ongoing plot' and 'daily gag'. Plot with no gag just gets frustrating, same as most serial media: I want the rest of the story now dammit. Gag with no plot is fine, but I appreciate the sense of building towards something. And if I'm on an archive binge, well, mixing humour and gravitas is a time-honoured storytelling tradition. Like in Hamlet, where, on his way to duel his best friend and hopefully kill his father, Hamlet and his buddy Horatio stop to trade one-liners with the gravediggers.
Anyway, at some point this year the awareness that the comics I currently read will eventually end, or at least trickle off into near-nothingness, started to permeate. So, hey, why not pick up some long-running comics from the Golden Age of Webcomics (roughly, the early 2000s)?
R. Stevens, Diesel Sweeties
For reasons that are pretty much opaque to me, I started here. Diesel Sweeties is way over on the gag-a-day end of the spectrum. It's got a gigantic cast of characters, most of whom are quickly recognisable through various personality quirks ("Indie Rock Pete!"). It's not always terribly original; in a lot of the early strips the gag is either "and then they go have sex" or "they just had sex". But it's still fun, and the occasional surprising bits of plot are maybe more effective for their rarity.
Danielle Corsetto, Girls With Slingshots. Read on Erin's recommendation. Enjoyable but I find a lot of it's dropped from my memory, which is awkward since it's ongoing. (Well, kind of; the original black-and-white run was 2004-2014, and then it immediately went into reruns and got colorized.)
Jeph Jacques, Alice Grove. Excellent skiffy comic; some really great worldbuilding. The ending sort of peters out, but the journey is worth it.
Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content. Back in, um, 2005, I actually read all of the extant QC (up til around #600, I think). The end of my binge happened to coincide with "Marten gets a job at a library full of polyamorous lesbians," and for some reason it felt weird to read a comic about a (usually) single dude and his horde of female friends. I am pretty sure that 2005 Tucker had more male friends than Marten did, which is saying something. Anyway, I recalled both
sorcyress and James Nicoll reading it, and I figured maybe I had overreacted.So I read the 4000+ archive strips over a couple of weeks.
I'm glad I did. It's a fun ride. There still aren't a whole lot of dudes, but there are a few. And it's got what looks to me like pretty good representation across the board.
Rich Burlew, The Order of the Stick. Explicitly fantasy, set in an explicitly D&D-esque universe. OotS is I think my favourite of the batch (Alice Grove might have tied it if it had stuck the landing). It's got a strong plot arc, and good character arcs for all the PCs. And it does the thing where a universe that appears to be just a stage full of scenery made of painted boards turns out to be boards that were deliberately painted that way by someone in-universe, for a reason, which I can appreciate. I'll be sad when it ends in six or eight years, but I also expect to feel good about the ending.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-12 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-14 06:13 pm (UTC)If it didn't grab you initially I doubt it'll get more interesting? It seems like it's approaching a point where the main character is going to have some emotional growth whether she likes it or not, but it has certainly taken a bit to get there.