In Heaven There Is No Beer / That's Why We Drink It Here / And When We Are Gone From Here / All Our Friends Will Be Drinking All Our Beer

(From Malfunction Junction. Click for full sized Flamethrowers are always the answer.)


The power to bookmark pages is both a blessing and a curse.

Let me explain.

My method of acquiring new webcomics is fairly simple, yet effective. Anytime I run across a recommendation or link to some sort of sequential art site somewhere, I will quickly click on the link and bookmark the site into the little corner of my Bookmarks labeled "Grab Bag".

Then, at a later time when I feel the inclination and have the time, I already have a good little mess o' fresh virgin webcomics ready for my perusal. It's a process that's been honed over many months of "not being able to find that comic that that guy mentioned that one time," and it works rather well.

Of course, the bad points tend to rear their ugly heads occasionally as well. If you don't pay attention you can end up bookmarking the same strip two or three times, of course, but that's not the bad part.

The bad part is that they build up alarmingly quickly, and then you have scads of random titles that you remember nothing about to sift through. And even this wouldn't be so bad if they were all quality strips.

...But since I don't do any sort of cursory screening process before I bookmark in the first place, about ninety percent of what's in my Grab Bag at any point and time simply stinks rather drastically. So I end up having to sift through a whole lot of crap to find the occasional gem.

This week, in the wake of my serious PvP archive crawl, my ingestion of 8 1/2 by Eleven, and my reread of Schlock Mercenary, my Grab Bag built up to unprescedented levels, and when I came up for air this morning I was astonished to find that I had over ninety strips bookmarked. This, of course, was rather intimidating, but I decided to bite the bullet and wade in. And, like usual, a good many of the strips I checked lost me by the first week or so of strips. I was even beginning to grow disheartened, when suddenly Malfunction Junction crossed my radar. It was gag-a-day, which I don't prefer. It was a journal comic, which I don't prefer. Some of the jokes were kind of disgusting.


But by gosh if it wasn't one of the funniest things I've ever read. It grabbed me right out of the gate, and didn't let go until I was through the archives completely, then jumped over to take a look at Gin and the Devil, his other strip, and dangit if it wasn't funny too.

And I immediately knew once again why I do this Grab Bag thing anyway.

So take a gander, folks. It's seriously just purely funny, in a way that reminds me strongly of Rob and Elliot, which (in case you don't know) is a good thing. You won't be disappointed.

_Kneefers

Of course, I suppose this means I'll have to go back to sifting through my Grab Bag again...

(From PvP. Click for full sized I am an idiot.)


In case you missed the memo, I deserve some punishment. Chinese water torture. Bamboo under the fingernails. Attack ferret to the crotch, at least.

The reason is this: I have been reading webcomics obsessively since November of 2004 - for almost a year and a half now - and have just this past week gotten around to reading PvP.

Well, that's not entirely true. There was a time, back towards the beginning of my interest in webcomics, when I got started on reading PvP, and then... stopped. I don't even remember why I didn't keep going, but the long and short of it is that I never tried PvP again until just recently, when, to my chagrin, a friend recommended it to me.

I'd been exposed to it before, of course; it's hard to avoid the influence of a strip so prominent and popular as PvP, but when I ask someone if they read any webcomics and they come out of the blue with something I've never read (why can't I just once run into somebody who reads something nice and normal like Sam and Fuzzy or Something Positive or Goats or Zebra Girl? Why?) I kinda feel... deficient. Incompetent, maybe. I'm supposed to be the expert on this stuff, dangit.

So I bit the bullet and headed back over to PvP to pick back up, remarkably, where I had left off, which was somehow still bookmarked after almost a year. And to my surprise and delight, it sucked me in immediately. It was good. Very good. And I ask myself: How did I miss this before? How? DAMN YOU MAX POWERS!

...Jeez. So... just in case you're wondering? I'm a moron.

_Kneefers

Endings

(From Angel Moxie. Click for full sized broken wands.)

Just a note to say that... well... it appears that Angel Moxie has just ended. I've seen this coming for several weeks, and for the past couple of days he's been running a single-panel "epilogue scene" type things, so I suppose that I probably should have been a little better prepared. Because suddenly... it's gone.

And this affects me in some rather unexpected ways. I mean, it's not like AM was one of my very favorites or anything. It was good, you understand (clean, manga-ish art evolving into a more distinctive style over time and rather silly, self-aware dialogue that seems to throw off the cliche of "group of preteen girls who save the world" that seems to be rather common in anime and manga), just not anything... especially noteworthy. (Of course, I've always thought that it deserved far more attention than it got; I've never once heard anyone else mention it, but c'est la vie, n'est pa?) Besides, it's apparently going to be re-airing, a la Queen of Wands, on a daily schedule going on indefenitely. And it used to be a lot funnier at the beginning, before the storyline evolved so much and we began seeing the seriously epic battles-that-will-determine-the-fate-0f-the-world.

It was, however, fun. Also, more significantly, it was an old comic of mine, way back from the EGS/Sam and Fuzzy/StV/etc. phase, and so, naturally, it's making me a little nostalgic. So if you just have some time when you're not doing anything else, go and take a gander at this fun, fairly short (618 days) strip. I'm out.

P.S. Oh, and just for the record, this is one of the very coolest things I've seen in quite a long time.

w00t

(From Ctrl+Alt+Delete. Click for full sized d00d!)

I've already detailed my feelings on CAD. And so you probably should have expected that I'd snark it again at some point.

I really don't have a lot to say, except to point out the fact that today's Ctrl+Alt+Delete strip is a major turning point in the strip, and once again, as happens occasionally, Tim Buckley has me hooked, desperate to see what she says. What's going to happen tomorrow? And I know I've said that before, guys, but this is really big medicine. There are precious few strips that ever have me absolutely desperate to see the next installment, (a company that includes things like Sluggy, CRfH, and Schlock). But CAD is one of them. And that's why I love it.

Just thought I'd put up a note about it. If you care.

A creature. OF THE NIGHT!!!

While I'm thinking about it, go and read Mr. Myth. It's a new webcomics blog, and he already kicks my butt up and down the block.

I got nuthin' else. Shoo.

The... umm... *Triple* Duce...

(From Real Life. And GPF. And Shortpacked! Because... well, you'll see.)

Dangitalltoheck.

Y'see... As you no doubt have ascertained, I have not posted in several days, now.

This is not because I no longer like you guys.

This is also not because I haven't had any comics catch my eye and give me something to talk about recently. Au contraire. In fact, I wanted to talk about Real Life. And GPF. And Shortpacked!

But my Blogger account was acting squirrely for some strange, as-yet unclear reason and it would not let me post.

*Grrrr...*

I wanted to talk about Real Life because, quite frankly, the strip I've thumbnailed is funny as crap. And it highlights perfectly everything that I like about RL: the fact that it is, in fact, true to life. Even though, yeah, things like time machines and alternate realities enter into the picture, the basic reactions of the characters are still... normal. Real. In this strip, it is shown in perfect detail what goes through Greg's mind when he figures out what time he has to get up in order to get to school on time.

And it breaks his brain. Which I can relate to, because that happens to me. Quite often. And this is exactly what I want from a strip called "Real Life." And it's funny. What's not to love?

Shortpacked! is next.

This strip, to me, was the climax of the recent "Drama Tag" storyline. First, we have Robin accidentally pulling Shortpacked's drama tag, and she absolutely panics. She doesn't want drama. She's seen that before, and it it wasn't particularly fun, emotionally. The world of Shortpacked has been something that has offered her peace. She can finally pursue her Perverse Sexual Lust for Greg Killmaster. She can attempt to seduce Ethan with action figures. In other words, Shortpacked has given her a normal life. And she doesn't want to lose that.

So when she accidentally pulls the drama tag, she tries desperately to change things back. She's panicky for a little while, but then, here at the climax, she remembers something new that she's learned.

Batman is comedy gold.

And so when I read the first panel of this strip, I cheered. Batman saves the day.

Then, on the second and third panels, I felt my jaw involuntarily drop open.

WTF???

Robin can't... she can't die, can she? I mean... she had the costume. She was Batman. Invulnerable. Hilarious. She was defending her new life against something that would destroy it, and I could just tell she was going to succeed. And then she gets shot? What's up with that?

The long and short of it is that David Willis had me on tenderhooks to see what was going to happen. And that deserves a comment regardless. Good stuff, that.

And finally, GPF.

I'll be brief, because I've already ranted quite a bit.

I get along with GPF. I like Nick, and Ki, and Fooker, and Sharon, and Fred, and the whole gang, right down to that bear friend of Fooker's who lives out in the woods somewhere. I like Darlington's sense of humor. I've read Eric Burns' YHMAYLM Essay, I saw the flaws he pointed out, and I liked it anyway. So help me, I adored Surreptitious Machinations.

So... another year long arc? Where do I sign up?

And now Nick is holding a sword, in a world that's supposedly based on Ki's story, the Council of Ethendale.

Dunno about you, but I'm hooked.

...And now I'm going to bed. You should to. Get some rest, or something.

_Kneefers