Eyeballing It

Okay, fine, I'll do a quick post. But you should probably know that this blog is basically dead.

2006-07-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

Narbonic is on WebcomicsNation?

How did I miss this?

Or the bigger question, why isn't anyone else talking about it?

This is awesome! Incredible! Fundamentally awe-inspiring! Really, really cool!

Go! Read! Now! It's free!

*Runs off going "w00h00"*

Holy crap. Why do I let these things pile up? This is like... the fourth multi-post I've done...

2006-05-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

(From, as usual, a crapload of comics. Only a few small pics up, because trying to put them all here would make your mind explode. And your browser.)

Okay.

A list of strips that I'm plugging today: Shortpacked, Get Fuzzy, Inverloch, Narbonic, Home On The Strange, Ctrl+Alt+Del, Digger, Dominic Deegan, and Birdsworth.

I don't know what it was, but... all of these strips? Made out of pure awesome today.

In Shortpacked, Robin is forcing Amber to go and meet her online boyfriend, and I must say that I am ridiculously curious as to how this is going to play out. It also looks like it's all going to start going down tomorrow. But who knows? We'll just have to see.

Get Fuzzy.

Today's strip was just... funny. I giggled. For a long time. Go. Read.

DRAMA IN INVERLOCH! THIS IS SOMETHING THAT WE LIKE. ...THAT IS ALL!

I'd say more about Narbonic, but... lots of people are already talking about the Lovelace twist, and I'm flabbergasted just like everyone else. Hey, why not jump on the bandwagon and pretend I have something to add?

Dominic Deegan. I cheered, man. "Get your hands off of my husband." w00t! Of course, Melna just rocks in any circumstances, and I'm secretly hoping that she and Stonewater will end up together, even though he seems to have a thing for Grench. Hmmm... Gah, I'm such a fanboy...

CAD. Hijinks will ensue, I just know it. Know it, man. Cuz, see... We're swinging back around to the subject of Ethan and Lilah's marriage, which has been on the back burner for a while, ever since the big announcement. And today, it's revealed that Lilah's parents have never met Ethan. Now... this is a big event for anybody, and quite probably a cause to be nervous. But... Ethan (of all people, has a reason to wonder about how his fiancee's parents will react to him) is completely oblivious. "That should be interesting to watch," indeed.

Digger. I have to admit that I did not see this coming. She... she ran the bad guys up against... the vampire vegetables! THE VAMPIRE VEGETABLES, MAN! Those things kicked butt. Hehehehehehe...

Home on the Strange is funny. The Ferrett is funny. And today's strip hit the nail on the head, man. S'good stuff.

Finally, a plug for Birdsworth, Gilead Pellaeon's new fixed-art comic strip, which I had high hopes for. It made me laugh today, for the first time, which is a good thing. There aren't too many strips, so head over there and give the guy some support. He could use it.

...Hmmm. I think that's all. Go away. I got nuthin' else.

_Kneefers

The screaming, on the other hand, was probably a bad sign.

2006-04-29T11:42:00.000-07:00

(From... wow. From lots of stuff... Okay, I'll list. In order, it's Least I Could Do, Starslip Crisis, and goats. And Melonpool is mentioned. And the one above is from The Splendid Everlasting. And in case you were wondering, the title of the post is a Digger reference.)

To start out, I'd like to say that Digger is free right now. If you haven't read it, read it. If you have read it, reread it. It's much fun.

Okay, in case you didn't notice, I haven't posted anything here in a while. A while being... let's just leave it at 'a while', shall we? This is not because I no longer am feeling the love for y'all, but rather because school generally sucks, and I barely have time to read webcomics, much less write about reading them. So this is a probably vain attempt to cover everything that has especially caught my eye both today and over the past weeks.
Anydangway, this leaves me with lots to say and not a lot of time to say it in, so I'll attempt to be brief. First up is Least I Could Do. This strip is from today, and it made me stop and think for a second. In this storyline we've had an interesting view of Rayne going from being mildly offput by his long-lost sister and niece to truly growing fond of the little girl. They shot people with Nerf guns in Wal-Mart, quoted Star Wars, learned swear words, and insulted people, and somewhere in the middle of it he found himself attatched to his new niece. His line as he is about to leave underscores the contrast of his character. "When you're older, stay away from guys like me." He has no illusions about his behavior, but, on some level, he really does care about those he is close to.

It's good stuff, all in all.

Next up: CLIFFHANGER IN SSC. WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN? WHO KNOWS? I KNOW I SURE DON'T!

...yeah. Straub has me seriously on tenderhooks here. Nothing much to say about this. Read Gilead Pellaeon's post about the many mysterious forces acting on our intreped heroes and the rising tension of the situation during the party, climaxing at this point as Jovia and her father are trapped in the pod that's about to fire its engines without disengaging. He pretty much covers all the bases.
Nextly: goats.

Yeah, it's an old strip, but I just want to say that it made me laugh so hard that the person next to me in study hall hit me and told me to shut up.

...Just thought you'd like to know.

Also, I wanted to express my *joy* that Melonpool updated again today. I'd been missing my comicky goodness from that particular angle.

Aaaaaand... yeah, I think I'm done. Go to bed.

_Kneefers

I Hear He's Up To That Evil Stuff

2006-03-18T07:52:00.000-08:00

(From 8-Bit Theater. Click for full sized No One Wants To See That.)

I have a theory.

This theory has rather disturbing connotations, but I believe that it holds up under scrutiny.

This theory is that the longer a strip goes on (especially if this strip is related, however tangetially, to geek culture or gaming) the possibility of a reference to Chocobos or Pokemon (or some other cute critters from a video game) having sex becomes more and more likely. (Can't lay my hands on the individual strip, but if Penny Arcade didn't already do something like this I'll be very surprised.)

But anyway!

Today's 8-Bit Theater strip is funny, in the giggle-out-loud way that the old school 8-Bit archives are, which makes me happy. Because 8-Bit has gone downhill a little of late, and it hasn't been as consistently funny as it once was. But then Clevinger comes out with a strip like this one and I know why I'm reading again.

Because, for the record? Chocobo sex? Is funny.

Who upgraded nerd-boy?

2006-03-16T09:16:00.000-08:00

(From Comedity. Click for full sized... er... not touching that one.)
I'm a simple man, after it's all over, I suppose.

Right now I could be soliloquizing eloquently about brilliant plot twists, touching moments, or mysterious goings-on in goats, Zebra Girl, Something Positive, GPF, or the like. (In fact, I wanted to talk about today's Sluggy Freelance, and the significance that the line "Who upgraded nerd-boy?" has to the evolution of the strip as a whole, but then... oh, wait, Websnark beat me to it. Never mind.)

I could be.

But I'm not. I'm talking about Comedity... basically because today's strip features a passle of hot girls holding a penguin.

And you just can't compete with that. 'Cuz... y'know... the penguin is like the Sinatra of birds.

(Comedity is a pretty good strip, in case you were wondering. It's got very solid, clean art, and a really good concept. And it's funny a good portion of the time. So I read it.)

Anyway, there's just something about today's strip. It has Garth sighing that the girls all flock to the penguin ("AWWW! He's so cute!"), and Garth's cool side going out of his head (because... dude, there are girls out here, and the only chick in Garth's head is that muse, and she's a little weird) and you just know that he's gonna get more attention than Garth himself.

I dunno. It just makes me giggle. I'm hopeless, aren't I?

There isn't a wound / that she can't heal / and I can tell her everything / except for how I feel.

2006-03-12T13:14:00.000-08:00

(From Tailsteak. Click for full sized Wide Smiles and Bright Eyes in the full beginning-to-end version, because the strip is really big.)

This isn't really a recent-events type of snark, really. I just wanted to mention that I was working my way through the Band storyline of Tailsteak.com (if you've never read anything by Tailsteak, by the way, you are cold missing out on some hardcore awesomeness), and I came across the strip where they sing the song "Nathan's Girlfriend" and... well... I was completely floored.

And I knew I had to talk about it, even though its from way back who-knows-when. Because it's just simply awesome.

In the first place, the lyrics are phenomenal. I can totally see enormous crowds of preteen girls swooning as a band sings this onstage, even though I don't know what the music sounds like. I thought it was famous song for a minute, but as far as I can ascertain the a lyrics to this is all Tailsteak. (By the way, let me know in a comment if this actually is a professional song and I'm just stupid and uninformed, eh?)

Secondly is the way the music is drawn on the page. It's very difficult for someone, as a comic artist, to give a sense of music in a comic strip and not have it come across falsey. The reasons for this are simple: you listen to music, you don't read it. Because of this, there are simply so many things that need to be conveyed for you to actually hear a song that having it be represented with only pictures and words is rather difficult.

Just in case you were wondering? Tailsteak nails it in this strip. It's perfect, honestly.

Tailsteak is generally great with whatever he gets in his mind to do, and if you're not catching this daily, then you're missing out, big time. Go. Read. Now.

Life is like a sandwich. Sometimes you eat the sandwich, and some times the sandwich eats you.

2006-03-02T11:54:00.000-08:00

(From Sluggy Freelance. Click for full sized SMOOCHIES!)

Every time somebody complains about Oceans Unmoving, I find myself perplexed.

Of course, I see many of the problems that people have with it. I agree with some of them. It was an entirely new cast suddenly tossed at us when what we wanted to see was Torg dealing with his newfound depression and retractedness coming off of That Which Redeems, (a storyarc which OU simply pales in comparison to). We wanted to see Oasis and Hereti-Corp. We wanted to see Aylee.

But we were given... Bun-Bun, a character that many Sluggites were growing tired of. By himself, with the new characters. Which left many people feeling detatched. They came looking for their Sluggish goodness every morning, and found something that simply didn't feel like Sluggy.

So people complained. They're still complaining, in fact. Which usually causes me to sigh and think "It's not that bad, guys." Because I liked OU. It's still funny. The story is interesting. And the concept is phenomenal.

And it still has Pete Abram's signature on the bottom, which is one of the most important things, to me. So I'm going to echo something that Occultatio said a while back, over at The Living Comic.

Don’t you freaking dare give up on this comic.

Occultatio was of the opinion that Sluggy should be given some major slack. He said "Pete Abrams as an author has won my faith on a level nearly on par with Bujold or even Gaiman. No, I don’t much like this current stuff, but dammit, I know it will get better."

I know it will get better.

Sluggy Freelance is one of my personal favorites. I was more impressed and enthralled with TWR than I have been with any comic storyarc, ever. So I put the work into OU. I went back over it and read it in chunks of a month at a time to get a better sense of the story as a whole. I combed the forums. And as a consequence, I know what's going on. And I'm enjoying the ending of OU immensely. And it just keeps getting better. It's not as good as Sluggy has been at times in the past, of course, but heck, this is Sluggy. At its worst, it still beats out a good seventy-five percent of the other comics on my list.

And something about today's strip just clicked for me. The subject matter, the way that it's put together, the art, the timing, the expressions, the dialogue... they all work together just right again, and today's strip, for some reason, just made me smile.

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

2006-02-19T21:30:00.000-08:00

(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...

2006-02-18T14:40:00.000-08:00

(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

2006-02-17T17:28:00.000-08:00

(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

2006-02-14T12:11:00.000-08:00

(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!!!

2006-02-03T18:02:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-02-02T16:50:00.000-08:00

(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

Sometimes it's about fear.

2006-01-28T05:07:00.000-08:00

I want to say something... but there's nothing to say.

I'm out. I'm tired and sick and completely and utterly floundering, you understand, in the wake of stuff happening.

I would talk about Something Positive. But... like I said before, there aren't any words. Not really. Eric talked about it already. So did Phil. And Robert. And the emotion in their posts... the feel... I can't duplicate that. I don't want to. I just don't have the energy right now. Go and... I dunno. Go away, for now. There's nothing here right now.

2006-01-25T19:50:00.000-08:00

(From Narbonic. Click for full sized PLOT TWIST ONLY NOT REALLY!!!)

This isn't a snark. This... is a revelation.

I read today's Narbonic... and I realized that I could identify all of the references that Helen makes. (This whole strip is a rather large crack in the fourth wall, [But still all part of the plot! It boggles the mind!] wherein Shaenon's characters refer to things like Questionable Content and GPF, while at the same time referencing/jabbing playfully at the blogging community surrounding webcomics .)

It's official now, (though it may have been true for a long while beforehand): I... am a webcomics geek.

I don't know if that's an accomplishment, or whether it means I should be committed. Either way it's sorta nifty...

The R-Word.

2006-01-23T19:04:00.000-08:00

(From Dominic Deegan, Oracle for Hire. Click for full sized Quick Thinking.)

I have to say that I've been seriously digging what Mookie's been doing lately. Because, for me, it seems like this storyarc is breathing new life into my rabid interest in DD.

Now, don't get me wrong. I've always liked Dominic, Gregory, Luna, Spark, and the gang. I like the humor in Dominic Deegan (the puns notwithstanding), and the way that it's mixed with the serious storylines. I like the way that Mookie builds his fantasy world and develops the races and rules. I like the way he develops characters.

It's just that the whole thing with the Storm of Souls and the subsequent battle for Barthis... I wasn't feeling it. It was cool and all, but it somehow didn't capture me as much as some of the beginning stuff seemed to. For a while, I was lackluster about Dominic Deegan.

Oh, wait... false alarm. I'm interested again. Because this thing with the Orcs... is awesome.

Let me just preface this by saying that I've always liked the way Mookie invisions Orcs. I always have. And since they were first introduced, he's been weaving in little things that give us furtive glimpses of how Orcish culture and individuals work in this world.

First in this storyline was the way that he introduced the characters. There wasn't really a sharp division between the concert and the beginning of the new arc about the Orcs. They just sort of showed up, stuff happened, (along with foreshadowing which even started earlier, you see...) and we moved on. But then things got more central. Bulgak the Orcish Infernomancer (and what's up with him anyway? Why is Stonewater hanging out with him? I WANNA KNOW!) passed out and Dominic saw somebody bad. But then it got overshadowed by the plot coming back around to whatever happened between Melna and Stonewater, which is really what caught my attention in the first place. And then, the R-Word came out. Melna says that Stonewater raped her.

Holy crap.

Holy. Crap.

So now we're getting backstory explaining what happened. Which, I must say, I am very keen to hear. This is Mookie opening up on new characters, weaving their stories into bits of the culture that he's invisioned for Orcs in his world.

Also, just as a note? His Orc girls are hot.

...Well, actually, I really just want to talk about his art at this point. The Orcs in the world of DD are extremely humanoid, and Mookie has succeeded in making them look like Orcs (fangs, green skin, funky hair, etc.) but also making his cast of a solid dozen Orcs look different from each other, distinctively male or female, and still moderately attractive to human aesthetics.

That's nifty, folks.

Needless to say, I'm hooked on this storyline like I haven't been for a long while, now. I want to know what happens next.

A cookie for Mookie. At least.

Gasp-a-roo!

2006-01-15T12:48:00.000-08:00

(From 1/0. Click for full sized philosophical discussion in the guise of humor.)

OK. I know I haven't been saying a whole lot lately. But I did promise you a reaction from 1/0 when I finished it, and I intend to follow through on that, dangit.

Anyway.

I don't even remember where I first heard about 1/0. (Not that I haven't looked, but Websnark, The Webcomicker, Fleen, Tangents, and I'm Just Saying are all curiously devoid of any recent mention [that I could find, at least, after a cursory search] of the quirky strip.) What I do remember is that wherever I read about it, I heard that it was a completed strip, with a clearly set beginning and end at exactly a thousand strips (the neatness of which appealed to me for some indecipherable reason; I suppose it's because it was the sort of thing one could invest a certain amount of time into, like a book, then go on about one's life without having to worry about.) Also, this mystery review blathered on about how intelligent, witty, and well done 1/0 was, and so I made it a priority to take a glance.

Edit: I found it. It was the review that Andrew Araki did a while back over at Comics Rock. Give it a looksee, 'tis nifty.

And, of course, that glance turned into a gaze, which turned into a stare, which turned into a drooling fixation for three days until I'd gobbled up all 1000 strips (which do indeed form a complete story, spanning, in fact, from the beginning of the universe to the end of the universe.) 1/0, I discovered, was everything it had been touted and more. It was funny ("This is war! There is no time for feet!") as well as being sometimes rather deep.

It starts in the beginning. First, there was nothing... then... there was Tailsteak. After creating light, he then proceeds to steal his first character, Barnacle Jones, from the strip Absolute Tripe (which I would link to if I could find it, but I can't, so I won't.) From there, the strip proceeds in earnest with gobs of wacky energy. It was clear that the story was simply supposed to be crazy and frenetic, and it was amusingly wacky for a while.

But then... eventually it settled down a little bit. It began to explore its world, the physics of the world, and the way that it worked. And since the characters had never had fourth walls (except for about a week in the beginning when Tailsteak experimented with an enforced fourth wall, which didn't go over too well) they spent a lot of time conversing with their creator. Because of this, long discussions spawned concerning the nature of their existence. They know they're in a comic strip, which brings up interesting theological questions. What kind of morals should they adopt? How should they regard their creator, Tailsteak, who converses with them and seems to be a normal guy just like them, rather than a god.

And most importantly, what will happen to them after the strip is over?

This spawns hundreds of discussions on the nature of fiction, examinations about breaking the fourth wall, and even (intended or unintended) metaphors for the differences between athiesm and Christianity.

When reading 1/0, you quickly become embroiled in the action yourself because it feels real. It feels like this place really exists, just because Tailsteak drew it into existence. What is great about this is that you develop an emotional investment in what happens to the characters.

I'll try not to spoil any more of the story for you, because sitting down and reading these thousand pages truly is a treat, and I'd highly recommend it.

Head over and take a gander. You won't be disappointed.

(...Unless you're the type who is always disappointed. In which case this will be just another disappointment. Sucks to be you!)

_Kneefers

1/0 is true. Deal with it.

2006-01-10T19:59:00.000-08:00

Not anything really big to say, just a small note to say that I've been reading 1/0, and I love it. I was just going to slap up a review when I finished, but I couldn't keep quiet. If you haven't read it, I'd highly recommend taking a gander...

...Yeah, that's all. I'm planning on having more stuff to fill this space in the weeks to come, rather than the half-effort I've been putting in lately.

Yeah.

No, I'm not dead after all. Nifty, eh?

2006-01-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

(From Lore Brand Comics. Click for full sized Just read it again and you'll get it eventually.)

Lore is hysterical. And the reason that I love his humor, largely, is because you have to wait for a moment before it hits you.

And this strip is a perfect example. I log on, early in the morning, and scan the strip. Like usual, I don't get it for a minute. So I read it again. "Oh, yeah! Like something died!"

I giggled like a maniac, in the computer lab during history class, and got funny looks.

Awesomeness.

Bleh

2006-01-04T08:56:00.000-08:00

Yeah, yeah, I know, I haven't said anything for a while. But in reality, nothing has really struck me in a while. And yes, I know that I still owe y'all a review of It's Walky! I haven't forgotten. Just gimme a bit. I'm not dead, just tired.

Dangit, how come I always end up talking about the same comics that Websnark does at the same time that Websnark does?

2005-12-23T08:04:00.000-08:00

(From Something Positive. Click for full sized ending of year four!)

What struck me about this comic was not the fact that it was totally awesome.

It was a great way to end the year, I'm not saying it wasn't. Randy Milholland always somehow finds a way to make the end of the year memorable and powerful, and this year was no exception. The whole twist with PeeJee getting chicken pox and Davan delaying his flight and moving heaven and earth with the huge convoluted plan with the wedding ring (which was pretty humorous in its own right, as well, which is impressive, because this whole run of strips has been pretty heavy with the drama) to come to see her in the hospital and everything was great and all, and PeeJee's tired smile in the fifth panel was really sweet, but it wasn't what really struck me about this particular comic.

What struck me, for some reason, is how much Davan looks like his father.

I mean, look at him. He's tired, with circles under his eyes, which kind of echo of his father's wrinkles, and the shadow of stubble also serves to make him look a bit older than he actually is. And, besides impressing the heck out of me regarding Milholland's artistic prowess to get it just right, this got me to thinking a bit about S*P in general and Davan in particular.

As Something Positive has grown and changed, the characters, too have grown and evolved. They've gone through some good times, and quite a few more bad times. This has caused many people, incidentally, to give S*P labels such as "mean" or "pessimistic", which I don't agree with. There's too much stuff like this past storyline. For example. For every strip like this, with PeeJee crying quietly in the darkness, there's also strips like the above. Yeah, there's depression. There's still "the overwhelming crappiness that is life" bearing down on our fearless heroes. But in this strip, as well as in many others, there's too much of a feeling of... cheerfulness.

Yeah, you heard me. I just used the word cheerful to describe Something Positive. This is because, though bad things happen consistently and the characters often feel lost, lonely, unloved, sick, tired, and generally crushed by the weight of the world, I've always gotten a general impression from S*P that despite everything that happens, there are still good things about life. I think one of the reasons that S*P strikes a chord with so many people is not that it's ridiculously pessmistic, but rather that it is realistic. Randy Milholland is not afraid to show life the way that it really is: negative things happen, but that doesn't mean that in the end something... positive can't appear.

And this opinion of mine is illustrated perfectly by this last run of strips. Davan has been, I believe, feeling more and more left behind as time has gone by. PeeJee, Aubrey, Jason, and the lot have been growing and evolving, but it's quite obvoius that Davan feels like he's stagnating. He misses the old days more and more and doesn't feel like he can get them back. As he says, in a lot of ways his life is better than it was before. But he still feels like there's something worse waiting around the corner.

But then comes along today's strip, and suddenly, I think, he sees everything a little clearer, if only for a little while. He's remembered that he does have friends and he still loves them and would do anything for them, whatever that means. He lets PeeJee know that he's remembered that, and for the first time in a long time, she smiles. A real, genuine smile.

Not that this doesn't mean bad stuff won't happen tomorrow. But right now? Even though Davan's exhausted and cranky and PeeJee's got chicken pox and a triple digit fever, this still manages to be one of the good moments.

This is good stuff, guys. Very good stuff.

A great idea. Unfortunately, there's no way I'm going to be able to do it, is there?

2005-12-22T07:08:00.000-08:00

(From The Webcomicker. Click for full sized awesomeness.)

Just... go there. Check out Gilead Pellon's post. It's awesome because he's exactly right. This is a bit of a problem, and we, the webcomic criticism community, have the power to actually help out people like Steve Troop whose comics we enjoy by actually going the extra mile and not only being drama hounds. Kudos to Mr. Pellaeon.

Teh List

2005-12-19T15:40:00.000-08:00

And now, because no one asked for it, Sam and Fuzzy are now totally edgy and hardcore! Er... I mean... I'm putting up a list of comics.
So... anyhoo... as I've been meaning to do for a while now, I'm going to post a list of the comics that I currently read, (which I call my Comic Closet, in case you're wondering; and no, I don't know why) for those of you keeping score at home. These are in alphabetical order, because putting them in order from favorite to least favorite would be a pain, and anyway, everything on this list is impressive enough to keep me entertained for a bit, and as long as your sense of humor/style/pacing/story/character/etc./etc. is exactly the same as mine, you should like all of them.
...For the rest of you, all of these come recommended. Give 'em a shot if they sound like your cup of tea. You just might like some.

[RPG World] - A comic inside of an RPG. Fairly old concept, but this is one of the best. Though it doesn’t update hardly at all anymore, it’s archives are first class, and I’d recommend giving them the once over.

5ideways - A dark and mysterious sci-fi/fantasy comic that pings all of my Flatwood senses. Fairly new, so jump on the bandwagon now.

8-Bit Theater - The best sprite comic in the world, though it's lost some of its edge as time has gone by. 8-Bit Theater also has the distinction of being the first webcomic that I ever read, and thus it has a rather special place in my heart (and, therefore, my bookmarks as well). I'd recommend taking an extended gander.

Alien Loves Predator - I didn't think I'd like this strip at first. Because... I mean, come on. The theme is this: an Alien and a Predator (not drawn, but rather represented with pictures taken of action figures) living as roommates in New York City. It's bizarre and irreverant. You look at it and say WTF? But then you see the tagline, and it says "In New York, no one can hear you scream". It was then that it hooked me.

Angel Moxie - Dunno really why I keep reading this. Inertia, I guess, since it's a lot better when taking extended archive dives than reading day to day. It still keeps me coming back, though, because I'm still fairly curious about how everything is going to turn out. Also, it's sometimes rather funny, despite being a story comic at heart.

Antihero for Hire - Read the first strip (the one where he falls off the roof) and you'll know why I like it. A superhero comic (those are few and far between, for some reason, in webcomickdom) with just the right mix of funny and silly.

Applegeeks - Like Mac Hall, only... not. Funny, (with occasionally forays into deeper, darker storylines) with some of the most gorgeous art EVAR.

Astronomy Picture of the Day - Yeah, you all know about this. Really cool pictures of the wondrous universe in which we live, yadda, yadda. 'Tis muy nifty, no?

Casey and Andy - Described by Eric Burns as "still a journeyman's comic in a lot of ways", Casey and Andy is just one of those that grabs me for reasons that I can't exactly put my finger on. It's funny, in any case, so it gets the Kneefers stamp of approval.

Checkerboard Nightmare - The infamous. We cried when it shut down, but now it's back up and as good as ever. Kristofer Straub is a master of the satiric craft. If you're a webcomic fan, especially, you'll find CxN to your liking, methinks.

College Roomies From Hell!!! - *Gleeble* We like CRfH. We like it much. It's one of my very favorites, in fact. By turns funny and light and then dark and horrifying. Drama, angst, humor, action, romance, and gobs and gobs of awesome storytelling. Maritza Campos keeps me on the edge of my seat, and I loves me teh roomies.

Ctrl+Alt+Del
- In everybody's list there is an obligatory gamer comic (because, quite frankly, there are a lot of them to choose from) and CAD is mine. It was the second comic I ever read, and thus it, too, has a special place in my heart. Also, I find it absolutely hilarious. So there.

Digger - The dark and whimsical tale of a talking wombat tossed suddenly into a dark, fantasy world full of oracular slugs, weird shadow creatures, and dead gods. Here you'll find some of the most gorgeous black and white art that you will ever see, along with a peculiar sense of humor, timing, and story.

Count Your Sheep - A quiet, sweet, sometimes melancholy strip about the power of dreams. Truly touching and often triumphant, even through the sadness. Good stuff, that.

Comedity - Fairly light, silly comic about this guy and all the stuff that goes on in his head. As in, he has the personifications of the good and bad personalities, but he also has one who's a muse, one who's a jock, one who's a ninja, etc. Surprisingly fun to read, as well. Don't step on the penguin.

Darken - Just your regular fantasy comic about a group of unlikely heroes out for an adventure to save the world... except they're really a group of unlikely villains out for an adventure to take over the world. A refreshing take makes for a fairly interesting comic.

Digital Purgatory
- Office life gone horribly, horribly wrong. Like Dilbert, only... not. You know what I mean. Manages to often be genuinely funny, which is more rare than you would think.

Dominic Deegan - A fantasy story comic rife with bad puns that still manages to be consistently good. Don't know how it happens, but it is, dangit. Go and give it a serious looksee.

Down Stairs Apartment - Not really sure what's up with DSA, but every time I consider dropping it (over eighty comics gets a bit unweildy at times) I go back through the archives and it makes me smile. So I keep it on.

Dungeon Crawl Inc. - Started out as a rather strange-looking, hard to read screenshot-using comic whose characters you couldn't really even tell apart. Then, it moved to real art, and I got more involved in the story. And like DSA, every time I consider dropping it I check back through the archives and it hooks me again.

Dungeons & Denizens - This one I know why I read. It's Graveyard Greg doin' his crazy thing with the writing and John Yakimow contributing the purdy picshures, and it's basically workplace humor, except... the main character is a minotaur and he works for an evil overlord. Light, satirical humor that keeps you smiling.

Earthsong - Another one with teh purdy picshures, Earthsong is a fantasy comic, straight up, though it has a fairly origional premise once you get into it.

El Goonish Shive
- A cast of normal teens living in a really weird world. (No, the title isn't supposed to make sense. Don't worry about it.) Sometimes really funny. Sometimes really serious. Always extremely weird. Treats extraordinary things as being normal, which is always fun. It's worth a look, definitely. I was really hooked on this one back in the day. Read it, or the owl will eat you.

Elsie Hooper
- Three w00ts for dark, post-apocalyptic type stories. I have a soft spot for 'em. The first thing you notice as you visit the site is that the header has a guy with a shotgun and a kid with a chainsaw, and I was hooked right there.

Errant Story - A fantasy story from the twisted mind of Michael Poe about half-elves (called errants). The word for Errant Story is "different", I think. You just might like it, though. I mean... I did.

Fade Resistant - The afterlife. Sort of. Also includes talking 8-balls, zombies, Yoda ripoffs, and Repo Depots. Funny stuff, strangely, and this strip is another one that grabbed me strangely.

Flatwood
- The quintessential dark fantasy tale. A boy who doesn't remember who he is wakes up in a room he doesn't recognize with a strange, furry, flying creature and ends up fighting off the evil spirits in the mysterious forest called the flatwood that surrounds the house. Seriously good stuff, this.

Foxtrot - Yeah, yeah. You all know about Foxtrot. It's funny stuff. You can have it (or just about any newspaper strip) fresh served up for you every day, on the internet. How awesome is that, huh?

Freefall - A hard Sci-Fi comic that is just fun. It's consistently funny, and it has a cleanness to its storytelling that's refreshing. The archives are long, but worth the dive once you get in. Give it a try.

General Protection Fault - The oft-lauded, oft-loathed geek comic which used to be purely silly until the Surreptitious Machinations storyline, in which the comic turned darker and deeper. It's probably hit or miss whether you'll like it. Give it a shot, in any case.

Get Fuzzy - Another newspaper strip that I just can't get enough of because of it's offbeat sense of pacing and humor. Gotta love it.

Goats - Goats is hysterical. Rosenberg knows how to take the complete and total random and make it terribly funny. Also, in the ongoing Infinite Typewriters storyline he has been developing more continuity (while preserving the insane elements) and I've been loving every second of it.

Gossamer Commons - Eric Burns' fantasy webcomic about life, death, faeries, and jazz. Great premise, and so far showing a lot of promise. I've been with this one from the beginning, and it's always kind of impressed me. Check it out.

Inverloch - Another fantasy webcomic, this time with the typical "unlikely hero out for an adventure" premise. It strikes me in just the right way, though, so I keep it on.

Joyce and Walky! - David Willis's followup strip to the ending of It's Walky! and it's pretty funny, still, because David Willis is a funny guy. But the real prize is the archives of Roomies! and It's Walky!, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Kristy Vs The Zombie Army - Don't really know what it is about KvtZA, but I just think it's awesome. It starts with a cute little girl cutting up zombies with a chainsaw, so what's not to love?

Landis - A newer comic, but an intriguing premise (highlander-esque immortal types) along with gorgeous art pulls you in and makes you want to hang around and see what's going to happen.

Last Days of FOXHOUND - An awesome fancomic, FOXHOUND is a hilarious parody of the Metal Gear Solid universe, and strangely engaging to me even though I've never played any of the games, nor am I in the least bit familiar with the universe. If it's anything like LDoF, though, I think I'd like it.

LinT - Another fantasy comic. Unlikely heroes out for an adventure again, and LinT is another one that keeps me coming back, because I'm all caught up in its storyline now, and it's nifty.

Little Dee - Little Dee is a strip about a little girl (who doesn't talk) being raised by some wild animals (who do talk). It's quiet and sweet, in the manner of Count Your Sheep or something similar, and it makes me smile more often that not.

Lore Brand Comics - I'm not usually much of one for cut-and-paste comics with almost the same art all the time, but... the thing about Lore Brand Comics is that they're absolutely hilarious. Absolutely.

Mac Hall - College students doing crazy things. Funny and fresh, with incredible art, and a great sense of humor.

MegaTokyo - The (in)famous otaku comic about Japan, basically. Its archives are long and sometimes the story can drag a bit, but it's still pretty good. Give it the once over if you're feeling bold.

Melonpool - Steve Troop's Sci-Fi epic. Recently restarted (with over nine years of archives deleted completely) so there's no better time to start than right now.

Midnight Macabre - Randy Milholland's tale of a midnight horror show on a cheap Texas TV station. A bit dark, but very funny and a bit whimsical, and the archives are still fairly short, so go over and treat yourself to one of S*P's side projects.

Nahast: Lands of Strife - Yet another fantasy comic, this one a bit more serious, and it paces the action and story almost perfectly.

Narbonic - This comic rocks. A tale of mad science, superintelligent gerbils, death, life, demons, angels, extradimensional entities, and... Heh, heh, heh... Anyway, Narbonic is a strip of deep and complicated backstory, but still works on the level of each individual strip. Pure genius.

New Gold Dreams - S*P's Randy Milholland on another side project, this one a black-and-white fantasy comic, and there's just something inherently nifty about that, right?

Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life - The deep and philosophical planet-hopping tale which takes place after the extinction of mankind and only robots are left in the Sol galaxy. A pair of robots with illegal "bohemian drive circuits" searching for meaning in the galaxy.

No Need For Bushido - Samurai, ninjas, and feudalism are cool again. NNfB is a comic set in Mideval Japan and it balances the funny with the serious in just the right way for me.

No Rest For The Wicked - Dark and gritty, this story combines a whole bunch of old fairy tales in such a way that makes it feel like this is the origional story that inspired the fairy tales, not the other way around. Kind of like the movie The Brothers Grimm, except NRftW was earlier and is better.

No Room For Magic - Adrian Ramos, of Count Your Sheep fame, weaves a light, bubbly tale of a normal girl living in a fantasy world that she hates with a passion. Funny stuff, all around.

Nukees - A comic about a group of... Nuclear Engineering majors... at Berkely. A bit weird, but severly funny.

PartiallyClips - Another clipart comic, and another one that really is simply terribly funny.

Penny and Aggie - High school drama. A character-based, relationship humor strip centering around a pair of teenage girls and their relationship.

Penny Arcade! - What many people consider the foremost gaming comic. I have only a passing interest in it, and it made me laugh several times, so I keep up with it. Check it out if that seems like your thing.

Questionable Content - Indy rock, romance, and a robot. Questionable Content is another one of those comics that balances the funny and the story almost perfectly. It's good stuff all around.

Radioactive Panda - Another mad science strip, with pretty art and a humor style that hits me in just the right way, so I keep checking it out.

Real Life - The archives take a while to get through, but this real life based strip (along with other stuff that doesn't really happen in real life, but we can't let that interfere withthe name, now can we?) is fun to read on a day-to-day basis, and it makes me laugh.

Rob and Elliot - Just hysterical. Known as the primary strip of 'that guy who does the Saturday filler for Sluggy Freelance' (Clay Yount does Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days for Pete Abrams), and it's really funny.

Sam and Fuzzy - A black and white strip with awesome Frank Miller-esque art and a bizarre sense of humor. Centers around Sam, a pessimistic, world-weary cab driver and his meglomaniacal teddy bear, Fuzzy.

Schlock Mercenary - A hard Sci-Fi strip with the best update schedule in the world, period. Also, it's really funny. A group of mercenaries fly around space and get into wacky misadventures. The third webcomic I ever read. Good stuff, in all. Go! Read!

Shortpacked! - David Willis's IW! spinoff about workers in a toy store is something that I generally find terribly funny, despite the fact that it has a limited amount of continuity.

Skinny Panda - A quiet, heartwarming strip (yeah, I've amassed quite a few of those; wanna make something of it?) about the adventures of Skinny Panda, the angry Gopher, Penelope, Robokitty, and the rest.

Sluggy Freelance - Vying for the top spot of My Favoritest Webcomic EvAr, Sluggy Freelance is one of those that makes me gleeble with happiness. It started fairly innocently, with two guys getting into strange misadventures, buying a homocidal lop-eared rabbit and frustrating the girl next door with their bizarre hijinks. Then it grew and evolved, got deeper and darker, and then there were insane female assassins, demons, evil scientists, evil kittens, and the like. We loves some Sluggy. Check it out. You owe it to yourself.

Smithson - Shaenon Garrity's tale of college, comics, and superheroes. Unique premise, and, as always with Mrs. Garrity, incredible writing.

Something Positive - Good stuff. Not really sure what to say about S*P, except that it really is an awesome comic. The story evolves slowly over time, and the wonderfully-drawn characters develop slowly and realistically. Truly a superbly told story.

Starslip Crisis - Checkerboard Nightmare's Kristofer Straub started his own Sci-Fi strip, and, to tell the truth, I like it better than CxN. Truly funny and well done.

STRIPTEASE - It's not just a clever name for a comic strip... OK, so it is. But Striptease is really a lot of fun. Relationship-based humor set around comic book artists. This, too, has characters that develop well and realistically.

Swordwaltzer - Fantasy comic set in a feudal-Japan-like world. Fairly poor update schedule lately, but gorgeous art and really cool fight scenes keep me coming back.

Terinu - A Sci-Fi comic. The art is clean and professional, and the premise and story are kind of catchy. Give it a try.

The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark - Eric Burns's same-art-every-day strip, a la Daily Dinosaur comics. And it's mildly amusing, so I read it, because I'm a fan, basically.

The Adventures of Spelling the Vacuum - Spelling the Vacuum is a strip that I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with, because it's fairly dirty, severely weird, and extremely iffy on the update schedule, (it just came off of a hiatus of... oh, dear, I have no idea how long) but is very funny. Hey, I like it. You might too.

The n00b - A comic that makes fun of MMORPG's, and hits all the right buttons for the funny. You know you want some.

The Order of the Stick - A fantasy strip... except not really. It basically takes place inside of a tabletop RPG, but its humor is still the type that can be enjoyed even if you're not full throttle into roleplaying games.

The Pet Professional - I stick with this one because of it's hysterical premise: it's a hit man for animals. Rockin', eh?

The Splendid Everlasting
- A weird, black and white political cartoon about... not much at all, really. Some guys standing around in a bar, I guess. It's terribly funny, though, and it gave me the line "I did some soul searching the other night. I thought I'd found one in my back pocket, but it turned out to be just a breath mint."

The Tenth Life of Pishio the Cat - A dark, gritty, confusing epic about a bad cat who has wasted his nine lives but is given a tenth on the condition that he perform a task for the forces that be. Seriously cool.

Todd and Penguin - A light, bitersweet comic that can take sudden dives into blackness. Another pretty good one, though I have to admit that, of the quiet comics, I much prefer Skinny Panda and Count Your Sheep. Todd and Penguin, however, is good, so I keep reading.

Two Lumps - Now, Two Lumps is one of those that is just plain fun to read. Two cats acting... well... the way that cats always seem to. Makes me laugh out loud with startling regularity.

Ugly Hill - Ugly Hill makes me grin. That's it. It just makes me grin. I like Hastings and how he's workaholically psychotic. I like Eli and the king of slackers, Snug. I especially like Peter and the way that he reacts to Hastings as the "sane" foil. The whole setup just works. It's funny, too.

VG Cats - It's a gamer comic, and it's gag-a-day, which I try to steer clear of, but Scott Ramsoomair has come up with some of the funniest stuff that I have ever seen. I've laughed out loud in the middle of English class and not been able to stop. (Over this strip, because everyone should read that strip, and it still sends me into hysterics every time I read it.)

Winger - Carson Fire's brand spankin' new comic is a conservative-but-makes-fun-of-both-sides political cartoon, and I like it already. (The troll jokes were funny.)

Zap! - Another Sci-Fi comic, this one about an incompetent psychic and the group of people/robots/aliens that he drags all around the galaxy.

Zebra Girl - A dark and brooding story comic that still manages to be funny under all the grit. About a girl who gets turned into a demon by an accident involving a mysterious book in the attic. I found this one fairly late, but it's one of my favorites.

And also, as if that weren't enough, additionally, there are some comics that have ended or otherwise gone on a rather permanent hiatus of some sort, so I don't check them every day. But I still check back over the RIP folder occasionally, just in case.

Elf Only Inn - This comic rocks. It has a fantastic premise, well-drawn characters, and wonderful humor. Unfortunately, it's also been on hiatus since August of '04. This does not mean, however, that you shouldn't head straight over there and devour the archives. EOI comes highly recommended.

The Filgym Cycle - A weird fantasy comic started for the Daily Grind competition that I quite liked until it stopped abruptly. Ach, weel...

Comics by Alexander Danner - Including such nifty-keen short comics as "Five Ways of Looking At A Cockroach" and "The Discovery of Spoons". Kewl stuff.

Reman Mythology - Cool fantasy comic that got taken down because of imminent publication, I believe. Good stuff.

A Modest Destiny - A sprite comic, one of the few that did it right. Though it's no longer actually there, it was good while it lasted.

Irrational Fears - A small, one-shot comic series showcasing the incomparable Ursula Vernon at her finest (Chupacabras in berets, sentient dust bunnies, murderous monsters, nightmares, and all manner of bizarre happenings). And the best part? It's on WebcomicsNation, so it's free. Go! Read!

Tired Feet - Another one-shot comic, this one is sweet, romatic, and sad. It only has five pages, so it won't take very long to read. Go and read it now.

Instant Classic Presents: Pirates - An Instant Classic offering that, in my opinion, was better before he went and redid the whole thing, but still quite a wonderful concept, even if it doesn't really update anymore.

Skirting Danger - Doncha just hate it when you read a strip's archives, then get to the front page and find out that it's on some sort of weird haitus, and you have no idea whether it's coming back or what? This happened to me with Skirting Danger. And it made me... *Grrr*. Because I liked SD. It was funny, and all that. But oh well, I suppose...

Niego - Niego's over now, and it's one of the few comics that I read that actually came to a conclusion while I was reading it. It was severely weird, as well, but not too bad.

Brainslug - This is another one that never seemed to update after I finished it, which was unfortunate because, it, as well, was fun. Bizarre Sci-Fi strip with tongue-aliens invading earth. Also, it had a psychotic rabbit. And hey, who am I to question the psychotic rabbit?

Schoolbooks and Brimstone - This is a strip with a full and gorgeous Art Gallery, a great premise, and a hysterical beginning. Unfortunately, it has fewer than thirty comics in an archive stretching back to 1996. Yikeeeeeees.

Brainwrap - A comic about those guys who run the movie theaters. It's funny, but it, too, doesn't update hardly at all, which, again, is unfortunate.

Aaaaand... there's the list. If you're still reading this, then I applaud you. That's a good ninety-five or so webcomics, some of which, hopefully that you'll like. And now I'm leaving, because I've been working on this for two days, and I'm tired. 'Night. Going to bed now.
_Kneefers

Jabba'a Palace?! What?!

2005-12-19T07:25:00.000-08:00

(From Melonpool. Click for full sized A Little Short For A Stormtrooper.)

Melonpool was always one of those strips that I thought that I should probably read, just... when I have time. You know how it is. You have some strip bookmarked and you mean to check it out, it's just that you know the archives are really long, so you know it'll take a rather large investment of time, so you just never get around to it. It'll always be there, won't it? So it sits there in your To Be Read folder and you just kinda think "Oh yeah, I oughta read that sometime. When I get the chance."

Anyway, Melonpool was one of those strips.

And, unfortunately, I missed the boat. As everyone knows by now, in November Steve Troop took down nine years' worth of archives. Took them down. They're gone now. Bye-bye. And I never got the chance to read them.

So I sucked it up and motored on over there to start reading on the restart. That was the point, after all. So I started. And I found that I really liked it. It maintains the story well and reintroduces characters smoothly so that new readers can pick it up and old readers won't feel like they're being hit over the head with something they already know. (Well, as far as I know, anyway. I'm not an old reader, so I can't say definitively. But it seems that way, in any case.)

Another thing is that it's consistently funny. And today's strip actually made me snort with laughter, as it also has several times in the past. It's good stuff. I'd recommend checking it out.

Guhhhhhhhhh

2005-12-12T09:02:00.000-08:00

(From College Roomies From Hell!!! Click for full sized "old strip used merely for point-making purposes!")
You know what are coming up, so... I might not be around for a while. Like anybody cares.

Just don't say the "f" word. And wish me luck. I'm going in...

Double-you tee eff.

2005-12-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

(From Penny Arcade. Click for full sized... WTF?)

Yeah, so I've read the whole thing. All of the archives. And yes, I am a bit tired. But I'm snarking while I still have this fresh on my mind, just for you. Happy? Good. Because I'd have to kill you if you weren't.

...let's start with the good news, shall we?

The good news is that it defenitely improved towards the end. By the time I got to the beginning of 2005, my impressions improved drastically, and tHence the thumbnailed strip on the right. That, I will freely admit, is funny. The idea of sending someone a soppy "beary sorry" e-card for aggro? Hysterical.

And so, as you may have already figured out, I laughed at some of the strips. In short, sometimes it was funny. I've already caught myself grinning while thinking of the phrase "I’m curious about the colander on your head."

And the cardboard tube samurai. Crap on a crutch, did I love the cardboard tube samurai or what?

Also, while we're on the subject of what was good, I would like to say that I totally grooved on the Penny Arcade Presents section of the site. It's a bunch of more serious story comics that Gabe and Tycho did about video games. Just to name a few, there's one for Empire Earth II, which makes me grin, and one for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which was awesome, and, my personal favorite, the one for Painkiller, which rocked my world.

In this vein, what surprised me is that whenever Gabe and Tycho would go off onto little tangents of story and continuity, I was hooked. I liked the Scion storyline. I liked An Alternative Lifestyle. And Cardboard and Steel was just awesome. Have I mentioned that I like the Cardboard Tube Samurai?

But... the problem was that it's fairly obvious that those aren't what the strip is about. Those are little sidequests, playful diversions of our fearless heroes to do when the mood strikes them. The main focus of the strip... is Gabe and Tycho sitting around and saying things. Things that are unconnected from strip to strip, floating out in space.

Let me first say that I could very easily tell that many of my problems with PA were simply my own fault. The first is very much one of them: It's a problem that I have with all gag-a-day strips.

As I've said before, I am a total sucker for stories. If anything tells a really good story, then I'm on it like a raving lunatic, drinking in every ounce of story that I can get.

So for a comic to be set in an almost completely continuity-free environment and be purely gag-a-day, as PA is, it has to be very funny. And in many cases, I found PA lacking in this case. It was funny sometimes, but occasionally I found it... wanting. For every comic like this one, there would be at least four or five that I just stared blankly at, shrugged slightly, then moved on, either because I didn't get it or I didn't think that it was funny.

A second problem, one that was also my own, I suspect, because it is closely related to the above, was that the characters made no impression on me whatsoever. There was Gabe and Tycho, of course (though I often have trouble remembering which is which). And they have those girlfriends whose names... I don't remember. And the DivX player (a one-trick pony, in my opinion; "Oh that crazy DivX player! He gets drunk and insults people!") And the juicer, of course. (But that's a gimme; everybody knows about that.) And maybe some other recurring male characters? There was that guy... who liked Macs. Maybe his name was Charles. And some other guy who might be named Gary. And Tycho's niece (or maybe she's Gabe's niece? I don't remember) Anne. I remember her name because I liked her. And... that's it. If there are more recurring characters, I don't know them off the top of my head.

And that's bad, folks. Especially in my department. If I read more than half a decade's worth of strips and still don't remember characters' names? Ouch, guys.

And I know that it's supposed to be structured so that you can read each individual strip without knowing any backstory or character names and everything... but heck, Narbonic and Schlock Mercenary can both do that, and they have backstory. What it boiled down to is that it simply wasn't my cup of tea.

The gist of it is that, though I enjoyed some of the strips, most of them, for me, simply fell flat. They seemed bizarre. They were referring to some weird news event that happened four years ago, or to some strange industry joke.

This is probably a good place to mention that some of the jokes undoubtedly passed me by because I am not really a gamer. Yeah, I've shot a few bots in UT2004, I've played FFIX, I have a general inkling of how WoW works, and I like Zelda, but... a lot of PA's jokes made me feel... alienated. Like it might be funny if I had even a remote knowledge of what they were talking about. Some might say that PA simply went over my head because it was a more of a hardcore gamer comic. But I've never had a strip lose me because I wasn't, essentially, a member of its demographic. I get CAD and VGCats, which are about video games, at least in theory. I get OOTS, which is rife with tabletop roleplaying references. Even The Splendid Everlasting, which is basically a political cartoon referring to all kinds of weird political events, makes me laugh. But when I was reading PA, I felt consistently lost. Like I was missing something before, or that there should be some follow up to explain. And, of course, a lot of the strips, I understood. Take the above strip as an example. I understand it, and you can understand it even without having ever had a previous encounter with Kingdom Hearts. It stands alone, and can be found funny by anyone with a sense of humor. But... some of the others I simply found... incomprehensible.

Another thing which was adressed slightly in the debate at Websnark was whether or not CAD and PA are really comparable.

And in my reading, I have become strongly of the opinion that they are not. They look extremely similar at the outset, but really they are two very different comics, despite appearances.

And... that's my two cents. Hope you liked it, because it represents a significant investment of time. And if you don't like it... *Shrug.* Who cares? I'm tired, and I'm going to bed.

_Kneefers

Sigh. Alright, fine. Cover me, I'm going in.

2005-12-08T19:52:00.000-08:00

(From Websnark. Click for... well, there really isn't an image. Just... click on the link for hardc0re discussionage.)

You know what? Screw it.

Hear ye, hear ye, come one and come all to bear witness: I am going to read Penny Arcade. The whole *#&@ thing. Every strip in the archives.

Never mind that I'm in the middle of rereading RPGWorld at the moment.

Never mind that finals are coming up.

Never mind that I have almost fifty comics in my Grab Bag that I still need to check on at some point.

Never mind that I'm still working my way through It's Walky!

I am gonna read Penny Arcade. The whole archives this time, and none of this get-one-year-through-the-archives-and-drop-it nonsense I am going to read the whole thing, and if I don't like it, then...

Dunno what I'll do. Actually, I'm betting it will grow on me like an evil mold and I'll end up at least chuckling a bit. Because the thing is... see...

*Sigh.* PA is like Achewood or Daily Dinosaur Comics or Superosity to me. They're ethereal, phantasmal, floating above me just a liiiiiiiiitle out of my reach. They look good, but when I jump up for them and just can't do it I just look like an idiot. I want to like them. Eric likes them. Lots of people like them. Why don't I? I like webcomics, right? I have an impressively sized trawl with some good stuff but mostly cluttered with halfway decent comics. So... why is PA such a big deal?

I don't know. So I'm going to try again. (For the record, this is the fifth time I've tried to do a serious PA archive crawl. Fifth. No, I'm not exagerrating, that's an actual figure.)

But I'll eat my socks if I like it better than Ctrl+Alt+Delete.

Smack

2005-12-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

(From Narbonic. Click for full sized EEEEEE!)

What I'm doing today should have been done quite a long time ago.

What I'm doing today is snarking Narbonic.

Now, you see, I should have snarked Narbonic a while ago. Because this strip, in case you don't follow Narbonic for some strange reason, is not the strip from today. It's from a while ago, several weeks, in fact. But also, it's really funny. And it reminded me what I love about Narbonic. So I'm snarking it, dangit, and there's nothing you can do to stop me.

*Sticks out tongue.*

...Anyhoo. This strip reminds me, as I said, of the reasons that I love Narbonic. As any Websnark junkie could tell you, Narbonic is, in Eric Burns' opinion, the best comic currently going, which is quite an honor, and it doesn't come undeserved. I think that Eric bases this opinion on one very important fact: Narbonic has a very complex backstory, but anyone coming right into the story can still laugh at any individual strip.

And this strip, essentially, embodies that very well. It's hysterical, quite frankly. (I've been going around for the past two weeks saying "Work mode off!" to people. Then they give me funny looks, but that's what it's all about, right?) Anyone just simply coming along could have no idea about this situation (it was caused because of Dave's latent mad scientist abilities because he tried to fix the microwave and it started spewing extradimensional entities with beaks and lots of eyes, and the fact that Helen has promised to let him go if she can't cure him, which is now complicated by the fact that they are now a couple) and still giggle about it. "Okay, you've noticed." "So do you have an Allen wrench, or what?" It's just funny.

Kudos to Shaenon Garrity. This is good stuff, folks.

...Woah

2005-11-28T12:04:00.000-08:00

(From Questionable Content. Click for full sized... full sized... holy crap...)

See... everybody knew that this was going to happen eventually. It was discussed at some length, among other things QC, at Websnark a couple of weeks back. We just... I dunno. We didn't think it would be like... "like interrupting a delicate waltz with a sledgehammer to the knee," as she says.

Today's Questionable Content just... just floored me, man. That's... I mnean, holy crap on a crutch I didn't see this coming.

D00d. I seriously don't know what to say.

Except that I am seriously looking forward to this storyline. In case you haven't figured it out in the course of this post, I'm a serious fan of QC. NEED TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS...

Life comes in two flavors: regular, and Cinnamon!

2005-11-23T10:02:00.000-08:00

Holy Crap there are a lot of good strips today.

A couple of days ago it was dry as a bone. Everything was simply one more day of comics. That happens sometimes. But today. I mean geez.

I'd want to talk about today's Sam and Fuzzy, because he just threw in another plot twist, but I just did that.

Today's Two Lumps made me laugh out loud, as did the current The Order Of The Stick (I took "Craft Disturbing Mental Image" as my feat last level) and the current Shortpacked!

I like how Starslip Crisis is coming back around to Vaporware (Today's strip makes me believe that it wasn't just a cameo after all; he might actually be a recurring returning character from CxN, the thought of which makes me gleeble with happiness.)

Something Positive made me swallow hard as we found out that Davan's father has told him about that.

Something about today's Questionable Content (especially that first panel) just makes me want to grab Marten and Faye by the shoulders, shake them, and yell "Look, just admit you're in love already!" (moreso than usual, I mean.)

Suzy Gee is graduating. And essentially, she's giving up on Gav and everything else.

And I just talked about CAD ten minutes ago.

There are some days when reading through my trawl just makes me so happy I want to hug somebody, and today is one of those days. I'm still grinning.

This is what it's all about, folks.

In one piece and not being chased by the authorities

2005-11-23T08:36:00.000-08:00

(From Ctrl+Alt+Del. Click for full sized Come on, you know I was going to snark it eventually.)

Today's strip made me do a double take. And, in the immortal words of Lewis Black... "I am confused."

Because CAD, as a rule, does not make me do double takes. CAD is wonderful. CAD is hilarious. But CAD doesn't grab me because of its epic storytelling, it grabs me because it's just so frikkin' funny.

But, you see... there's this thing with Emma that's been happening in CAD lately. It was just another little storyline, like we've been having the whole time. But they've always just been silly. Even that time when Josh tried to steal Winter-een-mas from Ethan and Ethan crashed through the roof and there was this big dramatic fight that took four strips... it was epic, and we wanted to find out what happened next, but through it all, it was still very CAD. In other words, it was comic strip storytelling. There was a storyline, but it was all for comedic effect and remained very silly throughout.

This storyline with Emma struck me the same way as any other storyline did. He met the girl, liked her, dated her, she clashed with Ethan (for other reasons), there was some epic quarreling, and a good time was had by all. But then this happened, and threw me for a loop. Then, on the very next strip Ethan heard Emma apparently plotting to kill Lucas.

To kill him.

(And of course, Ethan tried to warn him, but Lucas didn't believe him, because, frankly, nobody believes someone who has ever needed a Metroid drip or held up a sign that said Will Suck At Tekken For Fallout.

Personally, I wouldn't either.)

But it was still funny. It was still silly. It was still CAD. The whole thing with Lucas slowly starting to get paranoid about the rock climbing and the skydiving and even the hot chocolate was just... Lucas getting paranoid.

Then today Emma pulled out the gun.

And I'm all like "WTF, mate?" Because... she can't really be trying to kill him, can she? Because... that sort of thing doesn't happen in CAD. It's not the type of atmosphere where people might really die. Ethan has been hit with an arrow and stabbed by a ninja and choked by an ogre, but that was... different. If Emma shoots Lucas it's not like he's just going to pop right back up in the next strip. That was back when there was gag-a-day stuff going on, and CAD has more backstory than that now.

But it looks to me like she really is trying to kill him.

What's going to happen? I dunno. But Tim Buckley has me hooked, man. Hooked.

I feel so used...

2005-11-22T09:15:00.000-08:00

(From El Goonish Shive. Click for full sized "Hey look over there! A shiny new change of topic!")

No real snark on this one. I just wanted to gleeble hysterically over the fact that the demonic duck is back!

(This demonic duck, by the way, is a very old convention in EGS, which is just one of those things. Y'see, way back in 2002, Nanase distracted Elliot by saying "...hey, is that a demonic duck of some sort?" Which would have just been the old 'look out behind you' trick. Except that there really was a demonic duck there. And so now, anytime someone needs a distraction, the demonic duck seems to turn up, though we haven't seen him in a while.)

(But now, Dan Shive has brought the demonic duck back. Which, when I read the latest EGS, got quite a bit "w00t!" out of me. In the school library. I got funny looks, but there was no way I was going to try to explain. There are some instances where you just know that no one would really understand.)

(And actually, this is a bit of a segue into something I want to talk about, which is something I call, conveniently, The Demonic Duck Device. It's something that many webcomics do, and it consists of putting in some small, repeating character, such as the demonic duck, or even just a phrase, and when used correctly, can be extremely funny.)

(For the record, Dan Shive uses it correctly.)

Now I only have to post bail for you ten more times before we're even!

2005-11-21T14:44:00.000-08:00

(From Sam and Fuzzy. Click for full sized PLOT TWIST!)

First let me say a few words about Sam and Fuzzy.

It's funny. It always has been (which absolutely thrills me in a webcomic, by the way, and which I call Elf Only Inn syndrome: when a webcomic comes right out of the gate roaring in the direction that it wants to go, grabs you, and sucks you in, and you never have any doubts as to whether or not you are going to like it by the time you've read the first week's worth of strips in the archive.) I found Sam and Fuzzy on a link from Ctrl+Alt+Del, and the first strip made me laugh. The first strip. When something like that happens, that bodes well. That bodes very well, folks.

But anyway, Sam and Fuzzy used to be a lot more random than what it is now. There was always continuity, of sorts, but as the strip progressed some of the storylines got more and more involved. Sam started having more of a love life, which was referred to a lot. Fuzzy got involved in the ninja mafia, which had become a recurrent theme. Carlyle entered the strip in a physical way (this is my very favorite S&F strip, by the way) and it ventured into a bit of life philosophy. (Also, on a totally different note, Sam Logan's art has just been impressing the heck out of me lately, especially in this strip, which could merit it's own rant about the use of shadows and Frank-Miller-esque silhouette shots for a good while. The man knows how to use black and white.)

In fact, this sort of thing has been happening quite a lot lately, in Sam and Fuzzy, and to be perfectly frank, I think it's bloody brill. The storylines have been intertwining (the ninja mafia wants to kidnap Sam; please don't ask why, as it involves whatever used to posess the fridge in a very convoluted and hysterical way that I don't feel like going in to), which adds more depth and complexity to what's going on, though it never loses its comedic edge.

So really, I feel like I should have seen something like this coming. Except... it's so random. It's a perfectly legitimate story twist, but it's something that never would have occured to me, because it's not a plot-changing revelation. It's just one of those things that makes you widen your eyes and say "Woah. Candice is Sexxica?"

It's awesome stuff. And of course now I want to see what happens, which is the primary goal of any webcomic: to keep you coming back.

Crime, hatred, and the Spice Girls.

2005-11-18T13:43:00.000-08:00

(From Roomies! Click for hardcore 1998 action!)

I was holding off on reading It's Walky! for several reasons, but the primary was the size of the archives.

Let me explain.

Ever since I have been reading webcomics, I have always felt as if I should start at the beginning. Whatever the medium, what has always really mattered to me about any sort of art (even pictures) is the stories that they tell. Whatever else may be said about me, I am a total and complete sucker for a good story.

Being obsessive about stories has its good points. It's fun, obviously. (It is one of the reasons that Sluggy and CRfH make me overflow with joy, by the way; because of the slow evolution of the characters and how all the plot threads come together.)

But it also means that I have the almost OCD desire to start at the very beginning. I have to know the whole story, and there's no better way to do that is to read the archives in their entirety, back to front.

Roomies! starts on September 8, 1997.

Nineteen ninety-effing-seven.

That's a long time ago, gang, especially in the webcomicking world.

So I'm gonna be awhile. And after perusing the first strip or two I wasn't too impressed with the art, but then again, I know it gets better (I've read Shortpacked!) and it kind of pinged my CRfH senses. But still, I knew that there probably was going to have to put some effort into those early days.

But this strip (which came out in January of 1998, by the way) made me laugh.

Let's talk about what makes it work. On the surface, the wording is just funny. "Not so fast, scum!" "Okay, I'll go slowly then." It's a classic spoof-a-cliche type joke, and it just works.

But what also gives this strip its funny is, of course, the drawing. It's the way that you can just tell that Dust Bunny's response completely throws RoboVac for a loop. He's looming in the background, looking all menacing, then suddenly, his expression wavers. He does what looks like the robotic equivalent of raising an eyebrow in the third panel. Then, in the fourth, he kind of looks off to the side (Uh... what do I do? Line? Anybody?) Then he just says... "'Kay." Because he doesn't know what to say.

It's funny already, and that's a good sign. I'll try to keep you all posted on how I feel on my way on through the archives, assuming I make it.

Wish me luck...

OK, so... here's the thing...

2005-11-17T20:32:00.000-08:00

...I'm doing a lot of stuff, at the moment.

Some of this is non-webcomics related (I'm doing NaNoWriMo and am currently about two days [3 thousand words] behind, as well as trying to write college admissions essays that which need to be high quality and make me sound smart, intelligent, witty, sexy, etc.)

And some is indeed webcomic related (I'm rereading the CRfH archives, because I was checking out the Comixpedia.org wiki article and was shocked at how much I didn't remember, as well as doing my best to work my way through the Roomies!/It's Walky!/Joyce and Walky! archives [I'll let you know what I think when I'm done, though it already looks like I'm going to like it.])

So yeah, the miscellaneous snarks might slow down, but this is not because I do not like y'all. (All... three of you who read this).

Just thought I'd toss that out there.

We Understand j00: Why I Read Megatokyo

2005-11-15T14:49:00.000-08:00

(From Megatokyo. Click for full sized You Had Me And You… Still Have Me, Apparently.)

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of it.

You know what I mean. It.

It is not Megatokyo. It is not Fred Gallagher or the fact that Rodney Caston left or anything else like that.

It is the fact that everybody either loves or hates Megatokyo.

“ooh it’s megatokyo! Can I touch it? It’s teh aw3s0m3s7 (Im 1337 btw) webcomci EVAR!!!”

“What are you talking about? Megatokyo is teh suxc0re. Everyone knows that it’s massively overrated and slow. All you Otaku dorks make me want to puke. GAH. Get a life, luser.”

These two lines basically sum up every online sentiment I've ever seen expressed about Megatokyo. Even with a long moment to reflect, I cannot think of a single neutral review I've ever read about Megatokyo. Choose your side, young hero, for this is war.

William G did a review about a week ago in which he kept a log of his thoughts as he read the comic's archives, most of which consisted of long lines of Z's and a detailed analysis of Piro's art style and used phrases such as "misleading intensity" and "unfinished."

A while back, Eric Burns did a You Had Me And You Lost Me for Megatokyo, in which he laid down a very thoughtful, insightful review on why he no longer read it. Therein was laid out, in incredible detail, an analysis about job responsibility to one's audience and and subtle changes that took place in the humor style after Caston's departure and its effect on the webcomic as an entity.

Shaenon Garrity analyzed, (it's quoted in William G's review) about fanboys and how Megatokyo has capitalized on the solidification of the otaku fantasy of Japan as a type of "fantasy world where everything is attuned to their desires."

And the thing is? They're probably right. All the analyzing and the deep meanings and prognosises and everything they've said, it's spot on.

I don't think Megatokyo is a particularly awesome comic. But I read it, and (here's the kicker, are you ready for it?) I like it.

Let me repeat that. Because it bears repeating.

I. Like. Megatokyo.

I have read the archives all the way through, front to back, as is my custom, and honestly I really don't see what all the fuss is about. Yes, it moves very slowly, and yes, it lost me a time or two in its story, and yes, it not having a characters page annoyed me, and yes, I had tremendous trouble telling the characters apart. I don't consider it close to on par with Sluggy or CRfH or Narbonic or Something Positive or CAD or any of the other dozen or so webcomics that I consider to be the really good ones; the ones that are my favorites. In short, yes, it is not good enough to merit its through the roof popularity, which, I think, is part of the reason for the ravagings that it has taken from lots of other people.

But... and this is important... it is still good.

Seraphim is funny, with her glasses that sit on her nose and her sardonic glare. Boo is ridiculously cute and a lot more useful than anyone gives him credit for. Largo is crazy and likes in his own fantasy world, but he still has somewhat of an inkling of what is really going on, and, especially in the most recent chapter, has a profound effect on the story and on Piro. Junpei the Ninja (who is my favorite character, by the way) is just frikkin' awesome. So help me, I like how Largo speaks in leet and how Asmodeous plots deviously to bring Piro and Largo to moral ruin and even all the pathetic romantic subplot that Piro has going on, even though I can't keep up with who we're supposed to be rooting for him to fall in love with.

I just like it. I don't go in for the deep meanings or the subtextual otaku fantasies or the "unfinished" art style. I read it because, though there are better webcomics, there are also a whole lot that are a lot worse. I'd be willing to predict that were Megatokyo more of a fringe comic, that critics wouldn't be so hard on it.

What it comes down to, in the end, is that you should judge a webcomic on whether you like it. Eric and William and lots of others didn't like it.

I, however, do. And I believe that, despite what many people say, it still deserves a try from you, gentle reader. Tru5t m3.

Keep on truckin, Fred. You have me, and losing doesn't seem too likely.

Eat hot suppression, psycho-bears!!!

2005-11-15T11:36:00.000-08:00

(From Schlock Mercenary. Click for little bit late snark.)

Yeah, yeah, I know. This isn't today's strip. This is the strip from a couple of days ago. And I really should have snarked it then, but I didn't really have time. And besides, the subject is not exactly this strip specifically, but this storyline as a whole and, to be frank, Schlock Mercenary as a whole.
but more importantly
Schlock Mercenary was one of the first strips that I read, coming in third, just a little bit after 8-Bit Theater and Ctrl+Alt+Del, but more importantly Schlock Mercenary was the strip that gave me the hunger. Let me explain.

I have been reading 8-Bit for a very long time, probably as far back as 2003, if I remember correctly, because a friend of mine was reading it and recommended it. CAD came soon after, for the same reason. But for quite a time, I was happy with just that. I liked those webcomics quite a bit, but they were just sitting there in my bookmarks, taking up tabs, and were just one more thing to do along with Red vs. Blue and Homestarrunner.

But then something happened. In November of 2004, a friend told me about Schlock Mercenary. And, in perusing the archives, something took hold of me that still hasn't let go to this day. I wanted more. Specifically, I wanted more webcomics. I devoured a good portion of Keenspot from the dropdown menu on Schlock, and found Websnark through when Howard Tayler linked it.

I owe a lot to Schlock Mercenary, I know. But it's been a while since I've read the archives, and sometimes I get a nagging voice in the back of my head that says that the only reason that I'm so crazy about Schlock is because it was first.

Then comes along something like today's strip, and I remember that Schlock Mercenary is funny.

It's funny. And what's more is the way that it balances the funny and the serious. Because, you see, when you do a stupid buddy comic or something similar, there's always a feeling that the whole mess is just crazy hijinks and will work out in the end. It's just kids having fun.

In Schlock there are crazy hijinks as well. That's what makes it funny. But it's because they're a hardcore mercenary squad that trawls about the galaxy blowing stuff up, kicking butt, and taking names. At it's most basic, it's a fairly serious subject. People die, (or at least get blown up by incediary grenades and lose a great amount of their mass, and therefore also most of their memory, but that's a different subject.) They kill people, in reality. But the humor is all about your point of view, really.

And the thing about this particular strip is that it nails that. Nails it. Because, you see... we know something here that neither Tagon nor Pranger knows: what happened in the alternate timeline.

(If you haven't read it, by the way, go away and come back when you've finished reading the archives. All of them. Now. I'll wait for you. You done? Good. Let's rock.)

See, in the alternate timeline, the band of mercenaries led by Colonol Pranger (the brown-skinned hammerhead-shark-headed looking fellow) were hired by the opposite side of things. And Tagon died. It was some serious junk.

But fortunately, Kevyn was able to travel back to the past, preemptively outbid Pranger's would-be employer, and set things right.

Here in this last bit of the ending of the storyline, when Pranger found out that the Toughs now have posession of his old ship, he smiled. Which sort of scared me. Pranger had something up his sleeve. What was it? Because Pranger and his group are serious business.

Then today's strip comes up, and we find out that he was playing a joke on Tagon.

A joke.

Here I was thinking something nasty was in store, and it was just wacky hijinks!

It makes me want to shoot something with my plasma cannon with the ominous hum. (EAT HOT SUPPRESSION, PSYCHO-BEARS!!!) But that's what it's all about. Howard Tayler played me like a CD, man. He gave me ups and downs, made me bite my nails and sigh with relief.

He made me laugh.

I like this strip. Very much so. And if you're not reading it, you're cold missing out on some seriously funny stuff.

It's a Magical World. Or something like that. You know what I mean.

2005-11-11T06:23:00.000-08:00

(From Checkerboard Nightmare Click for full sized IT'S OVER!!!)

I feel, here at the end of all things (or at least the end of things CxN), like I should say a few things about Checkerboard Nightmare. CxN was one that I got into fairly late, for me, at least, and at first it didn't make much of an impression. It was weird, broke the fourth wall like crazy, and the story... holy cow. Is there a story?

Not really, I quickly figured out. But then, it started to grow on me. Because, like Goats, it has the concept of taking the weird stuff that Kris Straub thinks up and just putting them down and they're funny because they're just so random. This was "What part of 'Ninja' didn't you understand?" and the overclocked lemon and the panties of potency all over again.

I found that I liked Chex. I felt for Lyle and how he had to put up with him. Vaporware was just perfect as the token robot of the strip. And the rest of the cast was just great.

Just the idea of a character named Schrodinger the Quantum Cat is something that just makes me giggle. The Unraveled is a sentient godlike fetus, and "if that doesn't make you laugh," to quote Josh Sortelli, "it will probably make you cry." I started going around saying things like "Don't Drugs" and confusing my friends. Heathrow and Smacky (which is fun to type, by the way. Heathrow and Smacky) doing their whole vaudeville thing was just irresistable. The hard action squad parodies made me laugh like crazy, because they were spot on. And Dr. Hot.

In other words, it was funny.

And now it's ending.

That is, it's really ending (unless Kristofer Straub is pulling our leg in a rather gigantic way, which I wouldn't put past him. In that case I'm going to look kind stupid, aren' t I?) not just fake ending, which it has done before. Four times in one week.

This is really the end. And, in the true spirit of the strip, they say what I thought. That they're going out in the way that they came in. It's Chex, and it's Lyle. They're standing there, Chex says something stupid, Lyle rebutts. Chex says something crazy.

And the punchline is perfect. Plus, it's a Calvin and Hobbes reference.

If I gave buscuits. Kristofer Straub would get one.

And it would most certainly be one of the tasty-tastiest.

Hats off to Mr. Straub, ladies and gentlemen. He made it through, and we liked it. I, for one, am sorry to see CxN go, and that means that he succeeded.

My only complaint is that he doesn't say "Piro's here already." That would just complete it, y'know?

2005-11-10T09:31:00.001-08:00

(From GPF, Click for full sized guest-strippage.)

I oughta read It's Walky!

And I'm going to tell you why.

First of all, let me say that I trust Eric Burns' tastes. Really, I do. The man's site introduced me to Sluggy Freelance and College Roomies From Hell!!! and all manner of other wonderful stuff such as that.

So in my early days hanging around the 'snark, I didn't give the You Had Me And You Lost Me section much thought. I hadn't read any of the three strips it listed, and it didn't really matter to me what Eric was or was not reading. If I've never read the strip, I didn't read the snarks. That was my rule. No spoiling for if I wanted to read it later.

Then, one day, a friend was over at my house and he goes "Dude! I have a new webcomic for you!"

"Oh yeah?" Say I. "What is it?"

"It's called General Protection Fault. GPF." He replies.

My brow wrinkles. "I've heard of that." I say. "I've heard it's good at the beginning but... drops off at the end or something like that."

He shakes his head solemnly. "Just read it."

So I read it, and found that he was right. I loved it. (Which taught me, by the way, that just because someone else doesn't like something doesn't mean I won't.)

I see it's faults, certainly. I've read the YHMAYLM, and I see many of the points it makes. But I still like it. It's still fun to read, and that's the whole point, I think, so I've always felt just a little uneasy about the whole thing.

So today's GPF strip by David Willis? It makes me giggle. It's funny. David Willis is funny, apparently, (I already like Shortpacked!).

So... yeah. Why not? Here's Walky, here I come...

THE FIRST POST, THAT'S WHY IT'S IN ALL CAPS

2005-11-09T14:27:00.000-08:00

OK, this blog, Eyeballing It, is going to require some explanation, and there doesn't really seem to be a much better place to do that than the first post. So... here is what could be known as my mission statement (or maybe the ground rules), in point form, for your convenience.

1.) When I am here, I will most likely talk about webcomics. They're the point and focus of this blog, (and basically my personal life is none of your bussiness anyway). This, however, does not mean that I am qualified to make any sort of in depth-analysis or review about these webcomics. I just ramble, and that is what this is, rambling about the webcomics and what I think about them. This blog is called "Eyeballing It" and that is just what I intend to do: Give my impressions and just talk about the webcomics.

2.) Everything that is here, including the not-really-reviews, (henceforth referred to as "Snarks," because Websnark has already infected just about every webcomicer's mind out there) is my opinion. You got that, you little flamers? Repeat after me: *I Will Not Freak Out Over Kneefer's Webcomics Opinions* We understand each other? Good.

3.) I will update when I have something to say. I have no update schedule. I'm a busy guy. Deal with it.

4.) If you have some sort of reply/rebuttal/flame, feel free to leave me a comment. That's what it's there for.

5.) Yeah, it's another commentary blog. Do we really need one? Probably not, but I'm writing anyway. If this is too much webcomics criticism for your tiny brain to handle on top of all those other sites then you have my permission to stop reading. Go and hang around the PA forums and complain about how I'm ripping off Eric Burns or something.

Now go away. There's nothing else here yet.

(But there will be, oh yes... there will be...)