My mistake, if I can call it that, was trust - to think a smile was a smile and not a show of teeth. - - - All this week, tor.com is publishing
The Situation, a comic based on
a story by everyone's favorite Jeff VanderMeer, and illustrated by
Eric Orchard.
[more inside]
posted by Think_Long
on Jan 25, 2012 -
20 comments
On 11/11/11,
Homestuck entered
Act 6 (of 7). This follows
an explosive 13-minute finale to Act 5, which brought down its host
Newgrounds on the day of its unveiling and was released with
a fantastic companion soundtrack. In the two and a half years since it was created, Homestuck has become a full-blown epic, approaching the length of War and Peace, but with hours of
accompanying animation,
several interactive games, a
loop machine, and a baffling 19 soundtrack albums, ranging from
VG-inspired soundtrack to
jazzy mood music to
solo piano to
parody kids TV show soundtrack. It also has an obsession with
Nic Cage and
Betty Crocker, and comes with a metawebcomic called
Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff which is in and of itself pure gold. Intimidated? You probably should be! But it's hilarious, epic, and surprisingly addictive, so if you've got nothing else on your plate, you can either
start from the beginning, or, if it seems too daunting, you can learn...
[more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich
on Nov 17, 2011 -
66 comments
Sick. Parts
11,
12,
13, and
14.
[NSFW] An incredibly dark, raw, self-aware, and often insightful look into the depressed mind of a cartoonist evaluating his life.
posted by spiderskull
on Oct 29, 2011 -
29 comments
Armstrong is an online graphic novel in 3 parts (with more potentially to come), each on a long-scrolling 'infinite canvas'.
1,
2,
3. It has everything, Superheroes, Zombies, Pirates, Cowboys and Cooties. Cooties? Well, it is set in a playground full of 4th graders.
[more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop
on Oct 28, 2011 -
7 comments
Tarol Hunt, author of webcomic
Goblins, was recently
informed that the house he and his family rent had been allowed to fall into foreclosure by its owners, forcing him to make a choice: raise thousands of dollars to buy the home, or be evicted. On July 10th, Thunt
appealed to his fans as a last resort:
Raise $30,000 by August 20th, as part of his
Tempts Fate spin-off, and Tempts Fate will survive the most fiendish, dangerous adventure he's ever faced.
His fans raised the money in
four days.
posted by Silverdragonanon
on Jul 15, 2011 -
35 comments
Larry Gonick is a veteran American cartoonist best known for his delightful comic-book guides to science and history, many of which have previews online. Chief among them is his long-running
Cartoon History of the Universe (later
The Cartoon History of the Modern World), a sprawling multi-volume opus documenting everything from the Big Bang to the Bush administration. Published over the course of three decades, it takes a truly global view -- its time-traveling Professor thoroughly explores not only familiar topics like Rome and World War II but the oft-neglected stories of Asia and Africa, blending caricature and myth with careful scholarship (cited by
fun illustrated bibliographies) and tackling even the most obscure events
with intelligence and wit. This savvy satire carried over to Gonick's
Zinn-by-way-of-
Pogo chronicle
The Cartoon History of the United States, along with a bevy of
Cartoon Guides to other topics, including
Genetics, Computer Science, Chemistry, Physics, Statistics, The Environment, and (yes!)
Sex. Gonick has also maintained a few sideprojects, such as
a webcomic look at Chinese invention,
assorted math comics (
previously), the
Muse magazine mainstay
Kokopelli & Co. (featuring the shenanigans of his
"New Muses"), and
more. See also
these lengthy interview snippets, linked
previously. Want more? Amazon links to the complete oeuvre inside!
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 6, 2011 -
29 comments
Romantically Apocalyptic is a morbidly funny webcomic from Russo-Canadian digital artist
Vitaly Alexius (
interview,
gallery). Set in the
starkly diaphanous wreckage of post-nuclear Manhattan, it follows
an eccentric contingent of Soviet soldiers as they poke through the detritus of the past and contend with the mutants, cultists, aliens, and other horrors that inhabit the ruins. The comic's
striking art style is the result of an arduous process, using
"Photoshop, live actors, dead actors, sexy assistants, greenscreen, a camera, and a Wacom tablet" to composite "6 years worth of textures: 1 terabyte of stock footage, shot in real abandoned, forgotten places of our world." This multimedia ambition has burgeoned into plans for a
community-powered animated/live-action web series (
teaser video,
animatic,
fanart). While waiting for that to come together, be sure to spend some time on
Kimmo Lemetti's excellent
Gone With the Blastwave (
previously), a very similar webcomic project with a more subdued palette that turned out nearly fifty pages of richly-illustrated post-apocalyptic humor before going on indefinite hiatus.
posted by Rhaomi
on Mar 3, 2011 -
18 comments
The Word made another helper from fire to be its hands as it toiled on its creations. The Word gave them free will. Although they did not know their name, they were called the Jinn... Iblis, a webcomic take on the Islamic tempter figure by
Kelli Nelson.
[more inside]
posted by kid ichorous
on Jan 14, 2011 -
15 comments
Forming (NSFW - cartoon nudity) is a webcomic by
Jesse Moynihan (NSFW) that tells the history of the evolution of man via the machinations of various alien entities whose familiar names (and unfamiliar stories) have been recorded in various religions throughout time.
[more inside]
posted by lyam
on Dec 16, 2010 -
24 comments
PORTRAIT-DEX! Cartoonists create Pokémon self-portraits, with all three evolved forms. Featuring, among other fine artists,
Scott Kurtz (PVP),
Box Brown (Everything Dies, Bellen!),
Anthony Clark (Nedroid),
Aaron Diaz (Dresden Codak), and
Steve Wolfhard (Cat Rackham), who also runs the project.
posted by Gator
on Oct 27, 2010 -
13 comments
Caring about something is about taking the pain and the joy. The pain is hard. Taking the pain, facing it, dealing with it are the ways I think we can show we really care. That we know we care. --
Bob, the story of a dog.
posted by Gator
on Sep 18, 2010 -
16 comments
Bringing It All Back Home. The relatively long-running (
since 2006) webcomic
Bellen! will come to a close in early September as its author
goes on to
other things (pdf). In preparation for the end of the series, the creator is taking "a longer eye-opening look into the origin of Bellen!" which dispenses with the strips regular
old timey-yellowing paper style "because there are no more veneers in Bellen! it’s the pure unadulterated truth from here on out." An interesting look at the creative process in the digital age.
posted by ND¢
on Aug 13, 2010 -
11 comments
Andrew Hussie's latest comic enterprise at
MSPaintAdventures.com (
previously),
Homestuck, has been hurtling along at a truly absurd pace. Designed as a pastiche and parody of videogames in general and text-based graphical adventures in particular, updates are structured as a hypothetical game's response to your typed commands, such as "
Examine room." The art may not look like much up front, but it enables AH to maintain his multiple-updates-every-day pace for weeks at a time; it also lets him modulate the quality where appropriate for the storytelling. It's sort of a multimedia extravaganza: the story is told using
static and
animated gifs,
narrative text, dialogue presented as
instant messaging chat transcripts (click the
Show Pesterlog button to see the text),
flash-based static animations with
music and/or
sound effects,
interactive vignettes
reminiscent of
console RPG-
style combat, interactive
sound mixers and
animation compendia,
GameFAQs walkthroughs, an
enormous hyperlinked synopsis presented by the author himself during
a highly indulgent self-insertion into the story,
multiple webcomics within webcomics, and in at least two cases,
an entire miniature action/
adventure game.
[more inside]
posted by jsnlxndrlv
on Aug 10, 2010 -
22 comments
Susan Bell, mild-mannered secretary, thinks that pirates, space aliens, and lesbians are only found in pulp adventure novels. Until she is
Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space! And finds out that she's one of them!
You don't have to be a lesbian, a pirate or a space alien to read this web comic, but it helps.
posted by CrunchyFrog
on Jul 23, 2010 -
22 comments
