I didn’t get the daily paper after I went away to college,
but the late 90s and early 2000s brought with them the birth of webcomics. Unconstrained by the need to fill three or
four little black and white boxes in a daily paper, by the need to appeal to
everyone, or to be family friendly, dozens of artists and authors began to
produce comedy and compelling stories online.
One of the earliest and, to date, most successful comics has
been Penny Arcade, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated
by Mike Krahulik. Dedicated to
videogame culture and filled with a dedicated irreverence, the comic has grown
since its debut in 1998 to attract 3.5 million weekly readers and hosts a
yearly game convention. Penny Arcade stuck to the basic format
of the newspaper comic strip, but succeeded with writing and art that attracted
a niche audience and did it well.
A similar pattern can be seen in xkcd, a comic that mainly relies on stick
figure art, but focuses on the intersection of science and pop culture. Randall Munroe, a roboticist and computer
programmer at NASA, started drawing xkcd
in his spare time and it expanded to become a full time job. He continues to write new comics three times
a week, but in addition to the traditional “boxes with words and pictures”
approach, he also uses his programming skills to create interactive games on
his site and has expanded several ideas to book length projects. Thing
Explainer (2015) offers explanations of complicated scientific ideas using
only the thousand most common words in English and What If?: Serious Scientific
Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (2014) is just what it sounds like.
On the social sciences end of the spectrum, Kate Beaton
takes vignettes from medieval Europe to modern Canada and transforms them into
hilarious but educational little slices of history. One of my favorites on both
fronts is about Australian
Gen. Sir John Monash. I’d never
heard of Monash before, but the comic shows him responding to a critical British
officer during the first World War saying, “Yes, let’s look at what you’ve been
doing so far. Ah, I see, some losing
here, some dying in the trenches over here.”
Now I want to know more! Beaton
does most of her work online, but Hark! A Vagrant! and two other collections of
her comics are available in book form at the library. She’s also written a couple of children’s
books and is currently producing a graphic novel, Ducks, about her time working in the tar sands of Alberta.
Other webcomics are more focused on long, slice of life
storytelling and provide years of narrative and character development. Two that I’ve read for a long time are Octopus
Pie by Meredith Gran and Questionable Content by Jeph
Jacques. Both feature art and language
that could never appear in a newspaper, but the lives of the twenty-somethings
in the comics are all the more compelling because their relationships and
conflicts seem more honest and open.
Questionable Content is particularly notable for dealing frankly with
depression, substance abuse, and LGBT relationships. And there are also funny, cake-eating robots,
all in full color, five days a week.
Science fiction and fantasy make for popular subjects for
long-running webcomics as well. Gunnerkrigg
Court by Tom Siddell features some of the best artwork online and an
exciting, funny, and touching Harry
Potter-esque story about a young girl attending a mysterious school that
blends advanced technology and magic. Homestuck
by Andrew Hussie stands out as the comic that makes the most of its online
format, including interactive storytelling, music, and even short films. The convoluted narrative follows a group of
teenage friends who get sucked into a video game world and face time travel
paradoxes and aliens threatening the Earth.
All of these comics have some element of humor in them, but have
some other hook to really pull you in – whether that’s a focus on a subject
that interests you or a long, ongoing story.
Some, though, are more inspired by classics like Krazy Kat or The Far Side
where the joke is everything. Dinosaur Comics
by Ryan North takes this to an extreme by featuring the same art for every
strip, but different dialog between dinosaurs that exchange quips about
language, pop culture, and social expectations.
Dorothy Gambrell’s Cat and Girl follows the title characters around their bizarre
bohemian existence while they ask questions like: what’s the meaning of life?
why is poverty so intractable? how did I get this flamethrower? and what should
I have for breakfast?
Whether you want a short chapter of a long story every day,
or just a quick laugh first thing in the morning, webcomics are a fun online
option. I started with just one or two,
recommended by more traditional authors, but quickly followed links to a list
of more than a dozen pages that I visit at least once a week. Search for these titles online or try out the
print collections for many of them here at the library!
