Web comics to check out

general
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I thought we had a topic where we could list what web comics we’re reading, but maybe that was a long time ago on a forum far far away. So to make sure we’ve got one, I’m creating one.

The comic is Breaking Cat News, found at GoComics. The premise is a trio of cats reporting on events in their household. You have Lupin, who is the Lead Anchor and sports reporter; Elvis, a field reporter and Weather Cat; and Puck, also a field reporter and focuses on Feline Interest stories. The artist, Georgia Dunn, appears in the comic as The Woman, her husband is The Man, and their son is The Toddler. They also have a baby daughter, but I don’t know what she’s called in the comic.

Right now, The Toddler is sick, but Puck is braving contamination from who knows what horrible germs to keep The Toddler company. I’m not sure if this is normal, but The Toddler’s right eye is green and his left is red.

The background on how the comic got started is that one night, one of the cats knocked something off a shelf. The other two cats immediately ran over to investigate. As Georgia was cleaning up, she started acting like they were reporting on the event, creating dialogue for them. After quite a bit of positive feedback, she put her artistic talents into use and created the comic.

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I’ll bite:

Questionable Content - SFW - set in the extreme near future but after the AI singularity, follows the normal lives of characters both human and robotic in a small American city. It’s rather soapy, but that’s why I like it. Also Spiderbot is cute. And Pintsize is a dick.

Scandinavia and the World - SFW - anthropomorphised countries and their hijinks, stereotypes, and fun facts. Finland is my favourite country.

Oglaf - Very definitely NSFW - What started as a pornographic joyrun through some ill-defined period of the medieval era, now a compendium of mostly-sex-related jokes (visual and contextual) but always remaining in character for tales from the time. Just with accurate amounts of swearing and buggery and death.

XKCD - SFW - Does Monroe need an introduction?

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I have crawled out of the woodwork once again…and I can provide some oldies, some not-so-oldies, and maybe some confusion!

In addition to QC and XKCD mentioned above, I regularly read:
Between Failures - SFW, mostly (there’s an occasional slightly-risque panel rarely) The cast of an entertainment-type store (movies, games, music sales) gets up to sorta-crazy hijinks.

El Goonish Shive - SFW - A long-runner. Started off as a kind-of gag-a-day strip with various transformation antics, has evolved into a pretty serious (yet still wacky) story still primarily centered around transformations of one form or another, usually involving gender.

Misfile - SFW - What happens when an angel misfiles one boy’s celestial file into the “girls” cabinet, and leaves out the pages with two years of another girl’s life, because he was rushing to not get caught smoking weed in the filing depot? Very car-focused.

Nerf Now - SFW-ish - Mostly-gaming gag-a-day that started as Team Fortress 2 comics and evolved into general gaming. Mostly female cast members that can sometimes get somewhat scantily clad, but never full NSFW in the comic.

Real Life - SFW - Old comic (originally started back in the Megatokyo/Machall days), about the life of Greg Dean and his friends and the wacky hijinks they get up to including playing Ultima Online, drinking Pepsi, surviving a self-destructing space station and eventually terraforming Mars. Kinda went spotty in 2012 after the author had a kid, then stopped suddenly with no warning in 2015…UNTIL NOW. The author recently posted on Facebook that they’re finally returning to the comic in early September. I’m excited.

Rain - SFW - The troubles and tribulations of a group of LGBT teens, primarily centered on Rain, a young trans girl who (at the start of the comic) has just transferred to a new school in a new area where she can present herself as female without anyone knowing her past.

Gunnerkrigg Court - SFW - Magic and technology blend in this story primarily centered around a girl named Antimony and her life after moving to the titular Gunnerkrigg Court school.

And one more for good measure:
Alice Grove - A short-ish side project done by the same guy who does Questionable Content, about a couple of space dwelling “humans” who end up stuck in a small village on Earth. Alice, the village’s resident keeper/maintenance person/you’ll see takes responsibility for getting them the hell out of there before they cause a ruckus. She does not succeed, and ruckus inevitably happens.

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For any RPGers in the group, I present…

Order of the Stick - a very, very funny comic about an adventuring group (the eponymous Order of the Stick, so named because the whole comic is stick figures) and their quests. I almost guarantee anyone who has played RPGs will know - or have been - one or more of the OotS. I’m way behind on my reading and have started from the beginning again…

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In addition to Order of the Stick I read:

Grrl Power - A comic book store owner gets a hold of alien orbs that give her powers and she joins superhero group.

and

Schlock Mercenary - Pile of sentient goop with comically homicidal tendencies and the group of mercenaries that he is a member of. There hasn’t been too much Schlock in there lately, though. This one will keep you busy for a loooong time if you’re not already caught up. Updates are posted every day and it’s been running for over 10 years.

Other than those, I keep up on Dilbert and a lot of manga series.

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Howard Tayler, SM’s creator, is one of the panelists on a really good writing podcast I listen to - Writing Excuses (“Fifteen minutes long, because you’re in a hurry, and we’re not that smart.”). He occasionally talks about SM, and one of the podcasts was a breakdown of one of the arcs. I’ve never read SM, but it’s on my “must check it out” sometime.

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I’ve been reading Schlock since near the beginning. And I’ve talked to Howard every year at GenCon for six years now. He’s been experiencing some plot bloat lately. Used to be he’d hit a plot point every couple comics, now it’s a plot point every couple weeks. Great story, but it’s slowing way down just to get everything in and I’ve had to go back and read several times the last year or two.

Order of the Stick is indeed awesome, and also getting mired in detail, looks like it’s getting ready to start having more things resolved again, already starting to actually.

https://goblinscomic.org/

I love this comic, the update schedule is wonkier than OotS if that’s possible.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/

I’ve read some, need to read more. I love the art, and I’ve met Phil, so that’s cool. And I’ve been reading his stuff since the old Dragon Magazine.

https://www.erfworld.com/

Great comic that takes place inside a game. Lots of written material as well as comic material. So much back story I just can’t keep track of all the call backs.

I used to read Questionable, Misfile, and Gunnerkrigg Court, just fell out of them.

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The toddler has one red eye because he has pink eye. Yes, I’m hooked, and I’m up to the toddler being sick…

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Ook’s favourites :

  1. Girl Genius (see above)

  2. General Protection Fault www.gpf-comics.com
    Just plain geekery and good storylines. And the odd reference to old games etc.

  3. Ubersoft.net the home of Help Desk, the comic strip. Spoofs of the IT industry in general, most notably of Microsoft, Google etc, with the occasional SCO reference thrown in as well. Updated occasionally these days, but was the comic strip during the Windows vs OS/2 wars, and it started its life on OS/2.
    www.ubersoft.net or www.eviscerati.org

  4. Commitstrip - general view of life with coders, sysadmins etc. Updated regularly.
    www.commitstrip.com

Carbosilicate Amorphs FTW!!! Schlock rules!

Dead comics :
Elvenbaath
Userfriendly (cycling through old comics)

Others :
Nukees
Sandra and Woo (stopped reading it due to religious concerns)
Exploitation Now
Errant Story
After Y2K
http://avalonhigh.com/
Elf Life

(There may be others…can’t remember now, it is in another country and time…)

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FFS who mentioned El Goonish Shive? :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: Now I’m gonna waste time just to catch up…

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Okay, I have a serious gripe with Breaking Cat News. I’d rather have no updates at all than three months of reruns. :angry:

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I’d apologize, but I enjoy EGS too much to be sorry for it :smiley:

I may identify with Tedd quite a bit.

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I’m amazed some of these are still around.

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It makes me sad thinking of some of the older comics that are now finished that may one day disappear. I’ve been sorely tempted to order a full set of the Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire books so I have the full archive in case the site ever goes away.

Every now and then I have to prune down the list of comics I have in my bookmarks because some of them cease existing.

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No worries there, was just making a joke :slight_smile:

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Real Life did come back, starting back up again on September 10th. The Facebook post he links to provided the explanation: sleep apnea that he never got taken care of plus depression that kind of worked backwards means he got to the point where he just couldn’t do anything on the comic. The “backwards depression” was a comparison that went “I’m doing better than these other people who have depression so I don’t have depression”.

From what he says, he’s got things going a lot better now. Back to a Monday-Friday schedule, has storylines planned all the way out before the first comic shows up, and the comic’s now posting on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram so you can read it where you want to.

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Typical depression trap actually. Or really any serious illness. Yeah, I’m depressed all the time and life sucks, but I can still get out of bed unlike those poor bastards so I don’t need help. Or in his case, I’m crippled with self doubt, but I’m still operating OK.

Or, yeah I’m drinking a six pack on the way home from work and polishing another one off at home before dinner, but I’m not coming into work drunk.

In my case it’s a survival mechanism with my cancer. “I may have a nasty incurable case of stage IV cancer but staging is silly in blood cancers and at least I can still walk around when all these other people are confined to beds” (I was sick as shit and if walking hadn’t been good for me the nurses would have been yelling at me to stay in bed, they kept telling me how good I was doing just getting around and I never really understood until well after)

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http://acedev.com/

Rockets. 'nuff said.

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So what makes you like a specific comic or comics?

Is it :

  1. Artwork
  2. Storyline (schlock mercenary)
  3. Satire (ubersoft.net)
  4. Forum community with great people
  5. Something else. Do make mention of it.
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Ctrl-alt-del (before the reboot)
College roomies from hell (also from before the reboot)