Older news from the front page
Webcomic of the month: May
Sequential Art by Phillip M Jackson is a rather simplistic comic that suffers terribly from a horrible navigation interface. It’s like Phillip deliberately wanted to make it as difficult as possible for new readers to read the archive or current readers to keep tabs on where they were up to if they didn’t check the site every day.
If you want to go to the first comic, you need to actually go to the image itself since there is no html or php page that will display it (unless you feel like clicking “back” 40 times). Then, when you want to go forward, you need to change the url to the comic yourself in order to move forward.
Once you’ve read through the archives, it’ll be much easier to navigate because the last ten strips are easy to find and are conveniently numbered. But it’s a horrible system for new readers. If you know of a better way then let me know.
Update: Don’t I feel stupid now. Instead of going to the “classic” page which uses html, you should go to the php version which is much easier to navigate – thanks Mike!
Sequential Art is a great comic that you’ll enjoy. Its clean lines, clever plot and generally decent humour should be enough to keep you entertained. It's not all about face-destroying pancake accidents, there's some naked catgirls in there too. Very recommended.
Webcomic of the month: April
Scary Go Round by John Allison is a delightfully quirky tale that doesn’t quite come together but is all sorts of mad fun anyway.
The comic is semi-storylined with various short plots and ideas running through the comic and some running gags. However, the story is not the main point of the comic, and you can jump into the archives at almost any point and work out what is going on fairly quickly.
The artwork maintains its standard fairly consistently throughout the comic, with a smattering of guest comics thrown in at various intervals. The very dry, British humour will go over (or under) the heads of some people, but there are plenty of jokes to grab the attention. And it does not hurt that the archives are simply massive.
A great read and thoroughly recommended.
Webcomic of the month: March
Kukuburi is really hard to describe. Part fantasy, part dream, it covers the adventures of Nadia and her pet chameleon – Mr Bojangles. It’s really hard to describe just how awesome this comic is. It’s sequential, so start at the beginning. And take your time with it. There is so much detail and little things going on in the corners that you probably won’t be able to take it all in on the first rerading.
Webcomic of the month: February
I recently came across a great serial webcomic called Order of the Stick. It's a story driven webcomic, so you'll need to start at the beginning. I love it, where to begin?
For starters, it'll help to know a fair bit about Dungeons and Dragons in order to get some of the humour or even work out what's going on. You don't need full-on indepth knowledge of all the rules, you just need to know what it's about and know the difference between a halfling and a dwarf.
Apart from that little detail, it's a great story told in a simple, easy to understand way. The characters develop quite nicely over the 530 or so strips that are currently up. It'll take you the better part of a few days to get through, because most of the updates are multi-panel, multi-dialogue strips. I don't think I'm doing it justice.
Just trust me - go read it!
Webcomic of the month: January
Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell is a fun webcomic, also with a slightly “off” sense of humour which is what I like best about it. It follows the adventures of the main character, Antimony Carver and her new best friend Katerina 'Kat' Donlan.
They are enrolled in a boarding school that resembles an abandoned factory-city more than a place of education. There are all sorts of fun things like ghosts, rides to the moon, a creepy wood, the dead and it's own mass transit system (not as random as that sounds!).
The comic moves along at a nice pace, with a guaranteed laugh-out-loud moment at least every three strips. Well worth the read, good art and really good writing.
Break for the holidays
I'll be away from a computer for a while during my trip east until the new year. Have fun everyone!
Webcomic of the month: December
Dead Winter by S. Dave Shabet is a slightly macarbe but highly interesting webcomic. The style looks like it could have been a watercolour poster and has an interesting balance between being very detailed and quite abstract.
It is a story comic, so it’s recommended that you read from the first page. At time of writing there were just under 80 pages, so it’s a good read and it’ll definitely get you hooked and wanting more.
The basic premise is that Lizzie (with the red bandana) works in a diner run by Frank (the happy fellow on the right). She hates her job and wants something better. Then zombies show up a-la Dawn of the Dead and things get interesting…
NaNoWriMo 2007
I have decided to go for the NaNoWriMo challenge this year. For those that don’t know, NaNoWriMo is an open challenge to anyone to write a novel in one month. In this case, a novel is defined as fifty thousand words. Since most people tend to not write anything until they can think it through properly, NaNoWriMo aims to help people to get started. By focussing on quantity over quality, the participants free themselves from having to “go for gold” so to speak.
Of course, I didn’t find out about this till the 16th. And being insane, I decided to go for it anyway. So instead of writing 50,000 words in a month, I’ll have to do it in FOURTEEN DAYS. Or about 3,570 odd words each day.
You can keep an eye on my progress here and laugh at my pitiful efforts.
As I said, I’m insane…
Update: And... it's finished! Just managed to squeeze in on Nov 30th with about an hour or so to spare. More details on my blog.
Update: I have a pdf version up on the site now. You can get it from here and I'll have the html version up later in the week (hopefully!). The December WotM will be up soon as well.
Final Update: From the same page you can now read the on-line html version. I was right about the html encoding taking a long time!
Webcomic of the month: October
Vreakerz by S. E. Pennings is an interesting comic done in an offbeat, manga-ish style. The comic is mainly composed of anthropomorphic characters, but it’s not a “furry” comic.
Having said that, this comic is quite the page-turner. The story moves along at a fairly decent pace with enough text on each page to make it progressive, without so much that it becomes sluggish. The artist shows a fair amount of restraint with the story, with a lot of elements being portrayed visually rather than being spoon-fed to the reader.
This is a delightful change from the usual “let’s repeat things ad nauseam” that some writers employ when they under-estimate the intelligence of their readers, or the use of little signs to state the obvious (such as having a sign with “trap door” pointing at what is obviously a trap door – just in case people didn’t see it).
Overall, a quality read. And it has enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing, so it’s a thoroughly recommended read. Available on both the main site and the Comic Genesis mirror.
Webcomic of the month: September
MindFlayed, by Ozark is one of those quirky little comics that you either get or you don't. It's a little hard to describe if you are not familiar with the background.
The background of Mindflayed is that it's set in the Dungeons and Dragons world. A "mind flayer" is a sort of parasitic beast that eats brains. Which just screams "main character" right there! The comic is quite well done, and is in a serial story format so it's best to start reading from the first page.
A very enjoyable story, even though it's progressing rather slowly (up to page 77 at time of writing).
ictoanftc added
It took a while to get all the html coded up, but I managed to get my comic ictoanftc (I couldn't think of a name for this comic) onto the site. It's viewable here, but it's one of those "unfinished" comics. I have quite a long story laid out for it, but for some reason I can't bring myself to continue it.
I was going to put up the complete story (or what I had written so far) but there is a fair amount of good material in there which I may still use.
Webcomic of the Month: August
Funny Farm, by Ryan Smith is a great comic that has been running since 1999. It has a huge archive since it updates daily and has many complex and interwoven plotlines. As it’s a linear, story-driven comic, the best way to read is to go back to the start and read it through.
And now, Funny Farm is going into print, with it’s second book in the process of being released.
Ryan is also a participant of the Daily Grind challenge.