The Washington Post is running a decidedly unscientific poll asking readers to select (from a list) their favorite web comic of the last decade.
Several of the comics on the WashPost list are also on my regular reading list:
- User Friendly, the adventures of tech support staff at a Canadian ISP
- Schlock Mercenary, a witty space opera about a band of (yes) mercenaries
- Girls with Slingshots, comedy and romance among a variety of bright young things (sometimes NSFW)
- Girl Genius, steampunk adventure
- Hark, A Vagrant, comedic insights drawn from history, literature and some pop culture
- Penny Arcade, about video games and gamer culture – also notable as the web comic that spawned Child’s Play, a multi-million dollar charity that supports children’s hospitals in several countries (including Australia)
- xkcd, Randall Monroe’s comic of sarcasm, romance, mathematics and language
- Least I Could Do – two adult brothers negotiate the worlds of dating, business and growing up (I read this only occasionally; the underlying misogyny and immaturity annoy me intensely, but now and then there’s a worthwhile insight into how men’s minds operate). LICD is, at least, beautifully illustrated.
Others on my RSS list missed the WashPost cut, including:
- Wondermark, Victorian etchings that are thoroughly modern (and often quite surreal) and regularly hilarious
- Little Dee, by Mad magazine artist Chris Baldwin, is drawing to a close but years of archives remain available online; it’s the story of a small girl being raised in a forest by a dog, a bear, a vulture and various other creatures. Probably the only web comic ever to feature a week-long sea shanty about rogue knitting — there’s also a Google Video version of the shanty, and a later sequence of comic strips explaining Vachel’s serious dedication to garment manufacture
- A Girl and Her Fed is a recent addition to my reading list. Not quite sure what to make of it, but what I’ve seen thus far in the archives definitely has promise. It starts with a part-time journalist who converses daily with the ghost of Benjamin Franklin. She finds herself being stalked, quite obtrusively, by a federal agent who in turn is haunted by a small green sprite. Complications ensue.
- Wapsi Square was recomended in another comix artist’s blog, can’t remember who. I started reading it regularly many moons ago, and still haven’t worked out who’s who among the cast or what the hell is going on in the storyline. Nevertheless I await each new episode with a certain amount of interest and eagerness. One day it wil all click into place, I’m sure — just like that ancient calendar the girls have been messing around with.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Comics, funny stuff
- Hobotopia, the original LOLcats comic about two cats who live on the streets
- The NonAdventures of Wonderella, snarky superheroism
- Unshelved, observations about the inner workings and personalities of a public library
- Questionable Content, romance, rock music and relationships among a crowd of 20something nerds
- Evil Inc, Brad Guigar’s comic about a consortium of evil superheroes
- Tree Lobsters, commentary on science, evolution and scepticism
- Sheldon, the story of a 10-year-old self-made billionaire, his grandfather, Arthur the talking duck, Oso the pug dog and Flaco the lizard — funny, geeky, wise and poignant, sometimes all at once
Finally, my day is not complete until I’ve read the Doonesbury daily dose. Admittedly, Doonesbury has primarily been a print comic for most of its 40-odd years. However, creator Garry Trudeau and his team adopted the web meme quite early and have done more than most print cartoons to build an online community that extends the comic’s storytelling and makes a difference in the real world — see, for example, the Sandbox military blog that posts articles from services personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan and other active theatres, and from their families and partners left at home.
What about you? What are your favorite web comics? What do you love about them?
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