WebComics - Because we're too cheap and too lazy for the real thing

cshadow42

Here is the thread for WebComics and talking about Webcomics. Because let's face it, webcomics are so cheap they're free, and you can read them at work.

Here's a listing of webcomics to get folks started. Submit the link to the official webcomic series and I'll include it here:

- Order of the Stick
- Erfworld
- Looking for Group
- Least I could Do
- PvP
- Megatokyo
- Schlock Mercenary
- Roza - A girl with an explosive blood curse goes on a journey. It's Disney-esque content, cute animal companions, talking animals, and really good art. Updates Mondays.
- The Abominable Charles Christopher By Karl Kerschl, a professional comic book artist (Teen Titans Year One, Wednesday Comics: Flash) A dimwitted Yeti stumbles through a forest with hilarious results. There's a subtle ongoing plot with some intense drama at times. Updates Wednesdays.
- The Meek Mild nudity and violence, the actual story is far less dark then the plot would seem. Has a plant girl put on a quest by her gargantuan salamander grandfather to go to a capital city. The land is recently recovering from a vicious war. But there's also a lot of humor even though the plot is dark. Tu/Th updates.
- Border Crossings Another relatively new webcomic, a surfer girl gets sucked into a parallel reality full of horrible monsters. It takes a lot of inspiration from China Meiville's Bas-Lag fantasy books. Don't expect any elves or dwarves. You get horned otter men and hideous aquatic caterpillars that steal the personalities of creatures they eat. Updates Fridays.
- Evil Diva Another Disney-esque story, this takes place in a modern world where the children of angels and devils have to go to a highschool like everyone else. Poor Diva is a devil but she just wants to be cute and nice. And Mr. Virgil seems like such a nice principal. But wait, he doesn't have a halo or horns, he couldn't be that Virgil could he?
- Guilded Age Fantasy RPG comedy. Good art, excellent world design. Significantly better than Looking For Group. MWF.
- Gunnerkrigg Court Seriously, if you don't know about this already go read it. Neil Gaiman's recommendation is printed on the back of the published volumes. The early art is really rough but it improved drastically. A young girl in a boarding school full of science and magic has adventures. MWF.
- Yon Kuma BEAR WRESTLING. A poor boy gets his parents eaten by a bear so he has no choice but to become a world class bear wrestler to defeat the evil bear that ate his parents.
- FreakAngels Written by modern comic personality Warren Bloody Ellis. Updates with five full color pages every Friday. Psychic children in a flooded postapocalyptic London. Violence and psychic shenanigans occur.
- Johnny Wander Part journal comic, part short stories. You'd never imagine that a twenty something indian guy and his halfasian girlfriend could be so endearingly cute. Probably the best new webcomic of the year.
- The Zombie Hunters A black comedy about young salvagers in a zombie ruled world. Uses Romero zombies with elite zombies like L4D. Strong gore and an eclectic cast make it unique. Updates Mondays.


Any other recommendations? Any webcomics to avoid?

Solar

SchlockMercenary.com is a really good sci-fi comic which has a new strip every day. It will take a looong time for you to get through the old strips to the new ones but it's worth it as it is funny and quite clever with a funky style of art.

DouglasDanger

Achewood is great, Nedroid is great.

Avoid MegaTokyo and PvP, those are terrible.

Langly

DouglasDanger wrote: »

Achewood is great, Nedroid is great.

Avoid MegaTokyo and PvP, those are terrible.

yeah, this is a good thread for GV but I will say that my avoid recommendations would be the ones listed in the op. (but that's just me!)

DouglasDanger

MS Paint Adventures is the most amazing thing in the world.

Langly

I am on a dinosaur comics kick lately

LegendaryT

Roza
http://www.junglestudio.com/roza/

A girl with an explosive blood curse goes on a journey. It's Disney-esque content, cute animal companions, talking animals, and really good art. Updates Mondays.

The Abominable Charles Christopher
http://www.abominable.cc/

By Karl Kerschl, a professional comic book artist (Teen Titans Year One, Wednesday Comics: Flash)
A dimwitted Yeti stumbles through a forest with hilarious results. There's a subtle ongoing plot with some intense drama at times. Updates Wednesdays.

The Meek
http://www.meekcomic.com/

Mild nudity and violence, the actual story is far less dark then the plot would seem. Has a plant girl put on a quest by her gargantuan salamander grandfather to go to a capital city. The land is recently recovering from a vicious war. But there's also a lot of humor even though the plot is dark. Tu/Th updates.

Border Crossings
http://www.thelastisland.com/

Another relatively new webcomic, a surfer girl gets sucked into a parallel reality full of horrible monsters. It takes a lot of inspiration from China Meiville's Bas-Lag fantasy books. Don't expect any elves or dwarves. You get horned otter men and hideous aquatic caterpillars that steal the personalities of creatures they eat. Updates Fridays.

Evil Diva
http://www.evildivacomics.com/

Another Disney-esque story, this takes place in a modern world where the children of angels and devils have to go to a highschool like everyone else. Poor Diva is a devil but she just wants to be cute and nice. And Mr. Virgil seems like such a nice principal. But wait, he doesn't have a halo or horns, he couldn't be that Virgil could he?

Guilded Age
http://guildedage.net/

Fantasy RPG comedy. Good art, excellent world design. Significantly better than Looking For Group. MWF.

Gunnerkrigg Court
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/index2.php

Seriously, if you don't know about this already go read it. Neil Gaiman's recommendation is printed on the back of the published volumes. The early art is really rough but it improved drastically. A young girl in a boarding school full of science and magic has adventures. MWF.

Yon Kuma
http://yonkuma.com/

BEAR WRESTLING. A poor boy gets his parents eaten by a bear so he has no choice but to become a world class bear wrestler to defeat the evil bear that ate his parents.

FreakAngels
http://www.freakangels.com/

Written by modern comic personality Warren Bloody Ellis. Updates with five full color pages every Friday. Psychic children in a flooded postapocalyptic London. Violence and psychic shenanigans occur.

Johnny Wander
http://www.johnnywander.com/

Part journal comic, part short stories. You'd never imagine that a twenty something indian guy and his halfasian girlfriend could be so endearingly cute. Probably the best new webcomic of the year.

The Zombie Hunters
http://thezombiehunters.com/

A black comedy about young salvagers in a zombie ruled world. Uses Romero zombies with elite zombies like L4D. Strong gore and an eclectic cast make it unique. Updates Mondays.

Also, Least I Could Do and Megatokyo are terrible webcomics with only a vague level of professionalism giving them any credit.

Invisible

The Non-Adventures of Wonderella is rather good.


Then of course there's the all time favorite of The Perry Bible Fellowship which is ended or on hiatus and will hopefully return one day.

Munch

Besides the stuff already mentioned, I enjoy Gastrophobia quite a bit, being a big dork for all kinds of mythology, as well as swords and sorcery stuff.

Dr. McNinja's always pretty entertaining, and one of the best pseudo-superhero comics on the internet.

NSFWAnders Loves MariaNSFW fills my need for entertaining comics about romance and relationships. Actually, NSFWDAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Diary ComicNSFW scratches that itch as well.

Gunshow by KC Green, who used to do Horribleville, is really damn funny, and currently in the middle of another Anime Club story, the first of which you can read from the beginning here, and which I think is one of best storylines so far.

Shortpacked often has some pretty funny jokes about comics and nerd culture, and even the bits focusing solely on the characters' personal lives have improved over the past year.

70 Seas is pretty decent, though not great. Still, it's one of the few comics about pirates, and it's been improving pretty steadily, and that counts for a lot.

Corey Lewis's Seedless is alright, but I really just read it for Lewis's dynamic, funky art.

Lately I've also been enjoying Hannah Is Not a Boy's Name, wherein a young detective partners with a zombie and solves supernatural crimes, as well as NSFWEffort ComicsNSFW, which is kind of a modern take on the Roger Rabbit conceit of humans and cartoons living together in one world. They both have very good, stylized art, and the writing's pretty good as well, though neither have been going on long enough for me to really get invested in the stories yet.

mirac

I hear Penny Arcade is pretty good.

talking_goat

Well i'm obsessed with webcomics, here's a list of some that I check regularly that haven't already been mentioned (I've trimmed it down a bit from the full list to remove the mediocre ones)

Almost Daily Updates:
Real Life
Evil inc
Starslip crisis
Dominic deegan
GU comics
Sinfest
Explosm
Smbc
Questionable content

Sporadic Updates:
Applegeeks
rob and elliot
actiontrip
rusty and co
atland
goblins

Random:
giant in the playground
kawaii not
eerie cuties
amazing super powers
XKCD

These are all solid comics, especially GitP, XKCD, and the dailies. Enjoy!

Virral

Atland is hardly sporadically updated, it's every Thursday and the rare occasions he does take a week off he lets people know in advance. It's quite amusing though!

mirac

Besides PA, I also like VG Cats

talking_goat

Is atland weekly? i just have a hard time keeping them organized by update sched. Also vgcats would be better if they updated more than once every full moon

Mr Fuzzbutt

DouglasDanger wrote: »

MS Paint Adventures is the most amazing thing in the world.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Lux

What are the good non-comedic webcomics out there? I like a good laugh, but I'm wondering about the status of comics that try to be something else - whether it's suspenseful, moving or interesting.

Mr Fuzzbutt

MSPA's latest adventure manages to be all of those.

Virral

Lux wrote: »

What are the good non-comedic webcomics out there? I like a good laugh, but I'm wondering about the status of comics that try to be something else - whether it's suspenseful, moving or interesting.

Freakangels is good, and since you (usually) get six pages every Friday it moves along reasonably fast too.

Golden Yak

I like the following:

Fans
Shortpacked (and the previous walkyverse stuff)
College Roomies from Hell
Sluggy Freelance
Zebra Girl
Dr. McNinja
Johnny Saturn
Digger

Fiaryn

Mr Fuzzbutt wrote: »

DouglasDanger wrote: »

MS Paint Adventures is the most amazing thing in the world.

Truer words have never been spoken.

MSPA has been said to be the only true webcomic. I think it's a valid point to make, very few webcomics actually deliver a story in a way that couldn't be replicated elsewhere.

MSPA on the other hand makes judicious use of animations and music (especially in the latest story Homestuck) and it's oh so good. Wouldn't recommend bothering with any of the adventures besides Problem Sleuth and Homestuck though. Before that he was kind of experimenting.

Now he has vision. I have no idea what that vision is but it's something.

Edit: Shortpacked wins it for "most disappointing webcomic". The guy can be funny, but instead is hell bent on going full steam ahead with awful "storyline" bullshit.

Edit 2: I shouldn't even have to say Dr. McNinja but just in case you're an incorrigible heathen, Dr. McNinja.

Wildcat

Agatha Clay: Girl Genius.

Munch

Fiaryn wrote: »

MSPA has been said to be the only true webcomic. I think it's a valid point to make, very few webcomics actually deliver a story in a way that couldn't be replicated elsewhere.

This actually reminds me, Octopus Pie is also really good.

Oh, and Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton.

LegendaryT

Lux wrote: »

What are the good non-comedic webcomics out there? I like a good laugh, but I'm wondering about the status of comics that try to be something else - whether it's suspenseful, moving or interesting.

Border Crossings
Freak Angels
Zombie Hunters

Several of the comics I listed previously are exactly what you're looking for. The Meek has a lot of wacky characters but an otherwise very grim plot.

Abominable Charles Christopher has what many people call a "Bambis's mom" moment.

Try all of them, it's worth it.

Mai-Kero

MSPA, of course, is the most amazing thing ever.

ScaryGoRound by John Allison was one of my favorite story-based comics ever, before the truth of MSPA was revealed to me. Allison's follow up project, Bad Machinery, seems to be awesomesauce as well, and he had another series before ScaryGoRound that I've never bothered to read because time.

cshadow42

There was one series I used to read a while back called "Sexy Losers". Very NSFW and very gross, but funny. I think it stopped publishing for reasons unknown to me.

cshadow42

Here's a link to a story about how the webcomic, Looking For Group, isn't allowed to attend Dragon Con next year:

http://consumerist.com/2009/12/dragoncon-kicks-looking-for-group-booth-because-dragoncon-was-rude-to-them.html

There are two sides to every story, but so far it looks like LFG was the wronged party.

Mai-Kero

cshadow42 wrote: »

Here's a link to a story about how the webcomic, Looking For Group, isn't allowed to attend Dragon Con next year:

http://consumerist.com/2009/12/dragoncon-kicks-looking-for-group-booth-because-dragoncon-was-rude-to-them.html

There are two sides to every story, but so far it looks like LFG was the wronged party.

To be fair, LFG's author is a pile of shit and I call shenanigans on his story. There's a one hundred percent chance of him leaving out the part where he was a rude asshole to the Dragon Con people. He also probably made up the rest of it.

So he was just banned because he was a rude asshole.

Not quite as much as Tim Buckley, but still.

Invisible

That's the same story his fans have been spamming across the internet. It's pretty much exactly what was posted in D&D by some guy with 1 post to his name (which was that one). The Consumerist isn't exactly the most unbiased website either. I've not once seen them give the other side or do anything other than try to get other people riled up about one-sided and often wild allegations. Yeah sometimes they're in the right and occasionally they do some good, but judging from his fans, his comic and well everything else I've read, he's almost 100% in the wrong and leaving out the part about him being a colossal ass.

Just_Bri_Thanks

http://www.partiallyclips.com/
http://www.misfile.com/
http://www.tenthousandmasks.org/para-ten/
http://sidekickgirl.comicgenesis.com/
http://www.errantstory.com/
http://www.davidcsimon.com/crimsondark/ (3d art usually sucks ass, but this isn't bad. )
http://betweenfailures.com/
http://www.wncomic.com/
http://www.platinumgrit.com/index.htm ( updates once every second never. )
http://www.thedreamlandchronicles.com/
http://www.wayfarersmoon.com/

I also like Megatokyo, but I like love stories. Most people give it a bad rap because it isn't [supposed to be] funny. *shrug*

I like unpopular comics, but not because they are unpopular. But whatever, everyone loves to hate Megatokyo.

Fiaryn

Having read the whole damn thing I'd say Megatokyo loses more points for being nauseatingly pretentious at times than "not being funny".

It still manages the funny, the problem is the comic seems to believe it's more intelligent than it is.

Solar

Headtripcomics.com is pretty funny with a nice art style.

grim123

a funny wonderella strip mainly the last three panels
http://nonadventures.com/2009/4/18/

Ninjabear

Some of my favorites include:

Sam and Fuzzy
Jolly Jack's "Sequential Art"
Girly
Dr. McNinja

cshadow42

Fiaryn wrote: »

Having read the whole damn thing I'd say Megatokyo loses more points for being nauseatingly pretentious at times than "not being funny".

It still manages the funny, the problem is the comic seems to believe it's more intelligent than it is.

I liked Megatokyo all the way through, but than again, I am a fan of the romance comic. Megatokyo reminds me of Maison Ikkoku, but with every character an otaku.

Wildcat

I liked Megatokyo much more when Rodney still had some input into it, to be honest. I keep reading it for completeness' sake, but I think it's a shadow of what it could have been.

cshadow42

Wildcat wrote: »

I liked Megatokyo much more when Rodney still had some input into it, to be honest. I keep reading it for completeness' sake, but I think it's a shadow of what it could have been.

Yeah...it did deviate a lot from topical gamer humor to a more dedicated storyline. I still find it worthwhile reading though.

Ringo

Hitmen for Destiny

While I can't say that I've actually ever read all the way through it.. it's just something you need to see

There is madness

There is genius

durandal4532

"Family Man" by Dylan Meconis is really pretty excellent. Well drawn, and about an interesting and little-explored topic/time period. The only issue is how slowly it comes out.

0Replace4Displace

cshadow42 wrote: »

Wildcat wrote: »

I liked Megatokyo much more when Rodney still had some input into it, to be honest. I keep reading it for completeness' sake, but I think it's a shadow of what it could have been.

Yeah...it did deviate a lot from topical gamer humor to a more dedicated storyline. I still find it worthwhile reading though.

I miss the earlier bits of the series, this whole Tohya arc is dragging its ass pretty hard. I stopped reading because all it is anymore is "Oh man, Tohya, ohmahgawd."

Fiaryn

0Replace4Displace wrote: »

cshadow42 wrote: »

Wildcat wrote: »

I liked Megatokyo much more when Rodney still had some input into it, to be honest. I keep reading it for completeness' sake, but I think it's a shadow of what it could have been.

Yeah...it did deviate a lot from topical gamer humor to a more dedicated storyline. I still find it worthwhile reading though.

I miss the earlier bits of the series, this whole Tohya arc is dragging its ass pretty hard. I stopped reading because all it is anymore is "Oh man, Tohya, ohmahgawd."

The Tohya arc is pretty much the epitome of what I mentioned earlier, nauseating pretentiousness. Ugh.

It was never nearly this bad before.

cshadow42

Solar wrote: »

SchlockMercenary.com is a really good sci-fi comic which has a new strip every day. It will take a looong time for you to get through the old strips to the new ones but it's worth it as it is funny and quite clever with a funky style of art.

Thanks for the recomendation Solar. I'm already through the first year.