Webcomics: S/D

MegaTokyo has been on the verge of joining that list for about two years, but I keep reading it.

I sound so negative now! Bobbins was great, and is no longer being written; but John does Scary Go Round now, which is sometimes better, and uses many of the same characters. Both of them are strips that are better once you've read them for a couple weeks -- not for continuity/plot reasons like with so many of the popular webcomics, but because you get the rhythm of it.

1) I don't have the time or interest to read a year's worth of archives to catch up on the story. I have two piles of books next to my desk I've been meaning to read, and a nice town library.

2) I have an allergic reaction to self-righteousness, and to the things people write to illustrate their opinions on whatever it is that's near and dear to them this week. This is why I don't read the syndicated strip Frazz anymore, either.

3) People who are constantly unhappy, angry, depressed, or under the influence of teenage hormones produce terrible art more often than not, but will frequently find other unhappy, angry, depressed, or teenage people to cheer them on.

)

i visit get your war on and explodingdog. the 2nd one isn't so much a comic as it is art. the guy makes pictures based on words or a sentence people send him. cool.

(Tell us more about Daily Dinosaur Comics, Vic? That's the only one mentioned so far that I haven't heard of.)

Essentially it's a strip which uses the same pictures every day, only changing the words. Withing this limitation it crafts strips of unearthly beauty.

Actually, I've scanned back through the archives and stuff that I thought was kind of "meh" in the daily format is great when you read it in a big chunk, like the whole thing with the haunted house and the Harry Potter parodies.

That hasn't stopped me from digging through the entire archive like a big fool, so it must have something going for it, much like a car crash.

PvP does have way too many moments where Kurtz-the-guy overshadows Kurtz-the-cartoonist, but the best moments are still better than most current newspaper comics. (I realize that these days that's faint praise.)

MegaTokyo, I have no idea how to explain. A lot of weeks, I skip it altogether, and then start reading again without catching up on the old strips. It was definitely better in the beginning, and the art isn't consistent enough any more for that to be my reason for reading. I dunno. You've got me.

GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD!!! HELLO, SEXXY WORLD!!!!!

It's old.

What webcomics are you guys currently reading? (guilty pleasure + not) Like anything you've still got on your RSS feed or do that few month at a time reading session thing? Here are all of mine (way more guilty pleasure* than actual pleasure at this point):

Achewood
Comic Critics (thru the Comics Should Be Good feed)
Pearls Before Swine (newspaper comic, not webcomic, but in my RSS feed)
Penny Arcade
PvP
Questionable Content
Tom Tomorrow
xkcd
Medium Large
Happle Tea

*Meaning here that it gave me pleasure at one point, or I fell into soap opera'y relationship to the comic and now I just read it because I've been reading it for so long. Only comics in this list I'd strongly go to bat for in the last year are Medium Large + Achewood. Looking for something new and exciting!

Oh, and of course Axe Cop, but I only read that once in awhile.

I'm not sure if my not knowing a word of russian is coloring my view, but I can't think of a better site than caricatura.ru

http://caricatura.ru/parad/vasilenko/pic/15489.gif

http://caricatura.ru/black/alex_gordin/pic/684.jpg

I really like that whoever did this probably did it during a boring lecture on the back of the xeroxed study materials.

I think my favorite is Dinosaur Comics!

I used to read Dinosaur Comics every day, but the shtick wears off imo after awhile.

i should stress that the comics on caricatura.ru have a wider range than just people brandishing weapons. (no offense to axe cop)

There seems to be a huge concern in axe cop about people joining each other's teams and whatnot -- it is secretly a comic about the formation of community!

Just noticed that Jason Little's Motel Art Improvement Service (aka Bee) is going to print via Dark Horse next month... good for him!

http://marvel.com/news/story/15347/fear_itself_deadpool

Chris Hastings (Dr. McNinja) writing Deadpool

http://www.romanticallyapocalyptic.com/

I love it.

Wasn't sure at first, but I was convinced by this one:
http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/001/d/7/romantically_apocalyptic_05_by_alexiuss-d2hvyon.jpg

Kerr found this one and posted it on the chatz thread. It's amazing:
http://nedroid.com/2009/05/party-cat-full-series/

The Nedroid stuff is hilarious sometimes.

I think the only webcomic I read regularly now is Hark, A Vagrant. http://www.harkavagrant.com/

Kate Beaton is awesome.

Anybody ever read Bad Machinery? A lot of webcomics wear out their welcome with me really quickly, but Bad machinery is a long-form serial narrative and quite enjoyable if you don't mind something that adults and teens could both like: http://scarygoround.com/index.php?date=20090921. That narration drops out really quickly (was surprised to see it there).

Whoa - I didn't even know John Allison had anything new. I loved Bobbins and Scary Go Round, I don't know when I lost track of him!

OH man, I envy you getting to read a whole bunch of it at your own pace! I've not read his earlier stuff, but my brother who reads a lot of webcomics thinks Bad Machinery is a big step up from SGR.

SGR definitely went through good and bad patches. I really don't know how I missed this! This is a good week to find out about this, I have a big block of free time on Thursday.

I've been digging Allison's work for a few years now -- I really think he's brilliant.

Daily webcomic checks: Bad Machinery, Diesel Sweeties, Scenes from a Multiverse*, WIGU and/or Overcompensating depending on what Rowland is focusing on at the time.

*currently sporadic while Rosenberg's wife is going through a difficult pregnancy

A lot of webcomics wear out their welcome with me really quickly

Also, I'm with you on this. This was probably what happened with me and Sluggy Freelance, mentioned at the top of the thread, and I still have Order of the Stick in Google Reader because when I first saw it I thought the whole conceit of "D&D characters talk and think in game-mechanics terms" was hilarious, but I haven't actually clicked on the link to read the comic in ages. I don't think it got worse, the novelty just wore off.

Bad Machinery so good!

Yeah, Bad Machinery is definitely a step up from his previous stuff, which was always pretty fun. Shame to hear that it may not be successful enough for him to keep doing it.

I'm really tempted to just slowly link-dump this thread... forever

Shame to hear that it may not be successful enough for him to keep doing it.

Wait, what?

I never got into scarygoround at the time but I've been following Bad Machinery for the past few months and really like it. The author is a master of the end-of-week cliffhanger, too; the last several end-of-week episodes have got me slightly jittery over the weekend wanting to know what will happen next, which is something I've only had fairly rarely from webcomics before.

(Have since been reading the sgr archives in an attempt to fill that craving, and I like sgr and have no idea why I never read it at the time, but it's definitely not gripping me as much as BM)

BM and Cat & Girl are the only ones I'm checking recently. Have had other favourites, some of which I got bored of, some of which just stopped being updated. And I read BM every time it updates, whereas once a month or two I'll think "not checked C+G for a while" and have a binge.

xp

http://sgrblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/super-static-feedback-party.html
http://sgrblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/thanks.html

how often does BM update?

Mon-Fri at the moment. It was Mon-Thurs up to last week, but now he's experimentally doing 2 shorter strips on Thurs+Fri instead.

Very cool! I love a good frequently updated comic!

what's the name of the sci-fi comic with a vague interest in posthumanism - ? sort of halfway manga-styled? semi-experimental page layouts? whimsical sense of humour? never updates?

Shame to hear that it may not be successful enough for him to keep doing it.

That is really too bad! I hope he sticks with it. I'm as puzzled as he is that it's not more popular. His art is really appealing, but the writing of the kids' dialogue is what really got me hooked on it. I almost prefer it when the stories are just the kids hanging out and talking.

DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Mostly. I just spent half an hr reading Bad Machinery and just got annoyed/bored, anyway. Daily Dinosaur made me laugh in two pages.

what does sustainable popularity mean in webcomics terms versus print?
if you were making a comic for a college paper, sustainable popularity would mean 80% of the student body do not want to murder you.

what's the name of the sci-fi comic with a vague interest in posthumanism - ? sort of halfway manga-styled? semi-experimental page layouts? whimsical sense of humour? never updates?

-----they were all like that

I think I know which one he's talking about. the protagonist was a young woman and there was a whole plotline with an escaped robot and time travelers dressed strangely? i can't remember the title.

I think it's Dresden Codak

Finally had a chance to read all of Bad Machinery - so much fun. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Rob.

dresden codak, yes! thank you both

gosh, he's updated three times this year already

That is really too bad! I hope he sticks with it. I'm as puzzled as he is that it's not more popular.

Here is Adam Cadre speculating about why it is not more popular - http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/13081.html

I was going to comment on a few things in that Adam Cadre blog post but I see it's a response to the first (?) story arc, so no need for me to point out bits which don't fit with later arcs.

There's a link to a much more glowing followup at the bottom, and I read it and followed all the links to referenced strips and they all made me laugh out loud, even though I'd already read them and laughed out loud at them all, and felt briefly kind of sad because I guess the current arc hasn't made me laugh out loud, but that's ok, because it's made me feel other emotions. (Maybe so much so that I don't even remember the lols, actually, because they probably didn't just go away.)

holy hell I hadn't seen the name Adam Cadre in close to a decade

who on earth is adam cadre? is he english? the article made me wonder if most of the class stuff involved in the characterisation had gone over his head.

'bad machinery' is like actually good good! i am kind of surprised. also most of the people who read scary go round and wouldn't read it sound like dicks.

he's another of the old-school rec.arts.comics.* posters from the heyday of Usenet who made a name for himself writing interactive fiction; he's an American and IIRC kind of strange

ohhhh. i've played 'photopia'! the name seemed familiar from somewhere.

Dan you said that exact thing last time I posted an Adam Cadre link in like February! I was thinking of making a thread, actually, 'writers who are linked to on ilx by exactly one specific poster', like Morbs and Dennis Perrin would be the most famous example? I don't agree with AC about very much at all but there's something about the way he writes I keep coming back to!

hahahaha hi dere I am old

ok i like bad machinery now. it's a bit twee but the art is really nice.

I've been reading Allison's comics for a few years, really enjoying them, but had no idea about his thin skin until reading that essay (and its followup). I like this Cadre person -- he writes long sentences so I don't have to.

he wrote I-O and Varicella. nuff said.

Haha the main interaction I found in the archives between Adam and me was me yelling at him to stop feeding a troll.

plus ça change...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/599092525/the-order-of-the-stick-reprint-drive

I ... did not expect a webcomic reprint Kickstarter to exceed one million dollars.

i wish they were going to more webcomics like this one, but hey, stick figures make people happy, so who am i to argue
http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic+index

webcomics make it v hard for me to be cool

Life is so much gentler and richer w/the hatin' coming on in dave cool levels of apoplexy. I appreciate the rastraint.

don't know what dave cool has against When I Am King and Pup but would enjoy engaging with his restrained analysis

yall lost me

I'm not too surprised by the Order of the Stick thing - people who remember D&D fondly are probably a pretty good demographic at this point, and it's managed to write a pretty epic storyline with jokes in every one of 600=-odd strips. They have an enormous and devoted forum/community - but then who doesn't?

never saw pokey the penguin raise $1 million on kickstarter. just sayin

three word phrase is hit/miss but sometimes really great: http://threewordphrase.com/gregor.htm

so good: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=338

she's the best

agreed

set forth the demon horde

I love Kate Beaton

the conversations she links to at the bottom of that post are amazing too. here's one: http://twitpic.com/9lvz6c

"to hell with her then" http://harkavagrant.com/mothersdaycomic.png

just crushing: http://harkavagrant.com/loss.png

she's pretty great

Yeah, hooray for Kate Beaton.

Have you guys seen her give a reading? It's totally inimitable, she has this amazing tossed-off rapid fire Hepburn delivery.

It's comfort-food -- not quite junk food but definitely not haute -- but Bad Machinery really hits the spot for me. Love those kids. Allison is a pretty tight plotter.

Bad Machinery is really good. I love the dialogue.

Yeah, Allison's stuff is great. Amazing how far he's come along, not that Bobbins was bad by any means, but his "kid's" material is so beyond it now.

http://beatonna.tumblr.com/post/26661311030/teen-consolidation-all-the-teens-in-one-place-i

i should really just start a thread for her

http://www.harkavagrant.com/nonsense/ponyghost.png

I really like the Hark! A Vagrants I've seen posted here. I'd never heard of Kate Beaton before.

her comics are available on the web and most people probably know of her from the web but i dunno if it's really a webcomic other than by those two criteria.

i thought all of her comics originate on the web? what else would the definition be?

i kno lolwiki but the first line of her wiki page is "Kate Beaton (born September 8, 1983) is a Canadian webcomic artist."

well at some point garfield will also fit those criteria, too, so there needs to be something else.

Godddddd I love Mystery Solving Teens.

http://www.harkavagrant.com/nonsense/teenssm.png

No matter how many times I read this, it fucking slays.

Teen exhaling smoke with his head back while his friend flicks a cigarette

The baker! I knew it!

or perhaps a doobage

xp

well at some point garfield will also fit those criteria, too, so there needs to be something else.

http://www.4thletter.net/wp-content/plugins/smilies-themer/SAEmoticons/emot-colbert.png

yeah...

i have an easier time thinking of garfield as a webcomic than hark a vagrant to be honest.

The baker! I knew it!

I love Kate's reading of this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlDCSDdYg1k

All of her comics created for the web seems kind of a crucial distinction from Garfield.

I mean, as webcomics go.

why is there no hark rss feed whhhyyyyyyyyyyy

rss link here http://beatonna.tumblr.com/

i was looking for examples of really good webcomics a few years before, and really couldn't find any. I thought perry bible fellowship and hark a vagrant would fit the bill, but it turned out both comics had been published in print before putting stuff on the web, and it seemed like the web being the primary delivery vehicle for the comics is just an economic decision rather than an aesthetic one.

I'm not sure it's ever an aesthetic decision - has anyone claimed that they would turn down an offer of being printed in newspapers because their art is ill-suited to the medium?

the dude who made leisure town said he thought his stuff would look terrible in print.

hark a vagrant was published before its livejournal days? PBF was "published" but i think in a student newspaper or something

every time this thread comes up i have to force myself from turning it into an obnoxious personal blog

I think it's more that Kate Beaton was doing her stuff for her student newspaper with her art style and presumably catering to her interests, so it wasn't called that, but (I guess, I've never seen it?) none of it would look out of place in hark a vagrant.

yeah i think hark was either in a newspaper or a zine. i'm not very hopeful for webcomics anymore, and i feel like being crappy is sort of a prerequisite for being one, but i do feel like it's a distinct thing from regular comics (not just in being crappy), and hark a vagrant doesn't feel like one (not just because it's not crappy) while garfield does (not just because it's crappy). i'm not sure what's the litmus test, though.

You have completely lost me on Garfield, that is the definition of a newspaper comic (and not just because it's crappy)

bad machinery is an amazing webcomic. i don't know why all webcomics would by definition be shitty. it's a medium of distribution more than an aesthetic preference or style.

imho, if you distribute comix primary online, then it's a webcomic - especially if the distribution happens on a web page that people can visit

obv during period of transition some comix that were primarily print comix may become predominately online and we may want to distinguish between comix that started in newspapers but now are read primarily online, but that's more of a legacy thing i think and really i don't know why aesthetics should come into play at all here

but we don't call music distributed primarily online webmusic -- i do think there's an aesthetic (or something like an aesthetic -- an ethos?) that's in play.

the label isn't great.
but without webcomics we wouldn't have Kate Beaton, KC Green, lots of others but uughh too lazy to start writing essays

there is just no reason to hate on webcomics - there's an amazing wealth of good stuff out there, but since there's no more cost to print like there used to be with b&w floppies, there's a lot more to go through to find the gems

if there's any ethos, it's a pseudo-DIY thing where creators utilized the egalitarian nature of the web to distribute comix that might have been a tougher sell w/ traditional platforms (newspaper syndication, major publishers, etc) and where they could build an audience slowly through word of mouth. but that doesn't necessarily speak to the quality of the product. xxp

it's very DIY - remember when the best CMS most people could use was keenspot

kids these days, spoiled with ComicPress

I think to qualify as a webcomic it really has to be unimaginable to conceive of it as a print phenomenon on its own and kate beaton would totally do well in print (and she does! [ok some of that is due to webpopularity, but still])

that doesn't really make sense to me, tbh. is it unimaginable to conceive of achewood as a print phenomenon?

like are the only true webcomics stuff like PvP and Penny Arcade bc they do gaming/internet joekz?

I think to qualify as a webcomic it really has to be unimaginable to conceive of it as a print phenomenon on its own and kate beaton would totally do well in print (and she does! [ok some of that is due to webpopularity, but still])

u r scott mccloud and i claim my $5

i think you can translate some aspect of achewood to print (there was a long form version I saw in a print compilation that I liked) but as a whole, no, it wouldn't work.

reason i mentioned achewood is cause i was in the comic store on monday and they've got a bunch of his collections there that u can buy. in print!

jesus christ why am I still reading Sluggy Freelance

guys ive been trying to recall the name of this comic that was popular on ilx and the internet tho i think it was also published in like maybe some irl alt newspapers or w/e and it always had v neat lil narratives that were often kinda fatalistic fables i guess the only one i can remember was it shows like evolution creatures crawling out of the ocean and what not then theres a space ship coming up this giant button in outer space and someone says what you think this thing does then its starts again w/the evolution i am sure you guys are v familiar w/this comic thx in advance

the way i see people interact with achewood -- it's kind of critical to be able to click on it and see it on the web, and to be passed around that forms the bulk of the achewood experience that doesn't seem quite so crucial for hark a vagrant. don't you feel a difference in experience?

Perry Bible Fellowship xp

i don't feel a difference but i get the feeling (forgive me if i'm wrong) that the term 'webcomic' is a bit more loaded w/ meaning for u than it is for me xp

tyvm

it's loaded for me in a very weird way, in that i think it denotes crap, but at the same time i feel it's disrespectful not to acknowledge it as more than just a cheaper delivery device.

er .. not to acknowledge it as just a cheaper delivery device i mean

er.. scratch that scratch.

PvP was published as a comic for 9 years - longer than it's spent online-only.

So Philip, are you saying that webcomics are kind of the descendants of the thigns people used to cut out and stick up on walls / cubicles, or that used to be mailed around after email but pre-web? Because if so, I totally get that, but the number one comic that I see linked on twitter/facebook/livejournal as "hey check out this one strip" is Hark a Vagrant.

sort of -- but it's not just the passing back and forth, but also the way the readership helps shape the strips as well. (letting your audience have control of your work is probably another tendency that leads to crap, though)

Wow there was just a Kate Beaton + Lynn Johnston panel at San Diego Con.

FBOFW????

did she talk about animating all the characters on her website to blink periodically?

I dunno I'm not in SD! I wish I was! (kind of).

i wonder what kate thinks about her. i'm not a big FBOFW fan but i get she had a big influence - probably bigger if you're from Canada

there's a great story in the charles schulz bio about johnston calling schulz (johnston being one of the few colleagues schulz admired) and mentioning to him that because her characters age she's going to have to do something soon about the dog, who is going to have to die, and schulz is really adamant that johnston not kill the dog because people don't want to read about dead dogs over breakfast (they just want to read about endlessly telescoping bleakness and cruelty i guess) and johnston says no i have to do this it's all right it'll be a big affecting arc and everything and schulz apparently says

IF YOU DO THIS
I AM GOING TO HAVE SNOOPY GET HIT BY A TRUCK
AND GO TO THE HOSPITAL
AND EVERYBODY WILL WORRY ABOUT SNOOPY
AND NO ONE WILL READ YOUR STUPID STORY

also apparently schulz calls her to congratulate her on reaching some kind of syndication milestone -- X number of papers carrying FBOFW -- which is a very high number by the standards of most comics but not a high number by the standards of peanuts, and schulz is very gracious and complimentary at first but then johnston says like "i'm catching up to you haha!" and schulz just says CALL ME WHEN YOU'RE IN THE LOUVRE and hangs up

weird guy

awesome guy

That Schultz bio is rough, especially when you discover that the most jugular-inflating Lucy tirades were influenced by Mrs. Schulz.

SNOOPY IS OFF THE WEB BECAUSE OF YOU

The only thing the tweet from D&Q said abt the panel was that Johnston and Beaton bonded over their admiration for Guisewhite.

i remember hearing that schulz built a hockey rink for the local kids to play at, but then shut it down because the parents were so obnoxious. which i'm sure is partly true, but dude did not seem to get along very well with ppl

Didn't Schulz do some phone flirting with Guisewite? She was a Neutrogena model or something (even while drawing body horror strips)

Guisewitean body horror

so many ppl who knew Schulz, inc his kids, said the bio was slanted and crappy that I wouldn't rely on it for a full picture of the dude

it's kinda wild all of the newspaper strip writers like guisewhite, ketcham, even schulz for me at one point that i knew as defanged boring comic writers and then when i went back to their original material i totally understood the appeal

The rink's still open, I think.

Schulz gets redeemed for his complete and utter hatred of Garfield.

my dad had old peanuts collections from the 50s and 60s (at one point i could have told you who all the great pumpkin had visited -- one of them was 'boots ruthven') so that's what i grew up with. it's impressive how good it was for as long as it was; watterson otm

Yeah so many of these strips (but not peanuts) were ghastly spectres of their former selves by the time I was a kid. Then when I would see Los Bros talking abt Hank Ketcham or TCJ writers about Gasoline Alley it was baffling to me. Now the proof is out there, though.

peanuts was terrible when i was a kid, but my school library had a bunch of early peanuts comix and so around 5-6th grade i read a ton of the early ones. i would love to buy a bunch of the new fantagraphics ones -- but i have the ketcham fantagraphics volume (so excellent) and they're not super enjoyable to read. too many pages between the hard covers. i'm holding out for a super-sized volume

if i do get some, i'm not even sure which years are best to get. what's considered his best era? 60s-70s?

Of Dennis or Peanuts?

i'd start in the late 50s

every library i've been to has the peanuts fantagraphics collections. just try em all -- start at beginning. early charlie brown is kind of a proto-cartman!

not sure i'd go too far past '70? i'm not one to *blame* woodstock, but he did seem symptomatic of diminishing returns.

not sure where i'd stop, snoopy kinda takes tonal control around the late 60s i think and i prefer peanuts before that but obv snoopy is great so

yeah woodstock is prolly the symbol

it's kinda mind-boggling to me how many years he wrote this thing. who has that kind of longevity today? (dave sim?) even watterson + larson and other modern daily phenoms retired at some point

what year is the "mr. sack" arc from, where charlie brown doesn't want the kids at camp to see that his head has developed a weird rash that makes it look like a baseball so he wears a paper bag on his head and everybody loves him

watterson went out at his absolute peak, too

but i'm still legit moved by the way the lines in the last 15 or so years of peanuts got really wobbly, cuz they were still all his

I'm such a stan that I'd push the shark moment all the way to when Rerun shows up.

re; baseball rash, i'd guess 1973 (if this is the same arc with alfred e neuman)

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpwg4vC9Ya1qisuj3o1_500.png

xp you are otm! that story's really something i think. the one where he's just sitting on a dock fishing with another kid and telling a longish dullish joke and the other kid says "that's very funny. you're fun to be with, mr. sack." "thank you."

who has that kind of longevity today? (dave sim?)

Cerebus was 26 years, Peanuts was 50. Maggie Chascarillo's 30 years in now.

'mr sack' is from 1973-74. i think ppl tend to overstate the steepness of the 'decline,' though i admittedly have a lot of tolerance for snoopy and woodstock episodes.

i'd still take even '90s era 'peanuts' over most other comic strips of the last 30 years. even at his worst schulz is discernably himself; there's no committee-think in the mentality that could end a strip with snoopy saying 'i'm emotionally bankrupt...you're emotionally bankrupt...we're all emotionally bankrupt...'

oddly I get offboard w/Peanuts at the moment it stops becoming a 4-panel strip

*stops being. sorry, weirdly worded.

I loved the 50s Peanuts but the second 60s volume was enough for me. The 50s is such a psychogeographical landscape, with Charlie Brown constantly questioning his reality in a self-contained funk - it's like French philosophy with pictures. In comparison the 60s just seemed kind of hokey.

rss link here http://beatonna.tumblr.com/

belated thanks! i had a different one and it didn't work.

not sure i'd go too far past '70?

I read all the fantagraphics reprint books a while back and there's a definite drop off in the early 70s. Not that it becomes terrible - if you're a fan it's still enjoyable.

i know i've posted this link on ilx before, so apologies, but here's a review I wrote of the Schulz bio that tries to get across both the good and bad points of the book

http://comiczine-fa.com/?p=822

as for schulz's longevity, there are plenty of newspaper cartoonists with similar or even longer careers (beetle bailey started in 1950, and still has mort walker's name on it today) but what makes schulz exceptional, p much, is that he did the strip all by himself for so long - no other writers, artists, letterers etc. obviously the relative simplicity of the strip made that possible, but even so, what a grind! comics are such HARD WORK

can't think of many comic book artists who can match sim's 300 issues, but obv there are lots of comic bk guys who had much longer careers all told

did mort walker ever have a classic period? beetle bailey (and hi + lois too) has not been worth reading since before i was a kid

do we have a rolling funny papers thread on ILC?

70s beetle bailey paperbacks are perfect toilet reading imho, but i haven't seen the strip in years, so can't speak to its decline in quality. best thing walker ever wrote was a short-lived strip called 'Sam's Strip' in the early 60s, drawn by jerry dumas, that was a comic-about-comic. bill watterson obviously knew it:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-B7W1cuRVTOk/TlC6CZfNYSI/AAAAAAAAAZQ/2pM7HVj0fbY/s1600/SamsStrip2.jpg

Ha, never saw any of those early strips. I only knew about Sam & Silo in the 80s.

i've never seen sam & silo - for some reason, walker's comics have never been at all popular here in the uk - but iirc it's a retooled version of sam's strip without the meta elements? fantagraphics have issued a complete sam's strip, btw, that looks p tasty

S&S were pretty vanilla, nothing you'd ever think Bill Watterson would have been influenced by.

WF i liked that review a lot.

schulz' minimalism (and the ironic adaptation of the entire medium to that minimalism, when pretty much literally no one else can work properly with it) is so magic and spooky; i am not really arteducated but i suspect he was a greater american artist than most of the abstract expressionists or whoever his "fine" contemporaries were. sometimes i reread the paragraph-long intro he gave watterson's first big color collection, which begins "bill watterson draws great bedside tables. i admire that." and goes on to say that he likes "calvin's little shoes that look like dinner rolls". can you imagine what that must have felt like for watterson.

haha, wow. i didn't know about that

sam's strip is great
the dinner rolls bit is legendary.

schultz was clearly a difficult guy.

this thread convinced me to grab a lot of the fawcett peanuts collections off ebay

xp I mean, he's not wrong, but damn dude, lol

haha i've always thought it was like intensely complimentary! to single out little cartoonist's details like that instead of just saying oh childish wonder oh sophisticated wit oh we need the comics more now than ever.

he also compliments the water splashes.

i've seen some really old beetle bailey (early '60s i think) with what seemed like pretty sharp, stinging anti-military lolz -- or anyway a lot sharper than it got later.

schulz is right! i love the way watterson draws little things -- telephones, the covers of comic books, trees.

i can understand why schulz wld admire the attention to detail of someone like watterson - after all, schulz's background was in correspondence course commercial art, where the public wld pay to have their renderings of objects, animals etc graded via the post by schulz and many other 'teachers'.

i read he used to have contests with the other drawing instructor guys where they'd draw a series of parallel lines as close to each other as possible without touching, and he'd get them really close, so that the gap between lines were smaller than the lines themselves.

^I love this anecdote!

schulz drew this in high school:

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/87/243527705_99306dddfc_z.jpg?zz=1

little hitlers

OMG

http://childrensbookshop.com/images/bookimages/68/68044.jpg

there's a larger version of that pic, and the story behind it, in this bk, which is really great and really cheap secondhand. along w/ a nice selection of full colour sunday pages up to abt 1973, it contains a great photo sequence of schulz drawing and lettering a daily, and some terrific pics of him wearing 70s big collared flowery shirts - its still the best single volume peanuts bk, imho (the chip kidd bk favours the late 50s/early 60s stuff, which may suit ppl w/ the same taste as aldo. personally i find some of the design a bit grandstanding, although the bk does contain many treasures, too)

hey man, no chip kidd no fucking deal!!!?@?@@!@#111!

(sorry, I have no reason to be angered by chip kidd but i just am)

u convinced me. xxp

the thing that rly irked me in the michaelis book is that he seems to think schulz deliberately made up all the bad childhood memories he would mention in interview years later -- being picked on by bullies, etc. -- because he (michaelis) couldn't find any witnesses to verify it! i mean, i had a shitty time in first grade too, but i doubt any of my classmates would remember that 80 years later.

i second 'peanuts jubilee,' it's much more charming than the chip kidd book (which i actually found pretty disappointing, tho the huge oversized reproductions of schulz panels are inevitably beautiful). and 'peanuts treasury' and 'sandlot peanuts' (old oversized books with tons of classic strips, both probably bargain-bin remainder or easily found used now) are both great too.

i feel i have seen many wonderful things that i wouldn't otherwise have seen - schulz originals, translated japanese batman comics and so on- thanks to chip kidd, but the price for that has been to have CHIP KIDD flashed onto my retinas 24 frames per second

sandlot peanuts was among the first books i ever owned; my copy has crayon scrawls all over it

don't know sandlot peanuts, must seek out - iirc, peanuts treasury (the big golden hardcover?) recycles some of the autobiographical material frm jubilee...don't have those to hand right now

sandlot peanuts is just the baseball stuff.
at age four, i knew the name joe garagiola

and the name joe shlabotnik

seriously though!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSrABUI84wE

ahh i can see why a baseball-themed peanuts anthol never made it to the uk - but the exoticism of things like baseball and summer camps was def part of the appeal to this partic brit reader, and i'm sure many others. when i was young i had no idea whether the great pumpkin was a real holiday/event or not

it is iirc

the sack toon, btw, is a really faithful rendering of a long stretch from Sandlot

"you're fun to be with mister sack"

and the punchline of that shaggy dog story is amazing
the gag is that charlie brown has baseball on his mind so much that he develops a rash on the back of his head in the shape of the stitches on a baseball
then he sees the sun rising as a baseball
so he goes to summer camp to get baseball off his mind
and after many weeks he decides he's cured so he wakes up early to watch the sun rise, unsure if it will be a baseball or the sun and when he finally looks he sees -
really, watch the video.

haha i had that video when i was a kid -- it also includes the truly insane story where charlie brown bites the kite-eating tree, is threatened with a lawsuit by the environmental protection agency (!!!), runs away, gets lost, and winds up living in a cardboard box (!!!!) and coaching a team of toddlers.

in retrospect, it's amazing how faithful (and popular) those cartoons were considering how ubiquitous they became.
i remember a musical saturday morning peanuts show that i used to watch as a kid.

and a quick google search suggests that was the cartoon adaptation of "you're a good man charlie brown"
i can't hear home on the range without "give me my pencil"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgQyRoP6fgU

we talked about mr. sack upthread but i had not seen the adaptation

SO HERE I AM GOING TO CAMP. FOR SOMEONE WHO HATES GOING TO CAMP I SURE SPEND A LOT OF TIME THERE. MAYBE I WENT TO THE WRONG DOCTOR. HIS SOLUTION FOR EVERYTHING IS TO GO TO CAMP. I KNOW WHAT'LL HAPPEN TO ME. JUST WHEN I GET OLD ENOUGH SO THAT I DON'T HAVE TO GO ANYMORE, I'LL GET DRAFTED INTO THE INFANTRY.

i bet you straightened them out, didn't you, sack?

'the infantry' really makes that

in one of the books my dad had, charlie brown loses in the spelling bee because he misspells 'maze' as [willie] 'mays'. which is less sad than the time he misspells 'beagle'

'the infantry' really makes that

schulz definitely loved his "funny words"

Ever since I read that Michaelis book I periodically doodle objects in little groups of 3s, it's a good exercise. It inspired this thread: Things that are satisying to draw a simple cartoon of

the thing that rly irked me in the michaelis book is that he seems to think schulz deliberately made up all the bad childhood memories he would mention in interview years later -- being picked on by bullies, etc. -- because he (michaelis) couldn't find any witnesses to verify it! i mean, i had a shitty time in first grade too, but i doubt any of my classmates would remember that 80 years later.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, July 13, 2012 3:01 PM (6 hours ago)

haha you would totally not guess that is the case from that epic TCJ article w/Monty Schulz where he questions the veracity of seemingly every minor anecdote in that book

http://danceraday.tumblr.com/

have we ever brought up Three Word Phrase?
http://threewordphrase.com/todo.htm

why did you do that.

say what you will about rage comics, but I've laughed at fucking dolans 10x funnier than whatever that was supposed to be.

ooookay dude *backs slowly away*

ha, maybe I'm coming on too strong.

LOOOOL pplains otfm

i'm only a little upset that the re-introduction of actual webcomics kind of broke the spell of peanuts as the best webcomic ever.

Three Word Comics is a collection of "I thought a vaguely funny sentence / twist and then inexplicably my muse said I must draw it with all necessary explanation"

Rage Comics is a flaming ball of shit.

I was not aware of either of them until just now.

You have both brought shame to this thread.

And this is the webcomics thread, so well done there.

I would seriously take a rage comic over p much any "web comic" besides pbw and maybe half of hark a vagrant

it is nobody's fault but my own, but I just read the whole Three Word Phrase archive bcz it looked like a webcomic I saw one wryly poignant strip from once and I was going to defend it (wryly poignant is p. much all I want out of comics at this point in life), and that strip is totally not in the archive so it probably wasn't TWP at all, and I suck for even looking

to be fair, it's ok (maybe even good!) for a webcomic. pretty sure any random sampling of webcomics will pull up worse webcomics.

http://threewordphrase.com/anxiety.gif

or

http://anongallery.org/img/8/0/donald-duck-in-apple-store.jpg

dead to you if you like the first one.

ok, i'm dead to you

http://threewordphrase.com/funday.gif

or

http://i.destinyislands.com/public/dolan-comics/02-dolan-dinner.png

there's seriously no question here.

i just googled webcomics and saw something called vgcats. brrrrr....

best to avoid the earlier crappier ones
http://i.imgur.com/wtpG5.gif
http://i.imgur.com/sjUj1.gif
http://i.imgur.com/W0tXV.gif
also, are you seriously comparing his stuff to the C+P rage comix? i mean, come on, man. i guess we're just not on the same wavelength here

yeah, vgcats is one of those that doesn't even pretend to be for public consumption

I like this one
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/5273/blackholek.gif

And this one
http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/2517/tattoon.gif

I laughed at this one too
http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/5815/tarot.gif

The later ones are definitely more likely to be funny.

peanuts is still the best webcomic, though.

The drawing's not great but it's not embarrassing. twp, I mean.

This is like a joke in a Brendan Fraser movie but I like it better
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/3889/hockey.gif

I definitely laughed at this one. Drawings of penises are often funny by default, though.
http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/5485/dicep.gif

I would seriously take a rage comic over p much any "web comic" besides pbw and maybe half of hark a vagrant

Pup? When I Am King?

"A Arm"

This is a cheap laugh but I laughed and that's worth something.
http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/6641/amazingn.gif

"a al ship"

son

fuck w/

mustardcore

nah

bawse

Inside the Actors Studio with Rick Ross

pplains just so otm in here I can't even

Those comics are like Etsy in four panels. Fucking disgusting.

Are you gonna be on ilx all the time after you get laid off?

I think it's really uncool to talk about my personal and IRL life. I'd appreciate it if you refrained from doing so in the future. Thanks in advance.

yeah, here on ILX we like our assholery shut off from the outside world, to run free with impunity!

The Shining one is everything I hate about Family Guy that everyone tells me Family Guy isn't like anymore.

And the others are way too cute and self-aware.

The dice one and the Kool-Aid one were okay in a pbf wannabe sorta way.

Tarot cards would've been 23% funnier if panels 2 & 4 had been cut.

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/180/779/1110020225066.png

It's like Akbar & Jeff 2012.

webcomics are the worst thing in the world, but 'no egrets' made me laugh

all yall finding this stuff intolerable really need to check out vgcats to recalibrate.

brb

pplains, i like you, but i just don't get you

I just want the damn things to be honest and funny. Don't try to pull at my heart strings, don't try to insert an out-of-nowhere pop reference as the only gag and don't try to fill space to fill space. All I ask.

VG Cats didn't thrill me, but I acknowledge that I was born during the Nixon administration. That said, this was funny:

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/images/100708.jpg

cuz we've all been there guys, amirite?

(And I'm not really some crazed rage-comicaholic. I remember when The Simpsons were known as the crudest thing on television and since then, I've seen Beavis & Butthead -> South Park (->Terrence & Phillip) -> all down the line to where we now have c&p'd panels with badly drawn Disney characters speaking in mangled text. Can't wait to see what comes next.)

Hey Whiney, when you try so hard to be an asshole on the internet, it affects people's "IRL life." The division isn't as clean as you'd like it to be.

yah, but we do have a general line of demarcation regarding people's jobs or unwanted conversation that connects their ILX username with their IRL names
so deep breath let's all be cool? feel free to call each other dicks maybe? i hear that's what the kids are doing these days

or ask dickish q's to whiney on the "whiney q&a" thread, instead of going off-topic in this thread clearly delineated for whiney to be a dick in

The sweaty babies = classic surreal farce, not my tiptop favourite thing but I'll eat it up all day, sure. The same joke as eg Father Ted (which might be my tip top favourite thing, now that I think about it)

The apple store comic it's against = shit in a can. And totally filling space to fill space, the first two panels could be removed and it'd still be as funny which = no funny. And also with the pop culture reference that you hate?

Is it a thing where you see the art as being as bad in both, but twp is worse because it's trying?

Cuh, some of us were doing comics drawn badly for humorous effect years before these 4chan upstarts.

However, comics where the creators actually give a shit about quality can also be worthwhile. Such as Nedroid or Gunnerkrigg Court.

Who knows, perhaps there is room for both in this world. IMAGINE THAT!

Hey Whiney, when you try so hard to be an asshole on the internet, it affects people's "IRL life." The division isn't as clean as you'd like it to be.
--bamcquern

I'm making fun of web comics and you're making fun of my job and career and personal life. There's a clear, unblurry distinction there and if you can't see it, maybe the moderators can

Sorry for response, didn't see that forks covered this... Carry on, thread.

Ha, goaste. I was in love with their versions of Nemi strips.

xposts

hey whiney can you tell us why Pup and Bodyworld and When I Am King are shit?

When did WGW go off script and get personal with anyone here? Unless you're all taking these twee-ass strips to heart and finding your chivalry threatened when they're called out for the shit they are.

I probably need to just take my business over to this thread since both the dolans and the "kids have fun" strips can join hands together and be as one there:

What's the worst online comic strip?

honestly, i'm just tired of seeing him troll every thread. dude needs to chill (on ILX, i have no business knowing about his personal life)

Whiney only trolls on the threads where I disagree with him.

Haha, not true at all.

goofy pls

http://i.imgur.com/O0E87.png

http://harkavagrant.com/nonsense/SF1.jpg

Patrick Farley's NSFW flash comic The First Word is a hold-onto-your-hats bit of amazement. Wow.

whoa, neat. some inventive animations/transitions

man, that guy's been doing those FOREVER; i remember apocamon from what must've been just around 2000

tbf though, this is a lot better IMO than the stuff he did in the early '00s

oh no doubt! definitely channeling some corben there.

corben comparison OTM

http://www.tcj.com/webcomics-capsule-reviews-2/

http://vimeo.com/58412851

http://25.media.tumblr.com/c1ee750cf3a524ee8e5e92a011c4ef2a/tumblr_moipfvh1f01qd18uko1_500.png

http://biebercomic.tumblr.com/post/53190105484/biebercomic-sean-t-collins-michael-hawkins

mordy. mordy. no

Nhex and I finally agree on something itt.

Akkkkk, alterna-lit dudes who write fan-fiction, possibly the worst form of art outside of latte foam sculptures

http://24.media.tumblr.com/f5ed665773ac517879e54926e5e4fa36/tumblr_my2xcktI9K1rnw5qjo5_500.png

http://lamezone.net/cosm/img/cosm22.png

um.

yeah, that was my reaction.

reminds me of some of the study group stuff

http://www.sassquach.com/journal/2013/11/4/boys-night.html

yeah, that's written by john landis' kid, who also wrote the movie Chronicle

In January 2012, Variety reported that Disney picked up a pitch Landis made for a space adventure focusing on a brother and sister. The film is set to be produced by Wedding Crashers producer Andrew Panay.[20]

Zathura 2!

http://25.media.tumblr.com/7b71582cb166691afb706e99af17e5c2/tumblr_my2j2wR7CG1t9xnk4o1_500.jpg

http://shelf-life.ew.com/2014/09/24/acclaimed-webcomic-strong-female-protagonist-is-coming-to-print/?

thanks for that nhex, i just power read the first two issues. it's very good!

Strong Female Protagonist is A++ btw; highly recommended.
http://blankslatebooks.co.uk/zygote/masterplasty.html
http://harveyjames.tumblr.com/

SFP is a gem, glad you like
this harvey james's stuff is pretty cool, great faces and color

I also power-read SFP, was fucking great. Very happy to have discovered that.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18295369/webcomics-xkcd-questionable-content-dinosaur-comics-90s-internet-social-media

Recommending - story starts here

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjMM_ONr1JZ/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Oh, that looks great. Really nice art. It's hard to find good narrative webcomics these days, but I have enjoyed both Ninecrow and Everything Is Fine. They're both horror, Ninecrow has great art but feels a little traditional story-wise, whereas Everything Is Fine isn't amazing art-wise but does manage to be pretty genuinely disturbing at times.

nice to see false knees having a go at a real story

Ninecrow starts off rough in both writing and art, but gets good by the end. Looking forward to Book 2 whenever it happens. Hoping this gets a Netflix adaptation someday, feels like its made for TV

Everything is Fine is great so far, still going through it