…and I have the strangest urge to inflict my tastes on the lot of you.
(Word of warning: a lot of these comics are NSFW. I don’t think any of the links go directly to anything naked, but that could change as the comics are updated. Also, some of the comics link to the current comic, some to the first comic, and some to a random comic that I just really liked.)
Dicebox is a science fiction drama about interstellar itinerant workers. The main characters are a pair of women who are married to each other, although as near as I can tell only one of them is actually a lesbian. Oddly enough, it’s not the one who totally looks like a dude.
A Softer World uses photography and free form poetry to create create some incredibly dark, incredibly funny comics.
Achewood is a must read of the webcomic world. It’s been described as the comic equivalent to Miles Davis. Chris Onstad as a way with dialogue that comes across as absolutely true, and totally unlike anything you’ve ever heard actually spoken out loud. It’s mostly about the adventures of a bunch of stuffed animals. Frequently NSFW.
Alpha Shade is a manga adventure/drama. The artwork is outstanding, but so detailed that it takes forever for Chris and Joseph Brudlos to update it. Coupled with a rather meandering storyline, it can be kind of frustrating waiting for something to happen.
Arcane Times is kind of cute. It’s about a cut-rate magician who gets confused with an archmagus and inherits a magical house. It just got rebooted as a more focused narrative, but Cheyenne Wright is a professional artist, and the comic often goes on hiatus while he focuses on the stuff that he actually gets paid for.
Candi is another college humor strip. The comic takes its tone from it’s bubbly, slightly airheaded protagonist/namesake, but it hides a pretty sharp edge.
Casey and Andy is summed up by its creator, Andy Weir, as “Mad scientists who die a lot.” No one will ever confuse Weir for a great artist, but the humor is dead on. This comic is currently under an extended hiatus while Weir works on another project:
Cheshire Crossing, Andy Weir’s other webcomic. A much more serious story starring Dorothy, Wendy, and Alice as government agents in training, working under the command of Mary Poppins. I really wish Weir would team up with a better artist for this, because his style, which was acceptable for C&A, doesn’t really serve the story matter well. CC updates very rarely, but when it does, it’s enough material for a dead-tree style comic book.
Cat & Girl, which proves that you can be intellectual, post modern, and fall down funny all at the same time.
Copper is a series of whimsical vignettes about a boy and his dog. Sort of Calvin and Hobbes with a blood transfusion from Little Nemo in Slumberland. Currently on hiatus as the artist works on other projects.
Crap I Drew on my Lunch Break is by former doper Jin Wicked, and pretty much reads like an illustrated Pit rant. Jin has a wonderful, very distinct style, but doesn’t update very regularly.
Ctrl-Alt-Del is one of the legion of Penny Arcade wannabes, but this one is almost as funny as the original.
Speaking of which, Penny Arcade. If you don’t know this comic, what the hell are you doing on the internet?
Digger, by Ursula Vernon, is a real gem. It’s about a talking wombat and her adventures in a vaguely Asian fantasy world. The art is superb, and the writing is even better. It can be both funny and poignant, often in the same panel. It’s hosted by Graphic Smash, which is a pay site, but a lot of the archives are free. And frankly, it’s worth the three bucks a month just for this comic.
Girl Genius, by the inimitable Phil Foglio. One of the most outstanding comics, ever. Agatha Clay is a failing student at a prestigious college in a Europe ravaged by “sparks:” men and women born with the gift of mad science, until Baron Wulfenstein rose to power and brought peace… or else. Her life takes a turn for the adventurous after her tutor at the college is revealed to be studying forbidden technology left by the mysterious Other, which leads to the Baron taking a personal interest in her past, and Agatha taking to the road to escape him.
Gods and Undergrads is about the usual trials of leaving home to go to college: dating, making new friends, finding out your the illegimate daughter of Zeus. You know, the usual.
Gunnerkrig Court is an unusual story about an unusual girl at an unusual school. Tom Siddel has a wonderful style, and I think he’s going somewhere very interesting with this comic. Definetly one to keep an eye on.
Harker is an interesting comic, borrowing it’s titular character from Dracula and infusing it with healthy doses of Burroughs, Lovecraft, and Universal Pictures. I do wish Erik Brown would pick up the pace on his story a little bit, though.
Holy Bibble (yes, that’s Bibble) is an irreverent look at the Old Testament. I really liked this comic at first, but lately, I really have no idea at all what’s going on.
Home on the Strange is about Tom and Karla, a happily married couple who are incorrigible geeks. Very funny, even if you can’t quote the entire run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer from memory. But if you can, it’s even funnier.
Inverloch is another manga comic, this one an adventure story set in a fairly standard D&D setting. Once again, the art is breath-taking, and the updates (about three pages each) are regular and frequent, moving the plot along at a brisk pace.
Magellan is one of the better superhero stories I’ve read lately, including the stuff from the big studios. Kaycee Jones doesn’t have any superpowers, but that hasn’t stopped her from getting admitted to Magellan, the world’s foremost academy for training superheros. Naturally, there’s a diabolical plot in action when she gets there, and Kaycee finds herself caught in the middle. A great blend of high drama that knows not to take itself too seriously.
Malfunction Junction is one of the most hilariously dark comics I’ve ever seen. You really get the feeling that if he didn’t have the comic as an outlet, Matt Milby would be shooting somebody in the head, and it’s only a 50/50 chance that it’d be himself.
The most amazing thing about Medium Large isn’t the way it skewers pop culture with deadly (and deviant) accuracy on such a consistent basis. The most amazing thing about Medium Large is that it’s by the same guy who does Sally Forth.
I don’t know if there’s a better drawn comic out there than Megatokyo. It’s another manga comic, this one basically a romance comic, but with lots of robots and giant monsters thrown in to keep the attention of us guys. Piro’s update schedule is a bit erratic, but it’s worth the wait for a new page.
Multiplex is about the hijinx of a bunch of teenagers who work in a movie theater. Not a great comic, but Gordon McAlpine (who just joined the 'Dope today. Hi Gordon!) shows a great deal of promise.
There are a lot of “mad scientist” comics out there. Many of them are very good. None of them are as good as Narbonic. Seriously, if you read one comic mentioned in this post (assuming anyone’s actually read this far in this post) make it Narbonic. The story is coming to an end soon, but the archives are free. Plus, you can pay to own the comics in dead tree format! Shaenon Garrity is a great artist and writer, but maybe her business acumen needs a little work.
Technically, this link to Nodwick is to two sperate comics. One, Nodwick, is about the misadventures of a D&D hireling named Nodwick, and the party of adventurers who see him, not so much as a person, as a pack mule/mine detector/projectile weapon. The other comic, Full Frontal Nerdity, is about a bunch of geeks who play D&D. I kind of like the geeks better, but both strips are hilarious. Aaron Williams also does a “real” (read: paper) comic book about an elementary school for the super-powered children of superheros, called PS 238 that is also excellent.
Nukees is about the antics of a bunch of Berkely nuclear engineering students. Do you have any idea how many webcomics there are out there about mad scientists? Well, this is another one.
Overcompensating is the comic weblog of a millionaire hillbilly and his delusional friends. Hilarious, but not as hilarious as Jeff Rowland’s earlier Wigu, which he has just restarted. Read all of these comics. Do not eat or drink until you are finished. You may relieve yourself if you have an appropriate recepticle within reach of your computer.
The Perry Bible Fellowship is what would happen if Gary Larson didn’t have to worry about newspaper editors. Sublime. Also, I always call it The Perry Fellow Bibleship, but I don’t think that can be blamed on creator Nicholas Gurewitch.
Are you Indie? If you don’t read Questionable Content, the answer is “no.” It concerns the adventures of Martin, a cute, skinny, indy guy and his adventures in trying to get smooches from the various hot ladies in the comic. Also, he makes fun of lots of bands that you’ve never heard of, but it’s still funny anyway.
Possibly the most inapt name in all of webcomics, Real Life Comics is purportedly the true adventures of artist Greg Dean and his group of misfit (read: nerdy) friends. Unless he really know someone with an orbital death satellite aimed at Washington, I think he’s taking a few liberties with the truth.
Scary Go Round, by Englishman John Allison, is not at all like a combination of Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and Black Adder, but I don’t know a better way to describe it.
Schlock Mercenary is a great comic. The art was pretty rough orginally, but it improves by leaps and bounds as it progresses. I guess you get a lot of practice when you write a daily webcomic for six years without ever missing a single deadline. This one’s about a company of spacefaring mercenaries and their various exciting and hilarious adventures. What’s nice is that, in addition to being a great artist and top-notch writer, creator Howard Taylor also knows his science, and isn’t afraid to use it on his fans.
David Willis’s Shortpacked! finds comedy in the employees of a toystore. Worth it for the plethora of Batman jokes alone.
I’m not sure what title to use to refer to this strip, also by David Willis, because it’s had so many over its life time. It started out as a lighthearted college gag-a-day thing (Roomies), turned super dark and serious, then tranmogrified into an epic story of alien invasion and top secret government agencies (It’s Walky). Then that story ended, and it became a weekly three panel relationship strip (Joyce and Walky). All three incarnations are great, but It’s Walky is the highpoint. A couple of characters from this comic got carried over into Shortpacked!
Slow Wave is a pretty neat idea. if you have a wierd dream, write it down and send it to Jesse Reklaw, and he’ll turn it into a comic. Surreal does not even begin to describe the result.
Sluggy Freelance is one of the oldest and most established webcomics out there. It took me three tries, over the course of two years, to actually get into it. I don’t know what was wrong with me before, because this comic is fucking brilliant. But odds are, if you’ve read this far, you already know that.
Another comic written by Narbonic genius Shaenon Garrity, Smithson is about an unusual college campus that is haunted by what appears to be a goddess of some kind. It also has it’s own superhero. While it lacks the relentless humor and manic energy of Narbonic, there’s a wonderful otherworldly sense to this comic. I’m not sure where Garrity is going with this one, but I can’t wait to find out.
I know this is about the third comic I’ve said this about, but Something Positive is the best webcomic I’ve ever read. It’s easily the darkest comic I’ve ever read that still purported to be humorous. The first comic, I think, tells you everything you need to know about it. Except, perhaps, that a later comic uses the line, “I bukkake for justice!” as its punchline. (As I write this, the Something Positive website appears to be down. Hopefully, it will be back up by the time you read this. If not, stay at this portion of the post and hit refresh until you get the dark, morally questionable goodness. Trivialities like sleep and sustenance can wait.)
Queen of Wands is kind of like Something Positive on Prozac. The same sort of comedy, but with out the razor edge of hatred and despair underlying it. But it’s still very funny! QoW and SP had several crossovers, and when QoW ended about a year ago, the main character, Kestral, migrated over to the other strip, in what was, I swear to God, the single funniest thing I’ve ever seen on the internet.
Sorcery 101 is about vampires, werewolves, wizards, demons… all that good stuff. In the modern day, natch. I’ve been reading this one for a while, but I’m still on the fence about it. I think it has a lot of potential, but it hasn’t realized much of it yet.
Spamusement is best described by it’s own tagline: Poorly drawn comics inspired by actual spam subject lines. Hilariously funny, but, tragically, mostly dead now. Steve Frank got burnt out a few months back, and very rarely updates any more. Still, a read through the archives is well worth your time.
Stuff Sucks, by Dutch cartoonist Liz Greenfield, is about what happens when mild-mannerd record store clerk Daniel crosses paths with aspiring grifter Zemi, and how she utterly ruins his life. I’m pretty sure they’ll end up sleeping with each other sooner or later, but the comic hasn’t gotten that far yet. Very funny, with an original and engaging artistic style.
Templar, Arizona is an odd duck. I guess it’s set in the future? I guess that’s not really important to the story, which is about… well, there’s this guy who works for a newspaper, and he meets these people, who are… wierd. Look, just read the damn comic, already. It’s really good.
Back on Graphic Smash again, we have The Guardians, another superhero story. Writer (and protagonist) Graveyard Greg is very talented, but updates have been very spotty lately. The comic starts with some very extensive backstory, that you’re basically not meant to understand right away. It’s worth reading to see it all gradually doled out to you, though.
The Midlands can be described in three words: Lesbian cyberpunk elves. That phrase is wholly accurate and entirely misleading, as The Midlands is an intimate, insightful character drama that uses a unique technique of narrating every panel with the internal monologue of one of the characters in the story. It’s also one of the most ambitious world-building exercises since Professor Tolkien wrote his little tale about midgets and costume jewelry. It’s also really exceptionally not work safe.
You don’t have to be a D&D geek to love The Order of the Stick. If the term “saving throw” means nothing to you, you’ll still love TOotS as a wickedly funny fantasy pastiche. If you own your own d20, however, you’ll find the most deadly parody of roleplaying tropes and cliches on the internet.
Venus Envy, Erin Lindsey’s comic about the life of a teenaged transexual named Zoe, has some pretty rough artwork (she gets better), but that’s more than made up for by her completely engaging and believable characterizations. Even in the midst of ridiculously over-the-top drama, her characters retain a believablity that few other webcomics have managed to match.
Scott Ramsoomair shows off his incredible art skillz in VG Cats, and also his utter shamelessness in ripping of Penny Arcade. But who gives a shit? It’s still funny.
Wapsi Square is what would happen if Joss Whedon wrote Sex in the City. Diminutive, buxom archaeologist Monica Villarreal has her comfortable existence in Minneapolis thrown into turmoils by the appearance of the even-more-dimunitive Tepoztecal, a blue skinned Aztec deity who reveals that there’s a lot more history to the world than anyone suspected.
Fans is a really great title. A bunch of social misfits in a college science fiction club (am I being redundant there?) accidentally save the world, and realize that they’re really, really good at it. So they start doing it all the time. A fantastic story that came to a very powerful conclusion a few years ago.
So, those are the comics that I read regularly, not counting the six I had to delete to get vBulletin to accept my post. And you should, too. Read the comics, I mean, not post incredibly long lists of things nobody else really gives a shit about. Before you get started on you assigned reading, though, feel free to share any favorite webcomics of your own that you think I’ve missed. I’m always looking for something to add to my daily trawl.
