The Internet is becoming more and more a part of daily life, even for people who don’t use it for hours online. I work at a campus newspaper and a lot of my coworkers are planning on going into the newspaper business after graduation.

Let me tell you something, the journalists fear the Net.

And really, it a lot of ways they should be nervous. The Internet is a powerful news source, it has better comics than print does (and better ways to learn about and discuss said comics) and if you are picky about what sites you go to, it;s all free.

Webcomics are even starting to take the leap into politics offers views and analysis of current events a way that until recent years was reserved for the political cartoons section of the big papers. As far as I’m concerned you can get a better sample of the various opinions out there with more humor through Winger, Filibuster Cartoons and the many other politically minded strip available.

One thing I love about the Web and webcomics in particular is the ability to talk to a niche group. The Internet is big enough, and has big enough players that we can and do have strips very political in nature but completely meaningless to people with a high-speed connection.

A case in point would be today’s Joe and Monkey strip. Neither Joe nor Monkey get political too often. However, creator Zach Miller saw something that he had an opinion on and wrote a strip about it. Tomorrow will probably be another strip about that stupid bucket but today we got political commentary for free. We also got a link to the news story, which I then read, and was able to form my own opinion on. This is a pattern that I’m sure we’ve all seen. It’s the power of the Internet and an example of how webcomics can actually affect your life.

So if you’re not it the habit of reading the news linked to you favorite comics, start. You’ll be glad you did (the more you know).

Of course we’ll leave the tackling of the really important political issue to our Commander in Chief.