The show for fans of web comics by fans of web comics. Each week the DS crew discuss the state of comic art on the web. The show includes reviews, commentary, and interviews.
Hitting you hot off the presses of the cultural Zeitgeist, it’s the Digital Strips Blog here with the nominees for the 2019 Eisner awards!…
…two weeks after they were announced!
But tardiness aside, there’s some interesting titles on the block this year. We can’t help but notice, too, that 60% (or, three out of the five) of the offerings in the Webcomics category are hosted on Line Webtoon — but then, the pervasiveness of that ever-expanding hub of Webcomics content is no surprise to erstwhile listeners of the Digital Strips podcast now, is it?
Here, then, are your Eisner Awards 2019 Webcomics Category finalists.
It seems like only yesterday we were revisiting Andrew Hussie’s epic webcomic ‘Homestuck‘ when we looked at comics which have returned after long hiatuses. And as though our thoughts and words manifested into the ether, this week saw the return of none other than the internet’s most famous flash-based semi-interactive webcomic.
Homestuck’s latest update features an ‘epilogue’ to the story of John, Rose, Jade, Dave—and of course, Lord English—and much of the rest of the extended cast that grew with the comic across its nine-year run (although I guess that period technically needs to be updated now, huh?). It is, in true Homestuck style, a little confusing at first (especially if you accidentally skip the prologue and go straight to the main course/dessert as I did) and a little twisted at the end: but fans of the series will be rewarded by sticking through a read of both divergent (but intertwining) canon and non-canon paths.
I won’t spoil too much about what happens at the end, but… suffice it to say I wouldn’t be surprised if we were back here in another few years with a blog post entitled ‘Homestuck: the webcomic that keeps coming back’. Want to know why? Then why are you still here? Go read it now! 😀
Are you a fan of Homestuck? Let us know what you thought of its triumphant return in the comments below—and don’t forget to remind us that Hussie teased as much back in 2016 by catching us on Twitter and Facebook. And until next time, always remember: don’t eat the clickbait!
Don’t click away! It’s not the title of a Jane Austen novel you’ve never heard of (well, I guess it could be if ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ is a real thing…). This week, we’re continuing our dive into all things Webcomic Demonic by moving on from Love Advice from the Great Duke of Hell to look another way demons can work their way into the hearts of their comic’s protagonists—the more, erm… direct approach.
Of course, if you’re wanting to secure a happily-ever-after with the love of your life, then perhaps calling upon one of the Great 23 Dukes of Hell, ruler over 30 legions of bloodthirsty demons who could descend in fury upon the cities of the world and reduce them to ash at the mere blinking of an eye… might not be your best option. Some (including Astaroth, the Great Duke himself) might say the idea is patently ludicrous. But Paul, the protagonist of Love Advice from the Great Duke of Hell by Unfins (Damien) isn’t alone in the annals of people selling their souls for ill-conceived reward. In fact, Paul’s Faustian deal is remarkably similar to the one made by the famous Faust himself – and the others that came before them who also sold their immortal souls for… just the silliest reasons.
Four-panel strips have been a fixture since early 20th-century newspaper comics like Mutt and Jeff and the concomitant appearance of yonkoma (“four-cell”) manga in Japan. It’s the perfect three-act-structure: You start at one end, develop conflict in the middle two panels, and resolve with a punch line at the end. But thanks to a number of factors—not least of which is the rise of Instagram and Reddit—a gridded, two-by-two variant has come to dominate the internet.
Whilst Rubin’s article is clearly well-researched and definitely bags the incredible and recent cultural phenomenon which has been the Aliens from Nathan W. Pyle’s Strange Planet (the erstwhile E.T’s were originally planned to feature in this week’s blog post themselves!), I keenly felt Rubin’s omission of the greatest rival to this ‘dominant’ form: The Infinite Canvas.
As they grate to narrate, more than one webcomic artist has dabbled in the time-honoured practice of the novel – not only for collections of their comics, but for fully-fleshed works of fiction or non-fiction that either tie into their webcomics worlds, or even stand fully apart. Today, we’re going to look at a few webcomic writers who’ve crossed the comic page’s gutters and tested the idiom that a picture is worth… well, you get it!
Bringing you only the hottest of hot takes, today we’re talking about “Hourly Comic Day”, the yearly event which happens on… Feb 1?! Aw, man.
Missed the boat again! (Photo credit, Kai Schreiber, used under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Hourly Comic Day is a tradition that first began in 2005, when John Campbell (of Pictures for Sad Children fame—or, perhaps, notoriety). This first outing for the event occurred when Campbell posted a journal page with a series of doodles he had taken every hour throughout the course of the day. Over the following few years, more webcomic artists picked up on the trend, until it finally became An Event To Look Forward To on Feb 1st every year, from 2008 onwards.
1 Feb 2019 was no exception, and many webcomic artists jumped on the wagon to journal their days in comic form: here are a few to whet your appetite if you missed seeing the event unfold this year (like, apparently, some webcomic columnists out there…)
We’ve all had that one – the webcomic we absorbed through our very skin, lit by the glow of the computer monitor deep into the night. And we’ve all felt that little piece of our soul detach on the day our webcomic went away. It might have been time, it might have been hosting costs, or it might have simply been life. Nevertheless, it’s a sadness we’ve all felt when that dreaded word, ‘hiatus’ (or even worse, ‘The End’) appears on the site.
Why’d you go and leave the internet such a cold and lonely place without you?! (The Abominable Charles Christopher, strip for 23 Jan 2019)
Which is why, I think, Steve and Jason’s excitement at the apparent return of Karl Kerschl’s The Abominable Charles Christopher in this week’s podcast struck such a real chord. But this story of a child-like yeti and the forest creatures that live nearby is not the only webcomic to have come back from the long sleep. Here are three other Webcomics that have also returned to prove that, on the internet at least, there is an afterlife…
If you were on Line Webtoon anytime last week, then it’s a pretty sure bet you were treated to the news that:
“Save Me” BU (BTS Universe) has launched on Webtoon!
Webtoon’s synopsis of the comic runs as follows:
Seven boys. Best friends. Their fates intertwined through the good times together, but also the tough times, as they have gone their separate ways and suffered greatly as a result. When all is almost lost for these boys, one is given a special chance to go back in time and help his friends fix the mistakes that led them down this path. He’ll do anything to save them, but can he? Or is he too late?
So far, so good. But who are these seven boys, you might wonder—and what… on earth… is the “BTS Universe”? It’s okay! You wouldn’t be the only one, especially if you’re not living in South Korea or the United States right now, where BTS Fever is hitting epidemic proportions.
