Not to be the last one to talk about it but it’s hard not to say something about a struggle that has been going on for the past 14 months. When I first caught wind of this with the deletion of Outer Circle I was a little surprised at just how many web comics were being marked for deletion. Perhaps the biggest honor was Steve using his being reviewed by our little podcast as one of the reasons the strip was notable enough not to be deleted. The topic was annoying but interesting enough that I felt compelled to participate as a victim myself.

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For your pre-holiday pleasure, here are three webcomics that are sparse—no lengthy archives to wade through—but beautiful, all in different ways.

The Undertaker’s Daughter is drawn in a traditional style that certainly looks like ink on paper. The format is a vertical page in black and white, like a traditional comic book—from an earlier era. Artist Eric Palicki explains on his blog that he plans to do 12 episodes, each no more than four pages, with a new chapter going up at the end of each month. The first one is up, and it starts out moody but ends with a twist. I’m looking forward to seeing more of this.

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High and low upon these Nets of Inter virtue have I scoured looking for things to buy with the money I don’t have, but sadly my list of items is limited to wearable wisecracks in the form of T-shirts. Now, let it be known I am no stranger to these items of cloth and color nor am I philistine enough to denounce their good qualities, but I am still left a bit miffed in their abundant presence.

They are the mass product of choice in online stores of every comic of every nature. They come in all sizes, styles, colors, and designs and their supply never does seem to run low (much unlike my patience).

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Have you ever had somebody tell you they would do something, like give you a job, marry you or do decently in the World Cup, only to have them fall through? If you haven’t, let me fill you in, it sucks.

For the same reasons, although to a much lesser extent, it sucks when you favorite web comic doesn’t update when you’d like it to. I know a lot of you think I’m about to proceed to beat a dead horse but I think I may have something new this time.

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Ah, another whirlwind week where I barely found the time to read all the webcomics I have on my Favorites list, let alone write ABOUT them. But you don’t want to hear about all that wedding planning and retail job crap, do you? I think not. So what has been on my plate as far as webcomics go, besides the creation of the next episode of The Amazing Superzeroes?

Why, the Web Cartoonists’ Choice Awards, of course, which our venerable host and master, Daku, has already posted about. So why should I drop my two cents on this obviously dead horse? Because they’re my opinions and they are meant to fill this space, that’s why!

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Before we start, go take a look at these three webcomics: Penny Arcade, VG Cats, and PvP. Ok, now, to borrow from the classic Sesame Street guessing game, one of these things is not like the other one; can you guess which one?

Give up? While all these sites are host to very successful, critically acclaimed webcomics, only one of them opens with the strip itself. Now with strips like these, this can work; all 3 have been around long enough to survive regardless of what appears on the home page. In the case of Penny Arcade, Jerry and Mike could run with the first photographic evidence of Michael Jackson actually touching a young boy for the rest of their tenure on the Internet and their traffic would not only remain the highest of any webcomic ever, it would probably double.

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As I’ve made my way across China, I’ve been reading Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead, both by Orson Scott Card. If you haven’t read these books, I highly recommend them both, especially because you won’t understand a lot of what I’m talking about. It turns out that there’s a movie in the works. I thought about that for a while and I’ve decided that Ender’s Game was not made for the big screen. The book depends too much on the Battle Room, which would be hard to replicate, and a lot of the best dialogue takes place in characters’ heads. None of these are contusive to a good film.

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I’m a torn and twisted man. I have a serious medical condition where I am easily addicted to stuff but I have the patience of a seven-year-old on his birthday. I get hooked on any form of serial entertainment and then I go crazy waiting for the next installment. I can’t go into work until I see the next X-men movie. I’m serious; I have a doctor’s note.

I know myself though; I understand my weaknesses and live my life accordingly. While I love the idea of a web comic telling a long, drawn-out story, I’ve never had the desire to keep coming back every update just to read a few more words of the story. The delivery option just doesn’t work for a 21st century digital boy like me.

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There are some days I that I scare myself with my reliance on technology. My Firefox got rabid and ate itself a few days ago and took with it all of my book marks. I remember sitting down at the computer for the daily journey through my favorite web comics and I ended up staring at an empty bookmarks folder. I’ll admit panicked a bit; I hadn’t typed in a comic’s url for months. I had no idea what to do next.

Fortunately, after I dried my eyes, I was able to remember a few addresses and from the links pages I was able to start reestablishing my bookmarks. Thanks to every creator with a big old links page containing 20+ strips linked to it. You made my life a lot easier. It’s been a very cleansing experience for me. I’ve been able to renew my love with some strips that I missed a few updates of and best of all, finding new strips to read everyday. It’s also been a period of reevaluation. There were several strips that I was about to mark again and then I realized that they weren’t really that good. I ended up cutting loose a lot of dead weight strips that I book marked in a moment of weakness As big of a pain in the butt the whole ordeal was, I’m glad it happened. I may do it again in six months or so. I’m going to recommend all of you do it yourselves too. You’ll feel 10 pounds lighter.

There are lots and lots of dead strips on the internet. Most of which died quietly in the night, and thank God too (the Internet can take only so much crap). However there are some strips that died, I belive, that left us all too soon. There are strips that hammered our souls as the nails were put into its coffin; that tugged on our heart strings as it was lain into the ground; and that took a part of us with it as it was burried under the dirt. For me, Drew Weing’s The Journal Comic, was such a strip. [Direct link to comic in the title above]

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