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.
Last week when we looked at the Eisner nominations on the podcast and the blog, we noted that one of the webcomics presented was very different in both style and content: The Contradictions by Sophie Yanow.
In the blog last week, we said Yanow’s comic was more reminiscent of an “e-Zine” than a ‘traditional’ webcomic. But what on earth does that even mean?! Today, dear Digital Strippers, we’re going back up the branches of the webcomic family tree and looking at the wild and wonderful world… of Zines.
It’s Eisner time and Webtoon is claiming more than half the spots for their growing platform! We have quick thoughts on all the nominees (in addition to the intro that The Average Joe already gave us), including:
After that quick update, it’s time to travel to the wonderful world of witches with Pepper and Carrot by David Revoy, where we learn to love our family despite our desire to just have some danged fun with some danged magic.
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…
