Questioning Content – Maxwell’s Demons and Alice Grove

Longtime fans of Jeph Jacques’ webcomic Questionable Content may have noticed the comic has taken a bit of a turn in recent years. What once used to be a story about a group of predominantly 20-somethings, their relationships and the indie music scene of middle America has become, in Jeph’s own words, “a comic about robots that want to kiss.”

So it’s no surprise that when Jeph started his new webcomic Alice Grove back in 2014, it quickly became a story focused around sci-fi themes as well. So far those themes have included everything from your everyday, run-of-the-mill AI uprisings and man-made nanotech, to spaceships, aliens (both pretend and real), and giant floating space trees. But since the comic’s earliest pages, the reader has been left with the question of how the titular town witch, Alice – and in particular, her abilities – fit into these overall themes. Until now. But although the descriptor of ‘demon’ might seem to fit the town witch we have got to know over the past few years, what exactly is a “Maxwell’s Demon” and how does it play into the overall theme of the comic? Continue reading

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Digital Strips Podcast 305 – Review – The Petri Dish

I just realized that Digital Strips is basically James Bond. We’re cheesy. We follow the same formula each time. We’ve been around way longer than most people realize. We’ve had several different male sex-symbols take the lead role. We have a license. It isn’t to kill however, it’s to call out Web comics creators on their word bubbles.

This week we’re looking a new school Web comic with an old school feel, The Petri Dish by John Sutton. If you like your gag-a-day full of lots of robots and set up but without all that art or actual science in the way, then this may be the comic for you. I say may be because this is another episode full of arguments. Tune in to get both sides of the story.

We talk about James Bond, horrible people you can run into at the movies, jokes that don’t land and those that do, why people who don’t draw are lazy turds and how to end world guy-hunger. We also learn that on the rare occasions that I bring the pain, it’s because I have to poop. We argue about whether or not I’m saying nice things about this comic.

For the first time ever, we spend more time talking about about a comic’s JavaScript than it’s art.

For our middle music I finally found a song that speaks to me as a rare hick/geek, “Corn-fed Kong” by David Wise.

Not much in the way of show notes, but here’s what we got:

Poorly Drawn Lines
White Ninja
My Cardboard Life
My Milk Toof

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