What about the content now?

Well at long last a hole has opened in my schedule, so here I am, only a day late and several thousand dollars short, but that’s why we try to get famous right? School has actually been kind of fun now that we’re learning the stuff that I entered the program to learn exactly a year ago now. Also, preparations for Otaku-Con (Spokane’s only Anime and Gaming Convention) are well underway, so I’m pretty excited about that. Also, it seems I’ll be receiving some kind of gift towards the end of this month, so I’m very stoked for that as well. Enough about me, let’s get to the webcomics!

Now last Tuesday I told you that I’d be blogging a bit more about Lavapunch 2. Unfortunately that was a pretty much a flat out lie because I realized that it wouldn’t be the greatest idea to talk about a bunch of work that can’t be seen unless you go spend twelve dollars or so. As a result of these factors I’ve ditched further reviews on some of those pieces in favor of something that everyone can actually see. For the record, LP 2 will be back on this blog, but I’ll be a bit more careful about the stories I choose from it, ie: I’ll ditch the ones that don’t have a working website attached to their end notes.

Anywho, yeah, webcomics. The amount of blathering I’ve done in this particular blogpost borders on the questionable… which reminds me: Questionable Content! Yes, the name is descriptive and indicative of some of the things you may find there, but it mostly concerns the robot, whom we’ll get to in a moment. QC (as it is thankfully abbreviated) is a webcomic about a young music major living his life in Boston, Massachusetts, which is incidentally the most annoying state name to spell. His name is Marten, and he’s basically your all around pretty cool dude. The comic, which in itself covers somewhere between two and six months comic time, has actually been published every weekday for at least three years if not more, so there’s a lot of material to catch up on. This is not a comic that you read once in a while for kicks and giggles. It’s a time investment. The characterization skills of the writer are simply beastly, so if you really want the full picture you need to read the entire thing from start to finish.

We’ll talk about the robot for a minute. He’s a weird dude, and most if not everything he says is NSFW, so read at your own peril. For the most part the comic keeps its hands clean, from Swartzchild Radius jokes, to the incredibly awkward situations we’ve all experienced and come to enjoy in a perverted sort of way. Now the robot, he’s amoral much like Fuzzy of Sam and Fuzzy fame, but let’s just say that his amorality stems from an obsession with something that robots just can’t do. That being said, I skip the vast majority of the robot pages because that kind of humor is just not something I’m into.

Jeph Jacques is dang good at what he does. I personally don’t think of him as the sort of guy who writes stories in the normal fashion. He doesn’t generate vast and conclusive story arcs, and the comic isn’t really designed to end at any point, or at least that’s how it seems from my side of the table. I think the comic’s infinite nature is actually a strong point. It cuts out slices of people’s lives; sometimes he’s quoting your life, and sometimes he’s referencing the life you always wish you had. Be careful when reading it, especially if you attack webcomics in the same way I do. I mean to say that I read them non-stop for hours on end sometimes, so while that may help me finish them faster, it also tends to generate emotional attachments to the characters. On the day that I caught up to the current date, I felt a pang of sadness. So just to forewarn you, it’ll jerk you around in ways you didn’t think a comic could.

I don’t know why I always talk about the art last of all, but it’s just something I do, ya know? The art has varied over the life of the comic, and that is something I say with the utmost amount of respect possible. His artwork has done nothing but improve over the years, so much so that you may see random people on the street and think, “Wow, that totally looks like Dora!” It went from being very square and gray to being full of curves and vibrant colors. Though it appears that his art has probably reached its plateau, that is absolutely nothing to be sad about. It’s drawn a lot better than a majority of the stuff I’ve seen, so I think we can give him props for that.

So it appears that I’ve lied to you all. I must mention this before I leave you. The writer really fleshes out his universe. Marten has a blog, and all of the main characters, including some of the not so main ones, all have highly active twitter accounts, so it’s just kind of something fun to do if you decide to let these characters take over your life.

This comic is for people who want to laugh at their lives from afar.

QC gets a rather non-questionable 8.5 out of 10.

Dave
*_*

Are his eyebrows attached?

Clearly there is something wrong with me. First of all, I have started saying the word ‘clearly’ far too often, and second of all, yet another week has gone by with little or no webcomic action from yours truly, and for this I do apologize. Since most of you have probably given up on me I feel like I can start fresh with this audience of nothing that I adore almost as much as real people. This last week I have been so busy that I haven’t even read anything, much less written anything, but right now I’m waiting for a ride to someplace (because the car is down and out for now) so I figured, What the heck? Why not write something?

Today I would like to talk about Sam Logan’s Sam and Fuzzy. Why the main character is named after the writer is something we will hopefully find out if and when Mr. Logan does a questionnaire for me. Anyway, I must start off by saying that this comic is buckets of fun. If fun were a tangible substance you could fill those Gatorade thingys up with it and dump it on yourself. There are a lot of reasons why this comic is so good, and I will go into them for you starting… now!

First of all, we have the one that many might consider the star of the entire thing, the man, the legend, Fuzzy himself! Clearly Sam (a young adult male with funky hair and a button nose) is the main character. There are long stretches of time in which Fuzzy doesn’t appear at all, so you may wonder, “How can a member of the supporting cast be the star?” Well my dear reader, let’s just say that Fuzzy is all of the things you sometimes (in moments of insanity of course) wish you could be. Fuzzy is an amoral, insane, psychotic, sociopathic, egomaniacal, bear sort of thing… It is certainly unclear that he’s a bear, especially since he has the most amazing eyebrows of all time. I envy them.

Fuzzy, despite his personality, is very smart, and despite ruining portions of Sam’s life, he tries to be a good friend. Fuzzy is heavily dependent on Sam even though he may sometimes talk and act like he needs no one but himself. Mr. Logan has done a wonderful job of adding mystique to this character. Constantly, we readers wonder where this thing came from and why he can’t remember his past. Obviously this is a story for another time. Mr. Logan is very happy to give us small tidbits as things drag on.

Sam, of whom Fuzzy is a mere sidekick, is a very nice and likeable guy. He’s got a good heart and he tries to be kind to others regardless of their status in life, be it ninja, death metal band lead singer, delivery girl, spoof of Edward(Twilight), or fridge possessed by a demon. As nice guys go, he fits most of the clichés. He has a hard time standing up for himself a lot of the time and he can come off as being quite wimpy. In spite of appearances, he’s pretty hardcore. His ideas are good most of the time, and though he might be afraid, he does what he needs to.

The comic itself is wacky, and I’m sure by now you should be noticing a trend in the sort of things I read. It starts off in the way of many comedic comics, a joke every four panels. Soon however, we discover that Sam Logan has quite a knack for weaving a decent story arc: twists, elaborate back stories, exciting finishes and all. He’s quite skilled at toying with your heart as well. You will find yourself wanting the protagonists to succeed so badly that you become frustrated when things don’t go quite how they were hoping. These are the marks of a great storyteller. I imagine that in the future, Marvel and DC, along with Boom!, Dark Horse, Image, and all those other comic companies, may want to start looking seriously at webcomic artists as writers.

Sam and Fuzzy is a strange and off the wall comic about everything for anyone who would like to add a little more surreality to their life.

Sam and Fuzzy gets a very respectable 8.6 out of 10.

How to find that special something

Me? I love stalling for things I want, like interviews! (Please email me back!!!) Believe it or not, if I didn’t have any readers, stalling would be a lot easier, but since they demand content from me, I can only oblige them as quickly as is humanly possible, juggling this alongside my many other responsibilities. (HA!) Anyway, enough random screaming! I actually have something to talk about today and that is:

Finding new webcomics! I can’t really drone on about this for too long because it’s really quite simple. It’s odd, when I first considered writing this post I thought: “Well gee, I’ll write about two things and that’ll be the end of it.” However, I’ve just realized that there’s more to it than I first thought, so here goes nothing.

1.) Your friends know what you like. It’s true. Always take the advice of your friends when it comes to webcomics. XKCD was the webcomic that opened my eyes to the world of webcomics, and I never would have found it except for a friend of mine that loves the Ender’s series quite a bit more than I do. A well placed email is often all it takes to find your new favorite thing.

2.) Guest comics. Don’t ignore them! Yes, other artists/writers tend to take your favorite characters and skew them in some sort of unfavorable light, and you may feel angry, but what you should be paying attention to is the humor in them. Most sites I know of have a guest comic week. How such things got started is something I do not know, but most artists feel that they are obligatory. (Especially Sam Logan) Now while I personally have not found any webcomics I actually liked using this method, it can still turn you on to some good art, and what the heck, you may even find new love.

3.) Links. Yes, I know it’s obvious, but it’s crazy how many people can forget about something like this! Pretty much every webcomic I read has a page that is just chock full of links to other comics. If you’ve got nothing better to do on a Saturday evening, just go ahead and click on a couple. Okay, so you hate everything you’ve seen so far. What does this mean for you? Don’t stop clicking. The internet is too huge to give up so fast.

4.) Read my blog of course! But I’m sure you saw that coming.

I hope that helps someone! Don’t feel overwhelmed if you’re looking for something new, just don’t give up.

Dave *_*

Hi! Here are my goals.

Hi! Welcome to the first post of what I hope will be a very ongoing project. I like to read webcomics, and if you’re reading this, I’m sure it’s something you enjoy too. Everyone is looking for something different in a webcomic, so it’s hard to gauge how to recommend them to other people. Some are about superheroes, some are adventure stories, some focus on that last panel to bring the joke home. No comic author or artist can survive if he/she wants to be all things to all people. It’s just not possible. The best writers base their stories on what they know. Any artist that makes it past number fifty has probably got a great thing going. Those who drop off prior to that usually feel frustrated, because, let’s face it, some people just aren’t funny, or they’re not great story tellers, and all artists know that their readers will tell them if they suck.

I’m not here to complain about bad webcomics. I’m here to tell you what you should read, who’s a genius, who’s not. I promise to never pass judgment on a comic that I’ve never read in its entirety. That’s a big responsibility, but lucky for me, the old ones are usually good ones. If you’ve got a story to tell, and you’re still telling it with five times weekly updates ever since 2006, it sounds like something I should pay attention to.

I’m sure we’ve all noticed this independently of one another, but the world of webcomics is a huge place! I always feel that if there’s something good out there, I want to be reading it. It’s almost a condition I have, like this uncontrollable urge to know everything about the largest things there are, for example the Marvel Universe. Knowing everything is unrealistic, but it doesn’t stop me from trying. And for the record, I won’t be blogging about paper comics here. That’s why we have Angela Valenti at Girls Don’t Read Comics. Go check it out. I laugh as I write this because I say it like I have more than two readers right now, but I also know that I’ll probably mention that blog again, especially if I ever develop any kind of readership as time goes on. Here’s hoping right?

Anyway, back to the topic before I talk myself into the ground here. I’m going to start off my career as a blogger with the wonderful people who belong to Dayfree Press. I make no claim to have read every comic that belongs to Dayfree Press, however, I am working on it. I’ve read XKCD, Dr. McNinja, and Questionable Content. I’m more than halfway through Kristy vs. the Zombie Army, and am about halfway through Sam and Fuzzy. I love all of them so far, so you can expect to hear a great deal about them as time goes on. I may also complain about the site and its lack of updates since 2007, but we’ll talk about that another day.

I’ll leave this as an intro post. I’m waiting for some writers to email me back about interviews and such, that way I can include more fascinating content for my readers, or lack thereof, whom I already love so dearly. Thanks for reading! More content is on its way!

Dave *_*