Comics worth reading.
Apr. 11th, 2003 06:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynA while ago I posted a rant about some dreadful newspaper comics. I just thought that it might be a good idea, now that I've gotten that out of my system, to post some suggestions of strips worth reading instead. I'm going to confine myself to web-accessible ones, but thanks to the wonders of modern technology, that includes a number of syndicated strips that may or may not appear in your local paper. Although I do have to admit that I still like Prince Valiant, even after all this time.
Strange Daze, by Matt Roberts. Sidhe, greys, technomagic, conspiracies, and lines like 'I should have realized the spell was a dud when I got to the binding ritual and found out the central components were a Big Mac and fries.' The early art style's a little off, but it's got a fast and loose quality to it that really grows on you, and the serial nature of the story that's always running behind the gags is very cool. Plus there's a demon in a beer bottle who tAlkS lIkE tOrGo.
Planet Earth (and other tourist traps), by Thomas Deeny. The strip is currently in the middle of a storyline about a guy whose ex-girlfriend is a vengeful Scottish supervillain, recently broken out of prison and on the hunt for him. Said guy is Moriarty, the clueless wonder of the ages, former unknowing roommate to a space alien invasion scout named Dextrose (everyone calls him Dex) and sometime prisoner (the cable company decided it was time to enforce the no-cable-theft rule), indebted to Ninja Kaylee for springing him from prison and to Ninja Kenny, who is also Miss Spork Festival 2002 (don't ask) for rescuing him from Ninja Kaylee after she decided to kill him. There's also a one-eyed lesbian - realistically done, for once - and a number of RPG related storylines where people actually play the RPG's instead of being pictured as characters therein. All the art is hand-drawn rather than done in Illustrator, too. It's cool.
Elf Only Inn, by Josh Sortelli. This one's RPG based... sort of. Rather than being about the characters in a game, or about a game itself, it's about the people who play in a chatroom called Elf Only Inn. The incredibly dysfunctional people who play in the chatroom - the fact that a Trekkie playing a Vulcan character is the sanest and most intelligently level-headed person in the group should tell you something. (I can say that, I'm a former Trekkie.) If you've ever dealt with some of the more twinkish RPG types out there, then you know what this guy is drawing of the players' attempts at dealing with each other is true.
Mythocorp, by Kevin Wolf. Mythocorp International is a company whose CEO and president is the multidimensional cosmic horror Lord Huzbazathul ("NO BREAK FOURTH WALL!") Other characters include Mr. Kitano, a manager whose primary technique for keeping people in line is to dispatch his ninja; Dr. Marcus Ultra of the R&D Department, sometime member of a club of would-be globe dominating gay mad scientists; Hamish MacCreagle, the one-eyed hook-handed Scottish assassin sent as a spy by Mythocorp's enemy Dr. Malevanto; Hoax the extraterrestrial, sent by the temp agency; Harve Mannlicher, the internal security chief with more memory implant problems than Wolverine; Camille Legrasse, the company librarian and resident magician; and J. D. "Briefcase" Holden, Mr. Kitano's assistant and closest thing to a normal person on the staff. It went through a lengthy hiatus last year, but it's back and it's fabulous.
Baldo - It's a family strip. It's a daily humor strip. It's well drawn. It's got good jokes. It features a primarily Hispanic-American cast of characters. It's got a widowed dad, two kids, and their Tia Carmen, plus several friends and other characters. It's a nice thing to read and it's about a hundred times more on the ball than Duh and Lois ever was or will ever be.
Monkeyhouse - I have no idea who draws this or where they come from, but it's another family humor strip. Widowed dad, one daughter. Daughter is very, very bright. The art is a little on the minimalist side, but that's okay. It's nice to see the smart kid as the central character for once, although there is the obligatory nerd figure every so often. I was a little surprised to discover that the family in the strip was Catholic; off the top of my head I can't think of any other Catholic characters in comic strips beyond the cast of
Strange Daze, by Matt Roberts. Sidhe, greys, technomagic, conspiracies, and lines like 'I should have realized the spell was a dud when I got to the binding ritual and found out the central components were a Big Mac and fries.' The early art style's a little off, but it's got a fast and loose quality to it that really grows on you, and the serial nature of the story that's always running behind the gags is very cool. Plus there's a demon in a beer bottle who tAlkS lIkE tOrGo.
Planet Earth (and other tourist traps), by Thomas Deeny. The strip is currently in the middle of a storyline about a guy whose ex-girlfriend is a vengeful Scottish supervillain, recently broken out of prison and on the hunt for him. Said guy is Moriarty, the clueless wonder of the ages, former unknowing roommate to a space alien invasion scout named Dextrose (everyone calls him Dex) and sometime prisoner (the cable company decided it was time to enforce the no-cable-theft rule), indebted to Ninja Kaylee for springing him from prison and to Ninja Kenny, who is also Miss Spork Festival 2002 (don't ask) for rescuing him from Ninja Kaylee after she decided to kill him. There's also a one-eyed lesbian - realistically done, for once - and a number of RPG related storylines where people actually play the RPG's instead of being pictured as characters therein. All the art is hand-drawn rather than done in Illustrator, too. It's cool.
Elf Only Inn, by Josh Sortelli. This one's RPG based... sort of. Rather than being about the characters in a game, or about a game itself, it's about the people who play in a chatroom called Elf Only Inn. The incredibly dysfunctional people who play in the chatroom - the fact that a Trekkie playing a Vulcan character is the sanest and most intelligently level-headed person in the group should tell you something. (I can say that, I'm a former Trekkie.) If you've ever dealt with some of the more twinkish RPG types out there, then you know what this guy is drawing of the players' attempts at dealing with each other is true.
Mythocorp, by Kevin Wolf. Mythocorp International is a company whose CEO and president is the multidimensional cosmic horror Lord Huzbazathul ("NO BREAK FOURTH WALL!") Other characters include Mr. Kitano, a manager whose primary technique for keeping people in line is to dispatch his ninja; Dr. Marcus Ultra of the R&D Department, sometime member of a club of would-be globe dominating gay mad scientists; Hamish MacCreagle, the one-eyed hook-handed Scottish assassin sent as a spy by Mythocorp's enemy Dr. Malevanto; Hoax the extraterrestrial, sent by the temp agency; Harve Mannlicher, the internal security chief with more memory implant problems than Wolverine; Camille Legrasse, the company librarian and resident magician; and J. D. "Briefcase" Holden, Mr. Kitano's assistant and closest thing to a normal person on the staff. It went through a lengthy hiatus last year, but it's back and it's fabulous.
Baldo - It's a family strip. It's a daily humor strip. It's well drawn. It's got good jokes. It features a primarily Hispanic-American cast of characters. It's got a widowed dad, two kids, and their Tia Carmen, plus several friends and other characters. It's a nice thing to read and it's about a hundred times more on the ball than Duh and Lois ever was or will ever be.
Monkeyhouse - I have no idea who draws this or where they come from, but it's another family humor strip. Widowed dad, one daughter. Daughter is very, very bright. The art is a little on the minimalist side, but that's okay. It's nice to see the smart kid as the central character for once, although there is the obligatory nerd figure every so often. I was a little surprised to discover that the family in the strip was Catholic; off the top of my head I can't think of any other Catholic characters in comic strips beyond the cast of
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A while ago I posted <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/camwyn/161003.html#cutid1">a rant about some dreadful newspaper comics</a>. I just thought that it might be a good idea, now that I've gotten that out of my system, to post some suggestions of strips worth reading instead. I'm going to confine myself to web-accessible ones, but thanks to the wonders of modern technology, that includes a number of syndicated strips that may or may not appear in your local paper. Although I do have to admit that I still like Prince Valiant, even after all this time.
<a href="http://strangedaze.keenspace.com/">Strange Daze</a>, by Matt Roberts. Sidhe, greys, technomagic, conspiracies, and lines like 'I should have realized the spell was a dud when I got to the binding ritual and found out the central components were a Big Mac and fries.' The early art style's a little off, but it's got a fast and loose quality to it that really grows on you, and the serial nature of the story that's always running behind the gags is very cool. Plus there's a demon in a beer bottle who tAlkS lIkE tOrGo.
<a href="http://www.thesnakefarm.com/strips/planetearth.php">Planet Earth (and other tourist traps)</a>, by Thomas Deeny. The strip is currently in the middle of a storyline about a guy whose ex-girlfriend is a vengeful Scottish supervillain, recently broken out of prison and on the hunt for him. Said guy is Moriarty, the clueless wonder of the ages, former unknowing roommate to a space alien invasion scout named Dextrose (everyone calls him Dex) and sometime prisoner (the cable company decided it was time to enforce the no-cable-theft rule), indebted to Ninja Kaylee for springing him from prison and to Ninja Kenny, who is also Miss Spork Festival 2002 (don't ask) for rescuing him from Ninja Kaylee after she decided to kill him. There's also a one-eyed lesbian - realistically done, for once - and a number of RPG related storylines where people actually <i>play</i> the RPG's instead of being pictured as characters therein. All the art is hand-drawn rather than done in Illustrator, too. It's cool.
<a href="http://elfonlyinn.keenspace.com/">Elf Only Inn</a>, by Josh Sortelli. This one's RPG based... sort of. Rather than being about the characters in a game, or about a game itself, it's about the people who play in a chatroom called Elf Only Inn. The incredibly dysfunctional people who play in the chatroom - the fact that a Trekkie playing a Vulcan character is the sanest and most intelligently level-headed person in the group should tell you something. (I can say that, I'm a former Trekkie.) If you've ever dealt with some of the more twinkish RPG types out there, then you <i>know</i> what this guy is drawing of the players' attempts at dealing with each other is true.
<a href="http://mythocorp.keenspace.com/">Mythocorp</a>, by Kevin Wolf. Mythocorp International is a company whose CEO and president is the multidimensional cosmic horror Lord Huzbazathul ("NO BREAK FOURTH WALL!") Other characters include Mr. Kitano, a manager whose primary technique for keeping people in line is to dispatch his ninja; Dr. Marcus Ultra of the R&D Department, sometime member of <a href="http://www.mythocorp.com/d/20011024.html">a club of would-be globe dominating gay mad scientists</a>; Hamish MacCreagle, the one-eyed hook-handed Scottish assassin <a href="http://www.mythocorp.com/d/20011227.html">sent as a spy</a> by Mythocorp's enemy Dr. Malevanto; Hoax the extraterrestrial, sent by the temp agency; <a href="http://www.mythocorp.com/d/20011217.html">Harve Mannlicher</a>, the internal security chief with more <a href="http://www.mythocorp.com/d/20020104.html">memory implant problems</a> than Wolverine; Camille Legrasse, the company librarian and resident magician; and J. D. "Briefcase" Holden, Mr. Kitano's assistant and closest thing to a normal person on the staff. It went through a lengthy hiatus last year, but it's back and it's fabulous.
<a href="http://www.ucomics.com/baldo">Baldo</a> - It's a family strip. It's a daily humor strip. It's well drawn. It's got good jokes. It features a primarily Hispanic-American cast of characters. It's got a widowed dad, two kids, and their Tia Carmen, plus several friends and other characters. It's a nice thing to read and it's about a hundred times more on the ball than Duh and Lois ever was or will ever be.
<a href="http://www.ucomics.com/monkeyhouse">Monkeyhouse</a> - I have no idea who draws this or where they come from, but it's another family humor strip. Widowed dad, one daughter. Daughter is very, very bright. The art is a little on the minimalist side, but that's okay. It's nice to see the smart kid as the central character for once, although there is the obligatory nerd figure every so often. I was a little surprised to discover that the family in the strip was Catholic; off the top of my head I can't think of any other Catholic characters in comic strips beyond the cast of <a href="http://www.ucomics.com/heartofthecity"/a>"Heart of the City"</a>, which is also worth reading.
<a href="http://www.ucomics.com/housebroken">Housebroken</a> - African-American family humor strip. Two parents, two kids, one sentient talking dog, and an art and humor style that puts me in mind of a less political Bloom County. It may be the presence of the talking animal that does this. I think it's funny; I've been reading it for a few weeks now, having discovered it by accident when I was trying to scroll through the list to get to Heart of the City.
<a href="http://www.schlockmercenary.com/">Schlock Mercenary</a>, by Howard Tayler. Space mercenaries in the thirty-first century. The title character is an amorphous blob who looks like a cow patty and whose weapon of choice is a big fecking plasma cannon. The strip was recently relaunched after a thousand daily strips, to make it more marketable for book publication, but whether you ever encounter the old stuff or not it's still hilarious. I appreciate the fact that there is no one character who is constantly dumb - a lot of comics fall into that trap.
<a href="http://www.sheldoncomics.com">Sheldon</a> - A ten-year-old Internet billionaire named Sheldon, his grandfather, his talking duck Arthur, and his best friend, the normal kid, Dante. Dave Kellett finally got picked up by a syndicate after quite a stretch of appearing on Keenspot, and I have to say that I hope to see Sheldon in the newspaper at some point, because we could really use a strip that's not only clever and funny, but essentially nice - not to mention distinctively drawn.
There's quite a lot of other good strips out there, but those are the ones that leap to mind. Do yourself a favor and have a look. Me, I need to go over to Blockbuster now.
<a href="http://strangedaze.keenspace.com/">Strange Daze</a>, by Matt Roberts. Sidhe, greys, technomagic, conspiracies, and lines like 'I should have realized the spell was a dud when I got to the binding ritual and found out the central components were a Big Mac and fries.' The early art style's a little off, but it's got a fast and loose quality to it that really grows on you, and the serial nature of the story that's always running behind the gags is very cool. Plus there's a demon in a beer bottle who tAlkS lIkE tOrGo.
<a href="http://www.thesnakefarm.com/strips/planetearth.php">Planet Earth (and other tourist traps)</a>, by Thomas Deeny. The strip is currently in the middle of a storyline about a guy whose ex-girlfriend is a vengeful Scottish supervillain, recently broken out of prison and on the hunt for him. Said guy is Moriarty, the clueless wonder of the ages, former unknowing roommate to a space alien invasion scout named Dextrose (everyone calls him Dex) and sometime prisoner (the cable company decided it was time to enforce the no-cable-theft rule), indebted to Ninja Kaylee for springing him from prison and to Ninja Kenny, who is also Miss Spork Festival 2002 (don't ask) for rescuing him from Ninja Kaylee after she decided to kill him. There's also a one-eyed lesbian - realistically done, for once - and a number of RPG related storylines where people actually <i>play</i> the RPG's instead of being pictured as characters therein. All the art is hand-drawn rather than done in Illustrator, too. It's cool.
<a href="http://elfonlyinn.keenspace.com/">Elf Only Inn</a>, by Josh Sortelli. This one's RPG based... sort of. Rather than being about the characters in a game, or about a game itself, it's about the people who play in a chatroom called Elf Only Inn. The incredibly dysfunctional people who play in the chatroom - the fact that a Trekkie playing a Vulcan character is the sanest and most intelligently level-headed person in the group should tell you something. (I can say that, I'm a former Trekkie.) If you've ever dealt with some of the more twinkish RPG types out there, then you <i>know</i> what this guy is drawing of the players' attempts at dealing with each other is true.
<a href="http://mythocorp.keenspace.com/">Mythocorp</a>, by Kevin Wolf. Mythocorp International is a company whose CEO and president is the multidimensional cosmic horror Lord Huzbazathul ("NO BREAK FOURTH WALL!") Other characters include Mr. Kitano, a manager whose primary technique for keeping people in line is to dispatch his ninja; Dr. Marcus Ultra of the R&D Department, sometime member of <a href="http://www.mythocorp.com/d/20011024.html">a club of would-be globe dominating gay mad scientists</a>; Hamish MacCreagle, the one-eyed hook-handed Scottish assassin <a href="http://www.mythocorp.com/d/20011227.html">sent as a spy</a> by Mythocorp's enemy Dr. Malevanto; Hoax the extraterrestrial, sent by the temp agency; <a href="http://www.mythocorp.com/d/20011217.html">Harve Mannlicher</a>, the internal security chief with more <a href="http://www.mythocorp.com/d/20020104.html">memory implant problems</a> than Wolverine; Camille Legrasse, the company librarian and resident magician; and J. D. "Briefcase" Holden, Mr. Kitano's assistant and closest thing to a normal person on the staff. It went through a lengthy hiatus last year, but it's back and it's fabulous.
<a href="http://www.ucomics.com/baldo">Baldo</a> - It's a family strip. It's a daily humor strip. It's well drawn. It's got good jokes. It features a primarily Hispanic-American cast of characters. It's got a widowed dad, two kids, and their Tia Carmen, plus several friends and other characters. It's a nice thing to read and it's about a hundred times more on the ball than Duh and Lois ever was or will ever be.
<a href="http://www.ucomics.com/monkeyhouse">Monkeyhouse</a> - I have no idea who draws this or where they come from, but it's another family humor strip. Widowed dad, one daughter. Daughter is very, very bright. The art is a little on the minimalist side, but that's okay. It's nice to see the smart kid as the central character for once, although there is the obligatory nerd figure every so often. I was a little surprised to discover that the family in the strip was Catholic; off the top of my head I can't think of any other Catholic characters in comic strips beyond the cast of <a href="http://www.ucomics.com/heartofthecity"/a>"Heart of the City"</a>, which is also worth reading.
<a href="http://www.ucomics.com/housebroken">Housebroken</a> - African-American family humor strip. Two parents, two kids, one sentient talking dog, and an art and humor style that puts me in mind of a less political Bloom County. It may be the presence of the talking animal that does this. I think it's funny; I've been reading it for a few weeks now, having discovered it by accident when I was trying to scroll through the list to get to Heart of the City.
<a href="http://www.schlockmercenary.com/">Schlock Mercenary</a>, by Howard Tayler. Space mercenaries in the thirty-first century. The title character is an amorphous blob who looks like a cow patty and whose weapon of choice is a big fecking plasma cannon. The strip was recently relaunched after a thousand daily strips, to make it more marketable for book publication, but whether you ever encounter the old stuff or not it's still hilarious. I appreciate the fact that there is no one character who is constantly dumb - a lot of comics fall into that trap.
<a href="http://www.sheldoncomics.com">Sheldon</a> - A ten-year-old Internet billionaire named Sheldon, his grandfather, his talking duck Arthur, and his best friend, the normal kid, Dante. Dave Kellett finally got picked up by a syndicate after quite a stretch of appearing on Keenspot, and I have to say that I hope to see Sheldon in the newspaper at some point, because we could really use a strip that's not only clever and funny, but essentially nice - not to mention distinctively drawn.
There's quite a lot of other good strips out there, but those are the ones that leap to mind. Do yourself a favor and have a look. Me, I need to go over to Blockbuster now.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-12 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-12 11:30 pm (UTC)"To put it bluntly, Markus, we need to toughen you up. All of this moping and crying, and now this business with the mugger... I hate to say it, but you're making us look bad. You might be giving people the wrong impression... you know, about people like us."
"People like us? You mean homosexuals, Alex?"
"What? No, evil geniuses..."
no subject
Date: 2003-04-13 02:01 am (UTC)But I was certainly flirting with my running joke idea there, wasn't I?
Of course, not everybody in the society could be gay, because of course there's MacCreagle, and HE ain't no fookin' nancy-boy!
Re:
Date: 2003-04-13 08:31 am (UTC)I also have to say I was never entirely sure if the brain-in-a-blender scientist *had* a sexual orientation.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-16 11:52 pm (UTC)All this talking about these guys, I think I might have to do a secret society arc again here sometime soon. I never followed through with Omega and Ultra's "rekindling", after all.