Webcomic Round-up

Greetings, all!

Let me preface this by stating quite clearly that I am not, in any way, receiving any kind of compensation or incentives for discussing these webcomics. In fact, as far as I know, the creators, artists, colorists and anyone associated these comics have no idea that I’m even doing this.

Just wanted to be clear on that.

There are a lot of webcomics available out there on the ‘net, literally in the thousands, so I thought I’d take a moment to pass along a couple that I really like. Maybe there’ll be something in here that captures your interest and hopefully entertain you for a bit.

While I’m sure that there are some very popular webcomics that most people have heard of, I’m going to focus on ones that maybe you haven’t heard of. Not saying that they’re completely obscure; just that they might have flown under your radar.

I won’t post any spoilers or give detailed explanations of story lines, so no worries there.

With that said, on to the round-up!

First up is one of my favorite webcomics: Goblins

Created and drawn by Tarol Hunt, and currently colored by Danielle Stephens, Goblins hit the internet in June, 2005 according to the archive listing. Its first pages are drawn well enough, but are in black-and-white. Color was added to the comic in August of 2005 and really made the comic come to life.

From some of the dialog of the adventurers, it appears to be an RPG of some kind. We never see the people actually playing the game, but there are meta moments when some of the adventurers reference “the DM” and discuss character creation.

The main story, however, centers on a group of goblins who are tired of being experience point fodder for low-level adventurers and decide to fight back. This is where the story takes a drastic left-turn from being just an RPG adventure and the goblins take on a life of their own instead of just being a random encounter. Apparently the DM can’t control his monsters and NPCs.

The break-down:

Rating: Probably around a very strong ‘PG-13’ rating, maybe even a soft ‘R’. Scenes of violence and some mild language; no nudity.

Updates: This is where the comic kind of stumbles. Right now it’s updating about once a week, usually on Tuesdays, but Mr. Hunt is trying to increase the frequency to at least twice a week. However, don’t let that dissuade you from checking it out; it’s definitely worth the wait.

Archive: pretty good-sized as it stretches back to 2005.

Website: the site itself is pretty easy to navigate, with areas of extras, including free desktop wallpapers.

RSS: It has an RSS feed, as well Twitter, so it’s easy to get notices on when a new page is posted.

Overall: The comic has some very humorous moments, as well as some sad. It’s a well-told story that is drawn and colored very well and I highly recommend it.

Main site: Goblins
First comic: Goblins: First comic

Next up is Something*Positive (yes, the ‘*’ is supposed to be there).

This one might be a little “mainstream” and you might have heard about it at some point in time. Still one of my favorite comics out there and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it.

Created, drawn and colored by Randy K. Milholland, the comic hit the cyber-tubes in December 2001.

The comic’s main character is Davan MacIntire, a young man from Texas that resides in Boston when the comic starts. But he isn’t the sole focus of the comic as many other characters, especially Aubrey Chorde and PeeJee Shou, often get their own pages and even entire story lines.

One of the really interesting aspects of the comic is that it’s semi-autobiographical. Sort of. The character of Davan is sort of based on Mr. Milholland; Aubrey is based on Mr. Milholland’s real-life friend, anime voice actor Clarine Harp. In fact, most of the characters in S*P are based on, or inspired by, people Mr. Milholland knows in real life.

And almost all of them are cynical and snarky with a very low tolerance for stupidity. Wonderful stuff.

The comic’s main focus is humor, of course; however there are some poignant – perhaps even sad – moments as the story moves along. There are story lines involving gaming, conventions, acting and theater, geek boys and girls, love, pain, heart-break; basically everything that we might encounter in our life. Only funnier.

The break-down:

Rating: ‘R’. Lots of adult language and themes. No blatant nudity.

Updates: Right now it’s updating just about every weekday, with “filler” comics on the weekends.

Archive: massive. Starting all the way back in 2001 with fairly regular updates along the way. The upside is that most of them are four-panel pages, so you can get through them pretty quick. When I first found the comic, I got through the archive in about two weeks, just reading it in my spare time.

Website: pretty easy to navigate and laid out well.

RSS: It does have an RSS feed. Mr. Milholland also has a Twitter account, but he doesn’t announce updates by way of “tweets”.

Overall: a great, well-drawn, well-told story that can make you laugh. Check it out.

Main site: Something*Positive
First comic: http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp12192001.shtml

I had planned on discussing/reviewing more, but I'm going to wrap it up here as I’ve gone on long enough. If you’re interested in hearing about more webcomics, just let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading!
-Hinton