Webcomic Reading List #2

Some recent discoveries which I plan to check out:

Flipside

Xylia

TwoKinds

Crowfeathers

Webcomic Reading List #1

This is more or less in the order in which I started reading them, although there have been hiatuses (hiati?) esp. with Sluggy, which is the one I most often ask myself "Why am I still reading this?" and then there's a good spoof or a particularly endearing Kiki moment and I keep reading...for a while. I haven't decided if I'm going to review any of them, or talk about why I read them, or if this is really just going to be a linkdump. (I'm lazy, so I may just compromise with the random cryptic aside.) Links should open up in a new window. Most of these strips would be PG-13, due to elements of violence and bawdy humour, but some of them go into R territory at least on occasion, so be warned.

Sluggy Freelance

Scary-go-round
BTVS meets "All Creatures Great & Small", what's not to like?

Order of the Stick/Erfworld
OOTS way more than Erfworld, which isn't really gelling for me.

Dicebox
There is some serious narrative discontinuity in places, like if it was a printed book you'd be like "did they lose a sig here or what?" but the characters are cool, the art is REALLY good, and it's not like there's much on TV...

Roza and the Horse Prince
Likewise - it starts in media res and never really explains the backstory. Also the horse does things physically impossible for horses, which annoys me much (see also Road to El Dorado. But it's very pretty.

Wayfarers Moon
There's not a whole lot of story up yet to judge on, but the bimbo to non-bimbo ratio is very good.

Questionable Content
I sometimes wonder if I would be more impressed if I had started reading this before, instead of after, Scary-go-round, but I'm pretty sure not. Especially every time Pintsize is onscreen.

Girl Genius

The Dreamer
18th-century/time travel romance, just getting going - a popular YA genre directed mostly at girls for many years now, not sure why there aren't more comics in it.

Goblins
Hmmm...meh...site design is really bad, too.

Aether
Yes, the heroine is rather much of a 'Sue, and there is way too much stereotypical male-directed fanservice (no way Nova could stay in that top without magic!) but it's better than a lot of stuff out there, what with the class issues and the diverse casting and the many female characters.

Earthsong
A little...sweet; but lots of diverse heroines, swordfighting in sensible shoes, plus some genderbending and playing with stock fantasy tropes, all good. The author gets flak and accused of manhatred for having a majority-female cast--why am I not surprised?

Templar, Arizona
Any fellow R.A. Lafferty fans out there? You might want to give this a try.

Athena Voltaire
Very 30's pulp, reminds me of old adventure serials I watched on video, jodphur-wearing heiress in airplane and all. Clever, but...not really very subversive of the genre.

Where do we come from? Where Are We Going?

An appropriately arcane and pretentiously-in-jokey, referential title for an introduction to a blog which exists as an experiment in messing around with blogger's interface and a place for me to stash links to webcomics that I'm reading, or interested in following, and don't want to hunt for. There might be reviews. There might be compare/contrasts to historical narrative art/art with narrations. But it's mainly a linkdump for my personal use, because I get tired of scrolling through a jillion bookmarks, and of googling for the same stuff all the time, and anyway it's become the Done Thing to have loads of different specialized blogs, and I've always been one for keeping up with the absolute latest in fads--

(I've actually seen this painting, first saw it at the BMFA when I was in junior high - very enigmatic and creepy and yes, kind of a foreshadowing of modern surrealist comics in the unconventional (for the 19th century) captioning of a canvas (as well as its embodiment of Male Gaze and Western Appropriation); Little Nemo was some years in the future when Gaugin painted it, but they share a bit of the same fin-de-siècle feeling.)