Top Five Webcomics

Greetings fellow brain-bearers.

A couple of days ago I was able to go to a guest lecture at my univerity on the subject of self-publishing. It was an interesting talk, though directed mostly at the publishing students, but it got me thinking.

You see, publishing, like journalism and the music industry, is an industry in crisis - no one really knows what's going to happen to it and self-publishing (essentially getting round the middle-people) is becoming increasingly popular amongst the creatives who usually fuel such industries. The lecture's focus was mostly the self-publishing of books, (which wasn't something I'd thought of before, but now seems more reasonable and do-able than before) but I felt they'd almost missed a trick.

If any medium has been historically worse treated than publishing than the comic book sector, I don't know about it. From what I've heard, the artists in particular were paid a pittance compared with the royalties which the publishing houses made. So it seems to me that the recent explosion of webcomics is a logical one. The sector with the least to lose from turning their backs on traditional publishing methods was the first to really exploit the internet as a viable medium.

Webcomics are a bit of an interest of mine, mostly because they were the first comics I got into and the only ones I really read (apart from the glorious trio of Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts and Garfield). It seems some webcomics have been able to gather audiences large enough to actually make money.

Obviously it is still very difficult to make any real money out of the internet as an independent artist, but the fact that anyone can do it at all means that in the great ocean of shouting that is the internet, some kind of meritocracy can sometimes exist.

I can't go through all the successful webcomics here, nor would I want to, but I thought I would link to my top five webcomics in no particular order and tell you why I think (read: know) they are awesome.



1. Firstly, Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques which has been going since 2003 and is updated daily every Monday-Friday. QC is a webcomic about a group of dysfunctional 20-somethings living in New England, it focuses mostly on Martyn, a romantically frustrated young man with musical ambitions. It's a plot-based comic, and works something like a 2D sitcom. As you can tell from the main character, this webcomic has obvious appeal amongst the hipsterish late-teens to late-twenties group, but more than just that, QC is clever.

Its characters are easily recognisable, but nuanced and ideosyncratic, the plots are funny, but occasionally touching, there's a nice balance between the romantic realism and the fact that there are robots running around everywhere. What Jacques manages to do is pitch a balance between socially-problematic youngsters, and jokes about boners.

One of the things I really admire about QC is Jacques' willingness to experiment with new styles of artwork, interesting character development and a wry sense of humour. If you're wanting to start reading it, I would go back to the beginning, as there are stories, artwork styles and character traits which are really worth seeing develop over the years.



2. Of course no list of top webcomics would be complete without the inclusion of xkcd by Randall Munroe, probably one of the most successful webcomics in the world. Where people used to put up Dilbert comics on their office walls, now they put up xkcd's. Self-described as a comic about "romance sarcasm math and language" xkcd really set the bar for clever, nerdy commentary.

Online since 2005 and updating Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, xkcd tackles subjects as diverse as linguistics, theoretical physics, sociology and computing, all with a keen eye for human interactions and a slightly off-kilter approach to life; xkcd is a surprisingly deep comic for what is essentially stick-figure art. That isn't to say that there isn't artistry in Munroe's drawing; the minimal style allows the ideas to have the space they need.

With obvious influences from greats such as Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts, xkcd takes a philosophical approach to it's subjects, drawing humour from some of the more absurd things even very clever people do. The only flaw being that the humour is occasionally difficult to get, especially when he references scientific things that a poor humanities graduate like myself doesn't understand. But hey, when that happens, I go and look it up and I learn something new. The truly great thing about xkcd is that it is not afraid to branch out into every subject it can, as the comic talent behind it can always find the human element to make you laugh, and occasionally give you a sense of poignance about life.


3. If you want a webcomic which takes a format and really runs with it, you have to look at Dinosaur Comics. Like QC it started in 2003, and has used the exact same artwork for each comic (with the occasional addition) ever since. Based around six panels and three central dinosaur characters - T-Rex, Dromeciomimus and Utahraptor - Dinosaur Comics is a masterclass in doing a lot with a constrained medium. Creator Ryan North has, in addition to the dinosaur characters who appear in the panels, managed to add in several others, purely by using text (and occasionally a small picture of Batman's head) - including God, Satan, and T-Rex's mammalian neighbours.

It's subject matter tends to revolve around T-Rex's attempts at creative endeavour or the way to find happiness with many references to linguistics, computer games (the only subject Satan talks about) and relationships. T-Rex's attempts at writing novels and not finding disappointment in the world are often met by caring, but sarcastic responses from those around him, and suprisingly enough for a comic that is, in terms of artwork, exactly the same every time, there is a great deal of depth to be found in the characters. With consistently funny easter eggs to be found in the alt text, and an extraordinarily keen eye for funny phrasing, Dinosaur Comics is already a classic, as it ought to be.


4. The early 00s was a rich time for the development of now famous webcomics. Starting in 2002, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has become one of the leading comics on the net. With a breadth of subjects covering the nerdy touchstones of science, maths, history, philosophy and relationship anxiety, SMBC has the ability to turn many different subjects on their head and shake out some brilliant comic material all the while. Written and drawn by Zach Weiner, SMBC's colourful style and variable comic length, combined with the ever-changing characters, subjects and angles mean that the casual webcomic reader is never bored and there is always something new to explore.

The world of SMBC is not all that far away from xkcd, but though they share interests and (obviously) fanbases, SMBC has it's own character, often the punchline is a crushingly cynical look at modern human nature, or the occasionally anti-social characteristics of the scientific mindset and often just surreal tangents. The one-liner single-panels are just as good as the long, slow-burners, but it fascinating to go back through the timeline for SMBC to see just how many things it's gotten comic potential out of. Fans of Gary Larson's Far Side comics would feel very much at home here. With a very sharp wit and a very impressively dark perspective on human interactions in everything from economics to academia, SMBC is the black humour capital of the internet.


5. Hark, a Vagrant! A rather quaint phrase? Maybe. One of the most well-drawn webcomics around. Certainly. Created by Kate Beaton and written since 2006, this comic focuses mostly on speculating about the ideosyncrasies of historical or literary figures. Beaton's sketchy style of drawing belies a very keen eye for expression which is the key to a lot of the humour in this comic. I have genuinely never seen a comic artist draw awkward silences so well as Kate Beaton. Many of the punchlines are merely characters glaring, being weirded out, giving blank looks or being disappointed by what's going on around them, and the faces here are a joy to look at, cpaturing the feel of the stories perfectly.

Much of the humour is based on transposing modern tropes onto characters in the past, which you might think would get tiresome, but actually remains fresh nontheless as Beaton is brilliant at writing the one-word punchline. Much of the laughs are understated here, you won't be rolling on the floor, but the work in this comic is so quietly excellent that you can't help but smile at the very modern histories being played out. A lot of what Beaton plays on is the awkward moment in history, and I simply love these moments, where the human element of social anxiety breaks through the rose-tinted, romantisised notions of historical events that we are prone to have. A joy to read.


Hope you all liked the list/review format, there's just time for me to give honerable mentions to webcomics by two of my friends, Uncreation by Jamie Wright, a strange fantasy/horror world with lots of very nice eldrich creations and Barracuda Smile by Ollie Langmead and Michael Baker, a strange noir tale, with some rather cool and unexpected characters.

And let's not have any silly notions about webcomics not being a legitimate art form guys.

Laters, fleshbags.