webcomics

[psocoptera]

I've been meaning to write something about webcomics for aaaaages. (Since, um, May, when TJ&Amal finished and then 14 Nights finished.) I don't know why exactly but for a long time I've been reluctant to read any new webcomics and then in the past month or two, I did a complete re-read of Miracle of Science, a complete re-read-to-date of Chester 5000 XYV, reread a bunch of old Bruno, reread a bunch of Fans, reread Freakangels, read both the old and new Smut Peddlers, read Strong Female Protagonist, read O Human Star, Nimona finished, so, yeah, I don't know, I'm all comixed up here.

If it's not clear from that list: I really like romance. And SFF, but, like, cartoon people kissing and blushing at each other? (Etc.) CATNIP.

Bruno and Fans and Miracle of Science are old news (although if you never read Miracle of Science, it's complete and 435 pages long, just saying.)

Otherwise, some links:

FINISHED

14 Nights has trippy, SFnal dream imagery but is otherwise real-world. The author has said the one character isn't exactly asexual but there's some interesting stuff here about different-libido relationships. This comic is NSFW.

The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal is also not-SF and NSFW. Two guys on a cross-country road trip. Amazingly slow-paced and detailed and carefully constructed.

Nimona. Less romance, more SFF. Should we talk about Nimona? Are we nominating Nimona for the Graphic Hugo this year? On the one hand I kind of hate manic monster dreamgirls, or the whole trope where someone obnoxious invades and disrupts the main character's life *and also somehow gets them and by proxy the audience to like them*, see also Hanna in Octopus Pie, on the other hand it was a well-done story and what else are we nominating even. Man, I wish we got to see more about Balister and Goldenloin before and after Nimona, my absolute favorite strip was the Christmas special flashback to when they were young together. Apparently the book will have an epilogue although I don't know whether it will focus on them or Nimona.

STILL GOING

Strong Female Protagonist is so far superheroes and mostly not romance although I have Hopes. Thinky and (hopefully) still in its early days, it feels like there's a lot of story here left to tell?

O Human Star. Transhuman romance? I am so excited about this comic. Dying inventor wakes up sixteen years later in robot body, and then things get complicated.

Chester 5000 XYV is an extremely NSFW wordless erotic comic that is also telling a story about robots and inventors and romantic complexities. By Jess Fink, who also did one of my favorite comics in this year's Smut Peddler.

ETA: I forgot Check, Please! about adorable college hockey players.

Comments

[irilyth]

> Chester 5000 XYV

I feel like I really liked something else that Jess Fink wrote, and haven't been as into this. Possibly an earlier Chester story? Who knows, but I've had a hard time staying interested in the arc that's been going on for a while. (To the extent that I haven't even been trying for the past few months.) I should read it from the start some time, perhaps.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I definitely think it reads better in bigger chunks, but I think that's basically true of everything on this list except maybe Nimona (and/or Check Please? haven't been reading it long enough to say). This is about to be an overly broad statement and somebody who knows more about comics should feel free to counterexample me, but I feel like *mostly*, people whose comics look like "pages" are writing something that's structured more like issues or chapters of a graphic novel, while people whose comics look more like "strips" are more likely to be thinking about daily punchlines, story beats happening within rather than across strips, stuff like that. I guess Questionable Content looks like pages but reads well as a daily, but if you look back at the first strips, they were definitely strips (with a slightly "creative" organization).

[une-jonquille.livejournal.com]

the "Check, Please" author was at AWA and now I officially shake my fist at you for not posting this prior to AWA #allthepies

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Oh man I don't know about Check Please. I mean, I love it obviously, but if the author is going to tease us with Bitty/Jack for years and then try to sell us on some other ending being satisfying in the last chapter, I'm going to end up with bad feelings about the whole thing. That's almost certainly unfair, but I'm still kind of bitter about Boy Meets Boy (a comic which was one of my very first writing fandoms a million years ago) and I guess it has made me in some ways trust individual creators who are actively courting a slash audience *less* in some ways than big shows? I mean, Korra or Agents of SHIELD is going to make whatever good or bad decisions about ships, and maybe that'll be the story the original writers always envisioned, or maybe they'll be limited by corporate directives or what polls well or whatever, and what are you going to do. But it feels more personal when an individual creator sets out to taunt their audience. (Or maybe Check Please really is the original-character hockey slash epic I'm hoping it is, and it will end with rainbows, championships, and Bitty hand-feeding Jack bites of pie, WHO EVEN KNOWS.)