And now for something completely different.
I feel as though I should be talking about all the Big Stuff going on with some of the heavy hitters of the webcomics world.
Sluggy has brought Oasis back, and she’s no longer completely adrift from reality – though certainly not altogether there yet. There is a whole slew of words just waiting to be let loose in light of what it may mean to have Oasis as a character, and not just a prop.
The Penny Arcade Expo just wrapped up, they just ran one hell of a cameo laden storyline, and word has hit the street about their upcoming video game. It is official – they have won the internets.
And over at PvP, it looks quite possible that Brent, fueled by the spirit of competition, may be proposing to Jade. I see no possible way that could end poorly.
Oh, and Narbonic continues with things going from bad to worse, and it looks like soon we’ll have all the important cast members gathered together for one last hurrah. With all our favorite gerbil-people, too!
So lets somberly take note of all those crazy shenanigans, and set them aside, and think happy thoughts about birds, flowers, and other peaceful, ordinary things.
So while the big movers and shakers are rumbling, I’m going to spend the week (or what I have left of it prior to DragonCon) focusing on lesser known strips.
When I get back next week, never fear, I’ll be back to the usual pandering with the big boys – or, more specifically, will succumb to the urge to discuss these grand happenings. Mostly likely at length. With diagrams.
You’ve been warned.
Some quick thoughts
And… I’m back, and mostly recovered.
I had the good fortune to have my Narbonic books arrive (the mail package had a gerbil drawn on it! How cool is that?), but since my last post was on Narbonic, I’ll refrain from excessive exaltation of them.
I’ll likely spend tomorrow catching up with all the things on my mind – for now, I noticed that Modern Tales had added a few new names to its roster. Some are new to me, but look intriguing – but the two I currently read (Anywhere but Here and Irregular Webcomic) leave me with mixed feelings.
I think it’s a good move for Irregular Webcomic, mainly because he is also staying at his old site. Giving the complexity of his archives, and the need for something more robust than the less-then-accessible system MT uses, I think losing the readability it previously had would have been a mistake. But by preserving it, and potentially attracting new readership via MT, everyone comes out ahead.
I’m less sure for Anywhere but Here, but aside from the similar downsides of a weaker archiving system, I don’t think it is a bad move. Now that I ponder it for a bit, it does feel like a strip that is certainly at home in the MT community. It will certainly be nice to see some familiar faces on Modern Tales, and I wonder if they have some more such strips up their sleave.
I suppose it was inevitable…
…but that’s still just so sad.
Continuing with the brevity…
Bad News: I am sick. (Fortunately, this is only really bad news… to me.)
Good News (for everyone!): You can now cleanse your immortal soul, you dirty heathen, with Cigarro & Cerveja!
So go – immerse yourself in the bizarre little world (which happens to be a lot like ours) of these wacky characters. I’d indulge in more exuberant recountings of the strip, but… yeah, kinda sick. Which was surprising, as while I’ve had some ups and downs, I haven’t had a standard old cold in several years now, and now was not the best time for it.
Bah. As long as it is gone by DragonCon, I won’t be angry. If it should not, however… well, I’ll probably rail in impotent anger against forces beyond my control. Oh well.
Anyway! Cigarro & Cerveja! Go! Read! Buy! Exclamation Points!
A Short Announcement
So Scott Kurtz is currently running a beta site of his new PvP webpage.
Now, see, that’s pro.
A quick rundown on my first impressions of it:
It feels a bit more busy than the previous page, but nothing feels outright unnecessary – and the clutter is below the strip, so doesn’t get in the way of plain and simple comic viewing.
The navigation of the archives looks like it will take a bit of getting used to – but seems insanely more powerful. No easy link to the first strip, sadly, though any half-motivated user can find their way to it without much trouble.
The tag feature? Awesome. Prone to abuse, but hopefully fans will be able to keep themselves in check.
Big ol’ cast page, and a little guide for new users. That’s a nice touch.
A few downsides, but overall it seems very impressive. Props to his team for a kick-ass new site!
Phoenix Rising Prologue: Slice of Evil
“Also, yes, this is the start of the next Oasis story.”
Don’t have much time to chat today, but thought this was worth pointing out. I am 96% confident that this upcoming storyline will rock my socks off, if only because an Oasis story likely means a Torg story, and that’s what the readership has been waiting for since That Which Redeems.
Abrams is a clever man. The announcement is enough to make me forgive him – this time – for subjugating us to two weeks of stick-figure torment.
Five things that merit mention on a friday.
1) After my lament yesterday that AMD hadn’t yet returned, we now discover it will be starting back up on Monday. Awesome. Also, Squidi plans to make his place on the internet on a clean slate, with the past left behind – that’s a motive I can definitely get on board with!
2) Gaming Guardians has dropped a big old plot twist on us, and is now going on hiatus for a month! Agony!
The plot twist itself really turned me off at first. We have what appears to be Radical, our heroine, turning into Tartarus, a crazy, and extremely powerful, villain.
Some hunting in the forums revealed that it is likely that Tartarus is merely possessing Radical. This is good. That other plot twist? That Radical, having been driven insane by her inability to save the life of her friends from the villains, has now become that very force which drove her to the brink?
That is a plenty fantastic plot twist, and was quite awesome when it was used last time.
So, I’ve got my fingers crossed on there being some other explanation at work here. Only time will tell – lots of time, in fact, given the hiatus coming up.
3) Penny Arcade again features the dread spectre of continuity – and this time, the normal cast and crew seem likely to be bit players in the scene. That’s kinda nifty.
4) Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has been cranking out two comics a day. Damn. The man’s a machine.
5) Finally, Gisèle Lagacé over at P&A steered us towards No Rest for the Wicked. Given that I’m still on the fairy tale kick from the last few months, I devoured it pretty rapidly, and recommend others do the same.
Lessons Learned
Sean Howard, producer of a variety of pixelated webcomics, has recently returned to the field.
He left the webcomics field just over a year ago, due both to having a little one enter the family – and, of course, the fact that his webcomics career was plagued by dramadramadrama. I won’t go into the who, hows, or whats, since I’m sure everyone and their kid sister can dig them up from the archives of the interweb.
Instead, I’ll state that I was sad when he left, because drama aside, he produced a damn fine strip. Enjoyable and entertaining plot, combined with pixel art that wasn’t incomprehensible, made for a charmingly good strip, if not one of the web’s heavy hitters.
As such, when he announced his return, I was pretty cheered by the news. Unfortunately, A Modest Destiny hasn’t quite yet resumed – instead, we’ve been treated to the Athiest, the Agnostic and the Asshole.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not commenting on the quality of these strips. (As a matter of fact, I found quite a bit of amusement in his latest one, largely due to pondering how the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applied to Wikipedia.)
So it isn’t that they are bad comics, persay. The problem for me, rather, is that they are political comics.
I don’t know why it is, but the fact remains – I have quite a bit of trouble reading comics with heavy opinions. It doesn’t matter if I agree with the opinions or not – Sore Thumbs turns me off as much as Winger.
Is it that I can’t stand listening to an artist’s opinions? I don’t think that’s it – there have been plenty of strips I’ve seen influenced by some measure of personal interest that haven’t driven me away. It may just be that when the strip focused on a topic that I’ve seen a hundred times before, it just isn’t able to trigger any function other than disdain, no matter how valid the point or how well it is presented.
In any case, it leaves me all the more eagerly awaiting the return of AMD – and the sincere hope that he will be able to simply re-enter the webcomics world, update his strips and do his thing, and avoid any drama (real or imagined) taking away from the joy of it all.
Public Service Announcement
I think Irregular Webcomic may be in the running for the coolest webcomics auction ever.
Morgan-Mar is auctioning off a notebook in which he has recorded the scripts and planning of hundreds of strips, including some never actually seen.
It’s not a shiny piece of art you can stick on your wall. It’s not a neat little t-shirt with a slogan that may or may not be connected to the comic.
But it is a connection directly to the artist. A direct line into the thoughts that go into his work. You can’t buy that kind of connection…
…oh wait. I guess you can.
We could all use a little change…
I feel like I should talk about the changes of editors at Modern Tales and Graphic Smash – but I’m not really sure what to say.
My opinions of the collectives themselves remain the same – GS seems to be doing well as far as content, and MT still remains barren as far as new material. They have a nice redesign (well, it looks nice, even if navigation isn’t anything exceptional.) Hopefully a new editor will help things take off again.
As far as the editors taking over, I don’t think anyone can complain – Tim Demeter does one of the most professional looking webcomics out there, and Shaenon Garrity has always been a heavy hitter on the web.
Those stepping down? Well, no one can deny the impact Eric Burns has had in the last few years (case in point – I wouldn’t be writing this blog without his inspiration.) Sometimes life steps things up a few levels too high, and there isn’t anything one can do about it. He certainly owes the webcommunity nothing, and hopefully he won’t have been so burnt out as to leave it entirely behind – the updates on Websnark these days aren’t the onslaught of yesteryear, but remain full of quality whenever they arrive. That, I think, is more than enough for us.
And T Campbell? Man. From his recent musings on his blog, he seems to be pondering a lot of personal changes. He seems to have been through rough times of late, and I really feel for him – this is the man who, more than any other, has represented webcomics in my mind. He has been involved in so many projects designed to expand the medium. He was the writer of one of my favorite strips of all time. So I hope that whatever changes may come, things work out well in the end for him.
I don’t know how much these changes will really be felt, by and large – much of what the people in those positions do goes on behind the scenes. Still, it strikes me as… well, worthy of note, I suppose, that two such transitions are happening at the same time.
I’m not sure if I am really able to draw conclusions about what it means – and, to be honest, I don’t know if it means anything more than some people moving on to different things in their lives.
Still, I’m going to go with the best approach I think I can take with anything along these lines – see it as a chance for new editors to help Modern Tales (and friends) reach their full potential, and wish the best to those leaving it behind, and hope that wherever their path takes them next, they have a good time of it.
Change, after all, isn’t always a bad thing.
Damn Good Comics 