Jam-O-Gram is the latest project of Jam Torkberg, and seems to be an exercise in creativity. The strips are each almost always solitary, and often highlight whatever whimsically strange idea has caught the artist’s mind. For a time, he based each cartoon off a random comment chosen from the day before.

Now, a comic being experimental does not, in and of itself, make it a good comic. As within any other genre of comics, it is the quality of the work itself, not its trappings, that determine its value. On the whole I’ve found Jam-O-Gram to be worth reading more often than not, but the humor can be very hit or miss.

Some days get no more than a shrug from me, others I find clever without really laughing at them – but some definitely get a chuckle or two, and there are ones that I can keep coming back to, and grin every single time. There are days when I find the work to be masterful, and days when I just don’t get it – but in the end, that shouldn’t be unexpected, given that pretty much each comic is trying something new and unusual.

Today’s comic left me with a lot of different things I wanted to talk about.

Aside from the comic itself, Jam mentions himself to be an avid fan of Rejected. Now, it you haven’t seen Rejected, you should go do so. I’ll warn you right now – it’s not for everyone. Some people might just find it puzzling. Others may be actively horrified, disgusted, or traumatized. But I know that the first time I watched it, I found it so horrifyingly amusing that I was in physical pain from laughing too hard.

Rejected is an exercise in… the surreal. In the unusual. Absurd things happen without reason or expectation. Scenes are set-up and perverted – happy laughter going hand in hand with physically disturbing events. Sometimes there is nothing perverse at hand, merely the bizarre – unusual figures screaming out gibberish.

In this case, simply hearing mention of Rejected instantly changed up my view of the comic itself. I couldn’t read it without hearing the character’s screaming out their lines of gibberish in the same wild and vocal tones as are featured in Rejected. Without that, I don’t think I would have found the comic itself actually funny – but visualizing the lines beind said in that fashion, and it actually worked for me.

That said, I don’t believe the words are intended to be gibberish, but rather code. (Or at least, so I must conclude from a cryptic sequence of numbers posted beneath the comic.) Yet for me, I actually prefer the words to be meaningless. It is hardly a gag I want to see everyday – but right now, with this set-up, I like it.

The other thing of note about today’s comic is that it was created entirely with the left hand. If we weren’t told that outright, though, I wouldn’t even have known. Not because the quality of the work is perfect – it isn’t, you can clearly see the result of using the left hand, though it still came out very impressively.

But the reason I didn’t notice was because so much of Jam’s art is fluid and dynamic. I often expect characters to have loose, squiggly lines. Wavering features and strange perspectives works well with the oddities of his strips.

As I mentioned before, this is by and large an experimental strip. Jam tries new and unusual stuff all the time, and I imagine the work he does is more for his own sake then for his audience. This latest experiment, regardless of whether the characters are speaking in code or not, I’d rate as a definite success.

I admit I probably have not been paying as much attention as I should to the latest happenings in Nukees.

I’m not entirely sure why the dynamic duo are currently trying to get information about… whatever they are trying to find out.

I’m also not sure why the trip involved a detour to Gav’s parents.

But I think it says quite a bit that, despite not really following the current overall storyline, the strips have remained brilliantly funny. Especially the latest two – watching Danny and Gav’s o-so-cliche misadventure in secretarial seduction has proven a high point in my week.

Sorry for the short posts this week! Life’s been busy giving me lemons… or however the saying goes… but hopefully things will have settled a bit by next week.

You know, it isn’t every day a comic can swap out the main character, and then keep on doing its thing without even slowing down.

Joe Loves Crappy Movies is an awesome comic. Funny strips, funny reviews, funny newspots.

But out with the old, in with the new!

George Loves Crappy Movies is also an awesome comic. That is all.

For a good while now I’ve been a fan of Kathleen Jacques’ Intershadows. I had lost track of the comic for a time when it was transitioning from Coolsville (a fun comic with a lot of potential that was hindered by rough art and wandering storylines) into its current state: a very powerfully drawn comic with a lot of solid, connected plot.

The latest comic reveals that two of the secondary characters, Corey and Rain – both rather sad and lonely individuals – are, in fact, ‘getting it on’ with each other, as the kids say.

This came as a complete shock to me. It completely blew me away. Not because of the two character’s suddenly revealed homosexuality – that actually fits into the story surprisingly well. But it came as a surprise because the two of them had both been set up as tragic figures, constantly driven deeper and deeper into solitude and sadness.

And suddenly the two of them are given unexpected happiness.

It’s not an ending – the story will still be going on from here, and it is hard to say how it will end for these two – but it’s as welcome as it was unexpected. I think there’s a little someone in all of us cheering for everybody to find a happy ending.

Intershadows in general is a great comic, and well worth checking out. And the cast page, which some critics have proclaimed an integral part of any comic?

Is a flowchart. In haiku form.

Goddamn but that is cool.

I like Tailsteak.

The site is a collection of various little creative works by Tailsteak.

This includes several different continuing comics, my favorites of which are band (fantastic), the blue android (kinda neat), and TQ (clever).

It also features drawing exercises such as twenty questions with a coin, which are nifty and relatively entertaining.

And sometimes is comes out with something entirely out of the blue – such as this recent little flash sudoku game.

Now, I’m not a fan of Sudoku. I’ve recently expressed my public disdain for it, in fact.

But this game was fun. I liked it.

For all that I like the standard webcomics that bring the same story to the table with every update, I like being able to drop by Tailsteak’s site and, more often than not, be pleasantly surprised.

Journal comics can’t be easy to do.

On the surface, oh, sure – you just take what happens in your life and make a comic out of it. Anyone can do that.

Of course, anyone can make a comic about talking rabbits or space ships or what-the-hell-ever – that doesn’t mean those comics will be good.

Take a look at a comic like Malfunction Junction. It ‘brings the funny’, as they say in the industry, with damn fine consistency. Funny stories about his life, and the crazy things that happen to him.

I mean, not everyone can say they wake up and – bam! 8,000 dollars! How about that?

I know a remarkable number of people who that sort of thing would never happen to. If you asked them to share some of the fascinating tales of their life, they’d likely come up short. It simply isn’t the case that everyone can live a life of adventure and excitement, right?

But back to Malfunction Junction. Matt Milby’s life, one would argue, is not a life of adventure and excitement. His description of the comic, and his life, explains that he is an art-school drop out who works at a gas station.

That is not a life that exactly screams entertainment.

And yet… he keeps the comics coming. And they are funny. And filled with little stories and interesting things that you wouldn’t think happen to most people, right?

Well… wrong.

He describes his reason for making a journal comic as follows: “I am most inspired by everyday stuff that happens to me.”

Every day there are plenty of fascinating things that happen. To us, to our friends, to strangers. But sometimes it can be hard to actually notice them.

For the longest time, I would feel out of place when my friends would share humorous stories. I mean, I didn’t have any anecdotes of my own to share. I’d never been driven out of an ice cream store by angry and cantankerous cops, or amassed a cult following in my high school years. I didn’t have any exciting convention stories or tales of drunken debauchery.

I blamed myself, of course – I blamed not having an exciting life doing exciting things. Stuff like that happened to other people, not to me.

And sure, that is part of it – the world does need a person to walk out into it in order to experience what it has to offer.

But it was also a matter of perception. I didn’t think I had anything interesting happen to me. So I just didn’t notice when it actually did.

Once I realized that mistake, and started actively paying attention… started feeling a bit of inspiration… well, soon enough I had my share of stories. And they weren’t always about me – sometimes they would be about coworkers or friends, or random strangers I saw along the way, or whatever.

And there isn’t anything wrong with that – sometimes people do crazy stuff, and it makes for some funny tales to tell. Sometimes you notice some simply odd people. Thats part of noticing the world around you, and letting everyone know exactly how fucked up it is, in a way that makes everyone laugh.

It’s a good thing, to share a bit of humor about everyday stuff. And it doesn’t require living the life of a secret agent to do so.

No, this post isn’t about any drama out in the wild world of webtoonists – this is about the actual use of drama within a comic, if you can fancy that!

Suburban Tribe is a webcomic that, a year ago, I wasn’t always entirely sure why I read. It had a cast of folks trapped in miserable jobs at a marketing agency, who were by and large crude, hateful people who went through many of the same jokes about their circumstances. I read it, and had some laughs, but it didn’t really have much staying power at keeping my interest.

And then John Lee, the creator, decided to have a bit more of an intense plot. He decided it was time for the Big Story, and took a gamble that many folks have – keep some of the humor, but turn the focus towards plot, and character development, and so forth. After over two years of doing a different thing, changing a comic like that can be pretty dangerous.

In this case… it worked. I couldn’t get enough of the comic, with the government conspiracies, love triangles, secret agents and all that jazz. It took a gamble, and it paid off big.

The Big Story wrapped up, and things returned to normal – but the comic seemed a bit stronger for the struggle. The characters had a bit more tangibility. We could see lasting effects from what had happened, and future questions still to be resolved.

Then came along the second round of Big Story. The same elements came back in – conspiracy, romantic tension, spies and action. And… it’s still great. I am glued to my seat waiting for each update.

So sure, sometimes it can be a risky business to try and make that shift from humor to drama. But John Lee did a damn fine job of it, with a comic I never would have expected it from.

There are times when I really am in the mood for a nice solid adventure story, and Indavo fits the bill perfectly.

Normally the story revolves around the adventures of Indavo and Rachael – space adventurers, freelance explorers, extreme heroes, and romantic leads.

The stories are, in general, good solid fun – fighting space pirates, robot armies, and so forth. The majority of the time the heroes are in the midst of some chaos or another, and usually manage to come out of the worst situations with hides intact.

But currently, in the aftermath of a pretty intense storyline, we know find ourselves in the presence of a character about which little is known – the Time Traveler in the Big Hat.

Yes, that’s what he’s called.

He seems to be a figure of immense power and knowledge who hops into dangerous situations and manipulates the outcomes to suit his own, mysterious purposes.

Only… he seems to have screwed up, and is apparently stranded on a flaming hell-planet, and most decidedly not in control of the situation.

I didn’t have the slightest expectation of a storyline involving this guy, but this is looking to be fantastic, and maybe enlightening on some of the mysteries surrounding him.

I also love the image above – the artwork of Indavo is pretty perfect for the series, as it has a lively, slightly cartoony feel to it, that nonetheless can yield some pretty dramatic moments. The robots that are fairly prevalent throughout bear an uncanny resemblance to transformers, but thats been the only real hiccup for me, and is probably more due to having grown accustomed to more modern ‘sleek’ robot designs. In the end, nothing is necessarily wrong with the old-school designs here.

In any case, here’s hoping for more fun with fiery death and time traveler excitement!

There are a lot of gaming comics available on the web. There are a lot of superhero comics. Comics about elves, and dragons. Comics about romance, or roomies, or robots.

There are very few comics about libraries and librarians.

Unshelved has found its niche, and rules it well.

For me, the comic works well because of nostalgia – I remember my days working as a page in a public library, and Unshelved captures a lot of the little truths about such a place.

Even though I haven’t worked at such a job in over 5 years, I am still currently an avid reader. My reading has changed – it is much harder to enjoy the pulp fantasy books I used to love, but every once in a while I discover something amazing, and they capture perfectly exactly what that experience entails.

So Unshelved works well for me, because I can relate.

I’ve been there, I still am there in many ways, and I can recognize it all as true.

The comic has a lot more going for it than that, of course. There is plenty of clever gaming jokes and dorky references, along with more ordinary humor, from the surreal to the slapstick. It has solid storylines, a nice cast, and even the occasional romantic tension. I’d wager a lot of folks out there could easily enjoy it without needing any background in library logic.

And for those of us who enjoy the world of books? There are a lot of nice touches that strike very close to home, and thats a good thing.