I love webcomics, though I don't know a great many of them. There are hundreds, but there's probably not a large percentage of them that are actually worth it.

The first one I knew was Ctrl+Alt+Del, and it is still to this day one of those I prefer.

Edit: And I recently started following Order of the Stick, after going through the archives. I don't play D&D, but I still understand about 95% of the jokes.

What are your favorite webcomics?

The ones I regularly visit are:

Order of the Stick / Erfworld
Ctrl+Alt+Del
8-bit Theater
XKCD
Saint Gasoline, if it can be considered a webcomic
Perry Bible Fellowship comics

I also browse Count Your Sheep from time to time, but don't really follow it.

It strikes me that I was introduced to all of these either directly or indirectly by the Palace. Hmmm.

There are thousands of webcomics, @ztech. Probably tens of thousands. Head over to Comixpedia for some commentary and listings.

Below is my current reading list, although there are others that I drop by occasionally (such as Questionable Content and Perry Bible Fellowship).

Narbonic has actually ended, but the entire archives are available free online. This is easily the best of the gag-a-day black and white strips, featuring mad scientists, a talking gerbil and hilarity on a daily basis. HIGHLY recommended.

Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic is a relative newcomer to the scene, with a smallish, but growing readership. Mostly features jokes about 1st edition D&D, but applied to those children who have only ever played 3rd edition just as much. No D&D knowledge required. Recommended.

PvP Online is a gaming/office sitcom strip. Heavier on the office sitcom nowadays, this is still one of the premier strips for nerd humour. Excellent characterisation and crisp art. Recommended, but I'm a Penny Arcade man. Vastly superior to CAD.

DM of the Rings is a vision of the Lord of the Rings movies if they had been a regular D&D role-playing session. Absolutely gut-busting if you've ever played a pen-and-paper RPG and love Lord of the Rings. This pretty damn amusing if either of these are missing. Check out the rest of Shamus' site as well- he's a funny b***ard.

Starslip Crisis is a sci-fi comedy strip by the creator of Checkerboard Nightmare. Interesting characterisation and a unique approach to faster-than-light travel, it's a pretty good strip. Not as action-packed as Schlock Mercenary, but almost as good.*

Gunnerkrigg Court is... odd. It's set in a sprawling private school and has so far featured demons, fairies and a talking robot, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Gaiman recommended it on his blog, and that really says all you need to know: it's freakin' cool and very strange.

Penny Arcade needs no introduction. The gaming and nerd humour strip on the internet, if you've never heard of it...well. I don't think I want to know you any more. Once again: VASTLY superior to CAD. [Ugh.]

Nobody Scores! is a little comic about inevitable disaster. Each strip 'resets' at the end, usually with unfortunate results for Our Heroes. Hilarious gallows humour, fun for all the family except small children and the elderly and anyone who doesn't like gallows humour.

Sordid City Blues is a sadly under-read strip. It's an ongoing drama comic surrounding the lives of ordinary people. There are no robots, fantastic magic powers of special effects here. Just crisp characterisation and fascinating storylines. I really recommend this one. It's unusual amongst webcomics.

Malfunction Junction is pure Awesome distilled into a bottle of whisky and served on the rocks. The black, black humour is gut-wrenching at times, but it's all real. It's an irregular journal-comic of the author's life and is both entertaining and morbid at the same time. A must read.

Dresden Codak does not update enough. This makes me sad. It's like xkcd, but with full colour and gorgeous art. It's philosophical and light-hearted, intelligent witty and absolutely brilliant.

Minus is everything you ever wanted as a little kid, served in gorgeous watercolours on a backdrop of wonderful. The adventures of a little girl with godlike powers, it'll make you laugh, make you cry, make you wish you never had to leave. Not really- mostly it just makes you laugh. But it's gorgeous.

A Softer World is a photocomic with charm, black humour and zombie jokes. What more could you want? It only updates weekly (or so), but every single time it touches a nerve. Usually a funny one, but there's some solid stuff in there.

Tiny Ghosts is also a photocomic, but with the added restriction of only using two photos and two sentences to convey each strip's story. Similar to A Softer World, but different enough to warrant reading both. Excellent work here.

If you aren't reading The Order of the Stick start doing so now. The other comic on Burlew's site, Erfwolf, is also of high quality. Unfortunately Erfworld only updates twice a week (Tuesday and Saturday), which makes being a fan very frustrating. I want more of this intriguing story, damnit!

xkcd is a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language and is also the most hilarious thing on the entire internet. I remember very little math or physics and it's still uproariously hilarious every time a new strip comes online. This is an ABSOLUTE MUST READ. READ READ READ.

Home on the Strange is a good blend of dorky humour (lots of role-playing, Harry Potter and Star Trek jokes Within) and decent 'real-person' drama. I very much enjoy it, mostly for the art over the writing.

Something Positive is one of the darkest, funniest, most fraked-up things on the internet. Milholland's brand of humour is uproariously funny and revolting all at the same time. He opens with am abortion joke and goes downhill from there. Read it and enjoy! Another must read.

Sinister Bedfellows is the third photocomic I read,** and is similarly inclined to the other two: darkish humour interposed with deep moments. Very entertaining. Also check out the recently completed Cthulhuvida by the same author. It combines the Cthulhu mythos with Norse adventure. Very good.

There are a few others I read, but those are the big ones, the ones I recommend everyone read. The Saint Gasoline Thragka mentions is an excellent writer, incidentally. While his comic is fairly amusing, read his essays and assorted commentaries.

EDIT: Oooh! I almost forgot. Ursula Vernon's Digger is one of the most amazing pieces of artistic fiction found anywhere- on or offline. After about two-hundred fifty strips or so the free archives end, but you owe it to yourself to check those out. Spectacular artwork and a fantastic plot. See her artwork at Metal and Magic as well. She really is amazing.

===
*I don't read Schlock Mercenary anymore, but keep meaning to get back into it. So it's not on the list, but you should check it out.

**And as far as I'm aware, the three listed here (A Softer World, Tiny Ghosts and Sinister Bedfellows) are the the Three Big Photocomics in the webcomic world. There are quite a few others, but these are the Big Ones.

Jaw to ground.

Egad, man. That is a long list. And there are more?

Well... only a few more. But seriously, that is a very short list compared to folks like Websnark* and various others out there.

I like 'comics.

*Well worth reading in his own right, although his heyday was 2005.

If you think that's long mate, you'll probably want to look away about now.

Brace yourselves people...


No Need For Bushido
A humerous, nicely written romp through mediaval Japan as depicted by most anime cliches. While the main comic itself is excellent, the bonus comics, particularly the remixes, are also highly enjoyable.

8-Bit Theatre
FF1 taken to hilariously ridiculous lengths. If you aren't reading this already, there's something wrong with you. Black Mage is the evil to end all evils.

The Wotch
An engaging, long-running fantasy comic mixing light-hearted fantasy with some humour as well as keeping a good storyline throughout. Also contains an insane amount of gender-swapping.

Looking For Group
Another fantasy-comedy about a hapless elf drawn into helping some rather disreputable individuals in their quest. Mocks a number of fantasy worlds including Faerun, the World of Warcaft and the works of Terry Goodkind. It also contains Richard the undead warlock, possibly the only character in webcomic history to actually rival Black Mage in terms of comic evilness.

Dungeon Crawl Inc.
Does for Baldur's Gate what 8-bit does for Final Fantasy but with less evilness, more swahbuckling and a great deal more scantilly-clad females.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
A collection of frequently hilarious single-panel comics, making jokes about things most comic writers wouldn't dream of touching.

Gone With The Blastwave
Proving post-apocalyptical war can be incredibly silly. Great artwork, updates at about the speed of an arthritic snail. Which has been nailed to the floor.

Misfile
One of the better trangender comics around. A boy turned into a girl, a girl who lost two years of her life and the pot-smoking angel who did it to them. mixes light-hearted comedy with some interesting character-based drama.

Inverloch
An equisitely drawn fantasy saga now nearing it's end. Intriguing characters, unpredictable plot-twists and a good story, this has it all.

The Noob
All the stupidity of MMORPGs like Everquest in comic form. Always good for a laugh.

Lowroad 75
Tempting the censors on a weekly basis, this little brownscale comic provides silly, yet often apt humour with more fanservice than every other comic in this thread combined. Contains demonically possessed toy pigs, goths and australians in abundance.

Level
An intriguing, well-drawn dystopian science fiction webcomic set in an unusual world. It may not update much, but when it does it's worth it.

Kagerou
A dark, disturbing take on the 'boy brought to a magical world' archetype. Delving greatly into the minds of the mentally unsound, this comic will test your concentration and tolerance levels, but is definitely worth the effort.

No Rest For The Wicked
An unusual take on various fairy tales. Although often amusing, their are times when it also presents serious and even occiasionally chilling turns. Updates are slow, but generally good.

Demonology 101
Although it concluded some years ago this occult fantasy comic is something that should be read by anyone and everyone. A complex story, detailed characters and good artwork.

Foxtails
One of those 'I'm not entirely sure why I'm still reading this' comics. Light-hearted anime-inspired fun.

Crimson Dark
An interesting fusion of CGI and drawn artwork, this science-fiction space opera stands out visually from most webcomics. The story itself is also fiarly well-written, although the recurring references to the christian faith seem rather awkward given the setting.

Goblins
The widely acclaimed rival to Order of the Stick, Goblins is one of, if not the, best D&D comics around. Tarol Hunt's artwork is of a good standard, but what really shines is the story. In a quite simply amazing display of talent, the comic manages to blend jokes about the gaming system (without much of the 4th-wall breaking as seen in OotS) and situational humour with engaging, memorable characters, gripping fight scenes and an interesting well-revealed plot. It also features one of the most novel donation-bringing shcemes around, an entire mini-comic where events are determined by donations recieved. Updates are often late, but they are worth waiting for.

Order of the Stick and Erfworld
Order of the Stick has long been the best-known and loved D&D comic on the web. Erfworld, which started fairly recently on the same site, uses the TBS game matrix as it's rule-setting.
Both are humerous but with storylines (Order of the stick tends more to the comedy, Erfworld more to plot, although the diference isn't great).
Originally I preffered the former to the latter. However, as Erfworld has advanced my opinion of it has risen to the point where it's now my favourite of the two. OotS itself is partly responsible for this, as the story seems to have taken a downward turn since the Cliffport arc, although things look like they are recovering again.

Applegeeks
Very well-drawn and slightly surreal comedy for those of us who like our Macs. Also shows one of the less well-known side effects of fasting during Ramadan: hallucinatory talking squirrels.

Van Von Hunter
Deranged weekly fantasy comedy. Artwork is of a proffessional standard and the humour remains inventive and frequently unexpected. Ari(aka the ultimate evil) is also one of the very few characters who could go toe-to-toe with 8-bit's Black Mage.

Zap!
More science fiction space opera fun. Featuring snide robots, psychis powers and impossible hairstyles. Although on the surface it seems an amnesia comedy, the plot is surprisingly well-developed.

Darken
A good fantasy comic showing what those heroic bands of heroes might be like if made-up entirely of evil people. An interesting, and sometimes humerous, story set around a newly reborn disciple of one of the lords of hell sent on a quest to recover a set of evil artifacts. Features a number of highly memorable characters and an unpredictable plot.

Elf Only Inn
Roleplaying, it's kinda like that. Well, it would be if it featured the same kind of lunatics as the people who make-up the cast of Elf Only Inn. What orignally detailed the events of a roleplaying chatroom has since been brought-back, this time detailing the same group's antics in an MMORPG.

Tales Of Pylea
An interesting serious fantasy comic with a rather a rather shadowy plot. A lot of it remains to be unrevealed but what little has been so far is very promising. The names may be a little odd, but with artwork like that who's complaining?

Elvenbaath
This one I started reading due to its crossovers with Tales of Pylea. A decent enough light fantasy, expressly advertised as not being too deep in terms of plot, it nonethless presents an engaging enough experience. The only marring to this is it creator's tendancy to go on Haitus.

Slightly Damned
The realm of the slightly damned the ring of hell reserved for those who are slightly more evil than good, but not so much that they can enter hell, contianing probably the least threatening demon ever born. Although mostly a comedy, there does seem to be a rather involved plot unfolding.

Inhuman
A dark science-fiction story done entirely in watercolours, set in a far-future where humanity has encountered, surpressed and conquered many alien species. The plot is complex and frequently disturbing, particularly when concerning the mysterious Grey. I've been reading this one longer than any other comic except 8-bit, and I would recomend to anyone looking for something a bit different from the norm.

Hellbound
Insane comedy of genius levels, Hellbound contains probably the most deranged cast ever assembled the stupidity of whose escapades is almost umbelievable. The sheer mind-blowning hilarity of this comic defies description. Quite frankly, it just has to be experienced to be understood. Out of all the comedy comics here, this is one that I've laughed at the most often and the most loudly.

xkcd
Intelligent, surreal stick-figure humour. Touches on science, mathematics and philsosphy in equal measure. Also contains what is probably the most brilliant variation of the 'I sleapt with your mother' insult ever created.

Lint
Yet more fantasy comedy. The adventures of an unlikely band of heroes of possessed of great hebetude. Features a dwarf midget, who is somehow the most able one of the bunch.

Legostar Galactica
An amusing parody of popular science fiction sources done entirely in lego. What is not to like?

Paradigm Shift
A recent discovery for me, this police-drama/werewolf-horror fusion makes for an original serious comic. Combing memorable characters and a good storyline with proffessional quality black and white art. It looks set to be a very interesting experience.

There are a few others I dip-into, but they aren't in my bookmarks folder, which all the above are.

My faves:

8-Bit Theatre- what can I say about it that hasn't been said already?

Order of the Stick- This comic is (dare I say it?) even wittier than 8-Bit, and makes fun of the RP genre mercilessly. That said, though, it's not all comedy: there is actually a constantly-progressing storyling and character development in this WC, which is why I love it so much.

Turn Signals on a Land Raider- WH40k humour

Secret Lives of Mobs- Warhammer Fantasy humour

Shortpacked- What are you to do when you work at a toy store where your boss is a supervillain and your co-workers are either crazy people, nerds, ninjas or Ronald Reagan?

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja- He's a doctor who ALSO happens to be a ninja. Hilarious stuff.

VG Cats- Your number one source of video game mockery after Penny Arcade.

Ansem Retort- Think 8-Bit Theatre, except out to mock every game Squaresoft has ever made.

PHW Comics- Basically myriads of different comics series made using Half-Life 2 GMOD. Sometimes funny, sometimes not so, somtimes absolutely awesome.

A recently discovered comic by me is Goats a really funny webcomic that i find to be quite unique. There is a cute and cuddly chicken named diablo who is particularly sadistic

And remember Science is Satan spelled backwards!

looking for group is pretty good as well:

Looking for group

I tried to get into Looking for Group, but found the jokes obvious, the characters skeletal and the plotline derived. The author/s are mocking a fantasy series they hadn't even finished when they started the comic, it's set in the World of Warcraft setting, but they have ignored nearly everything that makes Warcraft what it is...

And the author liked Eragon. I mean, really.

OotS does a much better job on every count.

I don't know really. As I said before, I felt the storyline of OotS took a pretty hefty fall in terms of quality after the Cliffport storyline conclusion. I mean, Nale's plan was not only really obvious but heavily cliched and contrived, as was just about every event that occured in it's course. The fact that they headed back to Azure City completely defeated the point of Roy's mistake at the oracle and just seemd like a cop-out on Rich's part.
While Elan's escape was definitely a good point, it ended in more cliche and don't even got me started on Haley's speech problem miraculously clearing-up. It had stopped being funny a good deal earlier and Rich's retaining of it to that point just so he could he pull and 'elevnth hour' release just didn't seem worth it.

That said, I felt it has regained a lot with the siege of Azure City, but the arc before it has left a sour taste in my mouth. I am now sick of the Linear Guild, and I really hope they stay away for a long time. They were never particularly good antagonists, certainly not compared to Xykon, but now I just feel like I've lost all liking for them completely.

The transition from comedy to serious is a difficult one to write and I don't think he's managed to pull it off particularly well. I honestly don't find myself caring much what happens to the heroes (I was actually pleased and amused at the outcome of Xykon and Roy's last duel, which I suspect was supposed to provoke shock). I mean, while some characters (Roy, Durkon, who have generally tended to be the 'straight men') have managed to flesh out relatively OK others haven't. This is particularly obvious in the case of Vaarsuvious, who's development is blocked by his/her deliberately undetermined gender, which again has lost it's initial humour.
The Elan-Haley romance is also a bit of problem. Elan can't really flesh-out because he just is a shallow character. For a comedy idiot to become serious they really need something deeper about them and he simply does not. He's just comically oblivious. For a real comparison, put him next to Zap Vexler from the Zap! webcomic or Vash the Stampede from the Trigun anime. Both made the transition because they were more than they appeared to be. Elan isn't, he's exactly as he appears. He has no hidden deep feelings, no obvious fears of letting himself out.

Haley is a much better attempt, but suffered from her prolonged speech impediment. This basically kept her development stuck in a rut for too long. Belkar hasn't developed at all, but then again he's always been mainly there for humour and it still works for him. If he did change, I can't see it being much for the better.

Now, I'm not saying the authors of LFG are better at character development, they probably aren't, but they haven't made an attempt to up the seriousness of their comic yet, so they haven't encountered. Whether they will attempt it in the future I can't be sure, but by then they may have a better grasp on things.



Hmm.. Turned into a bit of a rant there.

Oh, I'd agree whole-heartedly about the Cliffport plot arc. Rich acknowledged that, subtly, by speeding up several strips in the middle of the whole thing. I almost turned away from OotS in that period, but managed to hang on- and the recent siege plotarc has been one of the most brilliantly written pieces of fantasy-comedy I've ever read.

The rest...well. I disagree with aspects of what you say, agree with others. But on the note of turning from comedy into drama, Rich has done a magnificent job. The only other 'comic I've seen at the same level of skill is Sluggy Freelance and that was later squandered.

On the other hand, LFG utterly fails to be amusing, interesting or even original. The artwork is pretty, but the rest seems to be pure marketing: "Look! We're a World of Warcraft comic strip! Come read us! Why? Because look- we make fun of fantasy! And we have an evil guy in the party! And a dumb good guy! And, um..." Yeah, and so does everyone else.

Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, Order of the Stick, Erfworld, DM of the Rings and 8-bit Theatre all do much better jobs, with original, multi-faceted characters and jokes that haven't been done a thousand times before. I don't particularly like 8-bit Theatre, but it's clearly been doing something right and doing it for a long time. LFG is pretty-coloured tripe.

I thought that that was meant to be the point? I mean, he's an evil twin. With a goatee. He's just like Xykon - the incarnation of an overdone villain stereotype.

I love Nale & Thog, personally. Not so much a fan of the rest of the LG, but they are only Pawns in his Masterplan, after all.

True, but that particular aspect was always done in a comedic fashion. The problem with Nale's infiltration of the group was that it was meant to be (at least in part) serious. Hence why that entire arc seems like a mistake on Rich's part.

@Benedictus: Well there's no accounting for taste in humour, I guess. I mean I wouldn't say Rich has dane a bad job of the transition or characters (certianly not compared to some webcomics, e.g. Dominic Deegan) just that I feel it could have been handled better.

From what you say though, it may well be worth you giving Goblins a try, Since that certainly seems to have an originality about it.

What Chili said about Nale and Thog. Although I have a soft spot for the succubus, if only because she made a colour pools joke and I oh-so-love the Planescape setting.

I tried Goblins. The slow updates combined with characters I couldn't take seriously killed it for me. It's a shame he started with over-the-top slapstick humour, actually. If the goblins had names I could take seriously and a little more depth, I would enjoy the comic a whole lot more. I may eventually check back in on it at some point.

Everyone loves the Planescape setting ;)

How far did you get with Goblins anyway? Certainly by the point the story's at now, the one thing I wouldn't think the characters could be called was shallow.

I read CAD, PA and 'Least I could do' (though not as frequently as the others, I let it accumulate for a while then read a few weeks worth). My favourites are 8 Bit Theatre and Red vs. Blue (more a cartoon than a comic, but whatever).

I have tried a few others: VGCats just sucked, and a few I can't remember the name of.

I'm thinking about trying a few other webcomics, which ones would you recommend to read first (A crazy part of me wants to read the archives of every comic linked in this thread)?

Red vs. Blue is just all kinds of brilliant.

Assuming you're more into the comedies, then I'd suggest Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Hellbound and Elf Only Inn. Gone With The Blastwave can also be very funny, but due it's nonexistent update schedule there isn't much of it.

You're kinda selling Xykon short here. For a stereotype, Xykon is still pretty frikkin evil (case in point: the way he made the gate guardians in Azure City go crazy and murder each other). In my books, at least, Xykon is just a few spaces below Black Mage on the tier of evil awesomeness.

But yeah, definitely agree on the LG. Aside from Xykon, Oots seems to get by fine using just one-shot villains.

And Swords? Definitely agree on Red vs Blue

What I love about Xykon is the way he doesn't seem to care about anything except his world domination. How does he manage to keep his followers around?

But villains in OotS are not all super-evil. Redcloak, for example, is becoming almost complex. In addition to being much more competent than Xykon as a leader...

My favorite villain will always be the creature in the darkness... :D

Yeah, if you're looking for character development in OoTS, you need look no further than Recloak. He's quickly becoming my favourite character.

Then again, I thought Miko was going to have a revelation, but that didn't happen. So I guess they're not all developing.

Also, what happened to the One Ring? It's ... gone!

Yeah, I'm currently in my Dune phase... ;)

My avatar represents a Fremen warrior wearing a stillsuit.

But if you guys are thrown off-balance by my new avatar, I can revert back to my good ol' One Ring. I'll keep the Fremen for a week or two, just to test it...

No, when I said he was like Xykon, I mean that he is like Xykon in that he is the embodiment of an archetype... which, in Xykon's case, is the Dark Lord of Unfathomable (and Unexplained) Evil.

Xykon is definitely my favourite character. Redcloak not so much (although he's necessary as a straight man). I reckon it goes

Xykon
Nale
Thog
Belkar/Vaarsuvius
Miko (she was in the wrong organisation... think how well she'd fit into the Adeptus Sororitas!)
The Rest

In no particular order, my favorite characters are Roy, Haley, Vaarsuvius, Miko, Redcloak and the monster in the darkness.

My least favorite characters are Belkar (annoying) and Nale (uninteresting).

"Oh guy I killed, the ground, the ground is calling..."

You should be using the past tense there.

SPOILER WARNING, guys. There are folks here (poor, deprived folks) that haven't read the glorious wonder that is OotS yet.

Red vs Blue is freakin' awesome. I don't head around there anymore, mostly because I am a lazy, lazy man. But yes- do visit and enjoy.

Spire: I got up to...lemme think. The point where they had just found the keys and the veteran set the room on fire. It was a few weeks after that I stopped reading, but that is the point I remember. Does that help your question?

The characters aren't super-shallow, but it's difficult to take them seriously with the ridiculous names they're saddled with because of the strip's beginning. I'm also disappointed that he made humans straightforward bad guys, rather than playing off complex grey areas. I liked Goblins, and might get back into it. For now, though, I just feel that it's immature and basic.

Swordsalot: I recommend every comic I posted up here, honestly. I'd first recommend xkcd, Narbonic (read the archives, not the Director's Commentary), Something Positive and Order of the Stick. After that, move on to whichever of the others look interesting.

Check out Schlock Mercenary, too. I forgot to link to it (because I don't currently read it, having insufficient time to go back through the archives). It's a great sci-fi comedy strip, easily one of the best on the 'net.

Ok, I'm going to see what I can remember...

8-Bit Theatre
Alpha Shade
Antihero For Hire
Ctrl-Alt-Del
Count Your Sheep
Dinosaur Comics
Dresden Codak
Dr.McNinja
Edwitch
El Goonish Shive
Erfworld
Errant Story
Ever After
God Mode
Inverloch
Lackadaisy
Least I Could Do
Looking For Group
Misfile
Order of the Stick
Questionable Content
Slightly Damned
Sore Thumbs
Spiky-Haired Dragon, Worthless Knight
xkcd
Zap!

That's too scary a thought, even in a 41st Millennium setting.

Seriously, though, I have never hated any webcomic character the way I hated Miko Miyazaki. I mean, she was just annoying at first, but after she (SPOILER) went crazy and killed Hojo, and was STILL unapologetic after that....boo-urns, I say. Boo-urns. I'm quite glad she's worm-food now, though.


EDIT: Another comic I heartily recommend is Concerned which is a hilarious parody of the game Half-Life 2. Even if you haven't played HL2 at all, the humour is still awesome.

OOTS: done, loved it. Exactly like 8BT, except with Halflings of pure evil

xkcd: attempted. I get the jokes, they're just not funny. I'm worried that I'm completely missing the point though, because everyone here seemed to love it :S

Everything's pretty much been covered, but I'll throw in a few thoughts.

Penny Arcade is the king of webcomics, and I'm glad Tycho and Gabe have got absolutely minted off of it. They deserve it, it's consistently brilliant.

Cyanide and Happiness is great, but to be honest there's only so many times that rape jokes can be funny until it gets a bit old. I like it when they get a bit more creative than that, like the over-the-top parody of media coverage of Bush.

CAD has lost its touch a bit, but it's still one that I always check on the day it comes out on the off-chance there's a spark there. It does get lost in storylines sometimes at the expense of punchlines, though.

VG Cats can be hilarious, but the dude never updates and lately when he does it tends to be filler art. If he could keep to a schedule I honestly believe it could be as big as PA.

VG-Cats and Cyanide and Happiness = total win where ever you are.

Just wanted to tell you, I have been churning through these lists.

Finished LFG: and was very impressed at the quality of art and the characters in the story. Admittedly, most of the characters are pretty dull and flat (I don't even know the tauren, troll girl, or elf's names to be honest), but it is all compensated for by the sheer greatness that is Dick. It is disappointing that there are so few comics, and they update so rarely.

Then went to Erfworld. I am a little confused by it: the butchery of the english language seems to be all it has going for it: though 'croakmancers' is a very catchy word. I get it, it is a very strict turn-based game world. It just seems to be the one good point about erfworld: and it is rammed home every comic, as the punchline to every joke (either that or something sickeningly cutesy). It got better as the fat gamer appeared as a general, but still a little meh. I'll probably keep following it though (infrequently of course).

Currently near the end of Narbonic. I was pretty scepical at the start: to be honest it's not particularly well drawn and wasn't too funny. I persevered because I think the characters and bizarre storylines are genius. I found the key to enjoying it is to skip the guest comics, sunday comics etc. since it is really hard to follow the plot if it is interrupted with random crap every 5 strips (and some of this random crap goes on for 4-5 pages). I am now very glad I pressed on, since it has gotten better as time went on.

Edit: just remembered a comic I used to read but lost the link for. I think I got it from this forum. It was a warhammer comic, with most of the 'storyline' about an imperial guardsman who eventually got attached to a mad inquisitor. However, it also had other random comics about warhammer etc. I especially remember 1 random comic about a bretonnian general 'sacrificing' his peasants in battle to buy knights some time, and the peasants absolutely thumping the bejesus out of an army of khorne warriors. The punchline, obviously: "Don't f**king mess with peasants" (and "I got a copper coin" "OOOH, shiny"). One of the funniest strips I read :D

I'm now looking for serious strips. Can be any style (sci-fi, fantasy, historical, crime, political thriller), as long as there's action, adventure and a complex plot. I'm currently reading through the archives of a rather good sci-fi strip called Crimson Dark, but since it's a relatively new strip (began in June 2006) that updates only twice a week, it probably won't take me very long to finish.

So... any suggestions would be appreciated.

Schlock Mercenary. Uh.

There are very few good action strips on the 'net.

How could I forget? Digger!

As for Narbonic, one must realise that it was originally intended as a daily strip, not something to sit down and read all at once. The Sunday strips, etc, are a lot less in-your-face when each strip comes daily.

I'd suggest for Shaenon to streamline the strips into different archive formats, but Webcomics Nation doesn't really work like that.

I dunno, Vendetta and Whogirl had their moments, although I will be the first to admit they aren't great. Marlith is still pretty kick-ass at times though. As was Shifters, even if it looks pretty dead now. There's also Chooken, even if the premise is rather bizarre.

I linked to a few such comics in my post on page 1 (including Crimson Dark), specifically Inhuman, Kagerou, Inverloch (not huge on action), Demonology 101 (as before), Paradigm Shift, Level and Tales of Pylea. All of those would fit your criteria. You might also wnat to try Flipside, although I'm not much of a fan of it myself.
A couple of recent discoveries that also fall into this are Haru-Sari and World Break.

Haru-Sari is set in a future world, where genetic experiments have left some humans mutated, including a sub-race known as elves. The lead character is female with some cat-like features. Groaning already? Well, so was I.
Then I read it. Believe me, this is a far, far more original and complex piece of work than you'd even begin to expect. Well worth a read, although don't expect things to be spelled out for you by the plot.

World Break is a new face in the webcomic community. With an archive smaller than Erfworld's, there isn't a hell of a lot to read of it yet but what little there is hints that this could well become one of the best fantasy webcomics out there. The artwork is truly exceptional (and in colour too) and the story looks as if it will become very interesting as it progresses, already the characters seem to be taking on a life and this does not look anything a straight good vs. evil storyline in any respect.

Anyhow, have a look over those. I'll see if I can dredge up any more comics you might like

*casts a Necromancy spell*


I recently started reading Shortpacked!, recommended by LoNC (it's pretty good, btw, though sometimes a bit weird). Then I learned that David Willis, the cartoonist, had done other webcomics in the past — and that some of the Shortpacked! characters were borrowed from his past comics.

One of his most successful old comics is the sci-fi It's Walky!. Don't let the stupid title fool you: I'm currently reading through the archives, and that stuff is highly addictive. Like OotS, it features both comedy and drama, though Willis's humor is much different from Burlew's (for example, no breaking the fourth wall). It's Walky! features superb character development, except for the xykonesque villain.

Basically, it's the story of an elite government agency that secretly fights aliens on present-day Earth. It's Walky! is the sequel of Roomies!, David Willis's first webcomic. I've not yet gotten around to reading Roomies!, but from what I gather, the everyday world of Roomies! has many links with the dark sci-fi world of It's Walky!. Many characters are present in both series.

The website of Roomies! and It's Walky! is here. The two comics are actually put together: if you go back to the start of the archives, it takes you to the first strip of Roomies!, dating from 1997. It's Walky! officially begins here.

Read it.

.

This is a different thing to write. I want to do this justice, but whenever I get enthusiastic about something, I tend just to make frantic, earnest gestures. “Go! Read!” I say, flapping my little hands. “This is brilliant!” I never actually get around to, you know, saying why you should.

I feel that way about Rice Boy, one of the best things about 2006 even if I only discovered it two days ago. This is a wonderful comic strip about a small creature who is given the duty of fulfilling a prophecy and saving the universe by a robot who made a Faustian pact with God that he would live forever so long as he found the Fulfiller. That one-sentence summary tells you absolutely nothing about Rice Boy. In fact, it makes this sweet strip sound pretty bad, that there should be a WARNING: RELIGIOUS THEMES brand seared into it. It is most certainly not, and Evan Dahm has created a work of true wonder. He describes it as starting as “an exercise in surrealism, and has evolved into a wandering psychedelic epic.” I like his words better.

Rice Boy, the titular hero of the comic appears to be a small, weak figure in the tradition of all the best fantasy. He is tiny, with neither arms nor legs. All he can do is grow plants and watch sunsets and listen to stories. The world he lives in is filled with malevolent frog-priests, bleach beasts, and one-eyed bounty hunters. Yet he is selected to be the Fulfiller by T-O-E, a robotic flawed hero in the best traditions of film noir, and he reluctantly shoulders the burden. Along the way he meets all kinds of crazy things, including a pair of soothsayers (one sees the past perfectly, one sees the future perfectly), tiny people in a jar and an arrogantly gullible prince of a tiny nation.

I have written three sentences here, trying to decide if the story moves swiftly or gently, and I cannot decide. It certainly seems swift, and I devoured the archive in what felt like a matter of moments. Whenever I return to idly flip through the electronic pages, they blur past. Yet each individual page seems gently flowing, probably a side effect of all the broad-spanning landscape views. So, I suppose the story moves. We shall leave it at that. It moves at a perfect pace, whatever it is and it carries you away in a gently bobbing currenty thing.

It would be appropriate to spend some words on the art, but I am neither an artist nor an art critic. Rice Boy’s style is perfect for what it is. Dahm writes that he deliberately keeps the process fluid, inking with a brush and allowing wobbly or too-thick lines to lend it that slightly imperfect edge. While he has a few paintings/drawings of Rice Boy and Friends in a more realistic style here and there, it would detract from the nature of the comic if that were the usual. The story is eccentric and personable, and the art perfectly matches this.

I have spent this long mechanically describing Rice Boy and have yet to say why it is wonderful! It is sweet and gentle and awesome and I loves it and now we’re getting back to my earnest gesturing again. There is exquisite characterisation, done with minimal words and gestures. Rice Boy is gentle and optimistic in a harsh world. T-O-E is bitter and aged despite his friends. Rosemary, a character we meet but briefly, is shown to be caring if easily distracted in only a few panels. The plot is not derivative, but is true to the traditions of the genre, if warped through the lens of surrealism.

Dresden Codak described Rice Boy as having “simplicity of design and understated profundity wrapped in an elegant straightforwardness makes Rice Boy a compelling and engaging read.” This makes it “possibly the best comic narrative on the internet.” He is absolutely correct.

I cannot recommend Rice Boy enough.

I'm seriously thinking about starting a webcomic.

The idea is only in its first stages of development. I don't even know what kind of webcomic I will make and what it will be about. It is still very likely that I drop the project before even starting: I often get ideas like that without pushing them very far.

I already have experience as a cartoonist: I've been drawing various comics since the age of about nine or ten (though I stopped a few years ago). Now I started practicing again, and I hope I can regain enough interest in it.

There are a few sites for wannabe cartoonists to show their work and test the waters before they create their own website. If I start at all, I will start there. But even if I do start (and as I said before, it is likely that I drop the idea before long), it will probably not be anywhere during the next two or three months. I still need to practice more, find advice and get ideas.

But most of all, I need support and encouragement.

Sounds rather desperate if you don't mind me saying so. :P I think we'd need a bit more info in order to offer either support or encouragement.

A vague "I wanna webcomic too!" desire is insufficient to gain much support right now. If you come up with ideas, or whatever, feel free to bounce 'em off us here. 'M sure we'll be reasonably supportive.*

*Except me. I am critical of everything.