Kuro5hin has a semi-comprehensive article that reviews several prominent webcomics. While I do not agree with all of the author's ratings, the article is worth checking out nonetheless. Inevitably, of course, it misses several excellent webcomics (there are just... too... many of them !), so I might as well add some blurbs for them below.
Before posting all these links, I should mention that most of these webcomics have a continuous story; this means that you will have to read them from the very beginning in order to understand anything. You have been warned.
Schlock Mercenary: Sort of like Reservour Dogs meets O'Henry meets hard SF in the future. This is a very funny comic in a satisfying kind of way: most of the humor is derived from the neat, mind-twisting pranks that the characters pull on each other. Sometimes, the pranks end up destroying entire planets. And, of course, there's Schlock the amorph who looks like a pile of dog doo-doo with a plasma cannon... The art is not that great, but the story makes up for it. 5 stars.
Errant Story: A fantasy (well... sort of) comic about Meji, a psychotic half-elven mage girl on a quest for the ultimate power just so that she can finish her school project and graduate from the mage college. I started reading the comic regularly when I saw one of the supporting characters call Meji a "Kefka wannabe". The art is really good, but the story and humor so far have not been as memorable as other comics. 4 Stars.
Nukees: The life and times of Gav, a megalomaniacal nuclear engineering major at U.C. Berkeley. Giant nuclear-powered robotic ants, psychotic girlfriends, homicidal rogue AIs, and lots of beer. The fact that everything the comic says about Berkeley is true is just icing on the cake, though I suppose some of the jokes have a certain "you had to be there" feel to them -- non-Berkeley graduates might not get them. Also, it feels as though the comic has been slowing down lately; IMO, it was really interesting in the beginning, but has been declining a bit lately. 3 stars, 4 stars if you're a former Berkeley student like me.
Freefall: The story of Sam Starfall, a hideous alien thing in a non-threatening-looking environment suit, and his quest to cheat everyone else out of their money, material goods, and dignity. A few panels in, Sam steals Florence -- a pathologically honest and moral engineer -- because he needs his ship fixed, and he is obviously not going to actually pay for it. His naive robot sidekick Helix persists in calling Florence "Doggy !!!" because she is a Bowman's Wolf, a tailor-made bioengineered species. This comic is similar in feel to Schlock Mercenary, only without all the random violence. 3 stars, because I feel as though it has been slowing down lately, as well.
Acid Reflux: An excellent comic about God, a litte girl deity who inherits the universe from her teenaged (well... by divine standards) older sister. God's sister neglected the universe for 1000 years because she got bored with it, and besides her parents gave her a new one. God is eager to fix things and make Irving (that's the Universe's name) all better, but, being a young child who is only a millenium old, she is not very good at it. God manages to acidentally fall into Erwin, where she meets up with Anathus the shy mage and Roxie the raging Amazon, who are on the run from The Banana Slug Liberation Front. The entire comic is very preposterous and very funny; it also contains multiple parodies of anime, various religions, movies, etc. -- in fact, it feels somewhat like The Fifth Element, only in fantasy setting. For example, one of the major parts of the comic is an extended Fight Club parody, which is actually integrated into the story... The comic is worth reading just for that. Unfortunately, it appears as though the author has moved on to other things, and the comic will never be updated again, which is a crying shame. 5 stars nonetheless.
Well, this should be enough for now... I would type more blurbs, but I have some webcomics to read.
Posted by metabug at 2003/06/26 08:18 | TrackBack (0) | Categories: Webcomic