To show I’m not all about the science (though it’s mostly about the science), I thought I would review the web comics I linked to on my blogroll. Go ahead, scroll all the way to the bottom. There they are. As a younger kid, I used to enjoy comics. But there was a problem, I didn’t have the money for all of them and when there was a crossover event… oh boy. So I drifted away from comic books. I still have a few, Transformers #1-42, Classic X-Men #1-90 or so. All good stuff.
But with the advent of the internet and self publishing, there’s a fair number of books and web comics that are really worth losing a week or two of productivity on.
I found out about Sluggy Freelance after reading some of John Ringo’s books. I enjoyed it for a time, but got burned out around year 8 or 9. It’s been going on a long time.
xkcd is kind of a geek classic. It’s smart, funny, meaningful, and oddly compelling… for a bunch of stick figures with no faces. If you like jokes about Fourier transforms, then you’ll enjoy it.
Wayward Sons is a true, old-fashioned comic book, just published on the net. It has a very interesting premise, if you can suspend disbelief for a few moments. Basically, what if all the old gods of history were just refugees from another dimension? And they are still here? I love fantasy and science fiction, but I can separate reality from comics.
I really don’t know why I like Girls with Slingshots so much. It’s funny in that kind of nuts way that Big Bang Theory used to be. For all the talking cactus named McPedro, to the ghostly kitty who uttersDooooooooom, it still a comic about men, women, and getting along in this weird thing we call life.
Grrl Power is a fairly new comic. It only takes a few minutes to run through the whole series so far. It is funny, it is somewhat over the top, but I like it in that classic superhero fashion. My only real complaint is the author tries to do too much in a single panel and the effect is often lost in the chaos.
Blue Milk Special is a chronological parody of the original Star Wars films. It’s got everything from an easily confused Vader who drinks too much coffee to a chain-smoking, over sexed Leia. If you like Star Wars, you’ll love this.
Surviving the World isn’t so much a web comic as a series of reflections on the oddity of life from the point of view of a geek. If you’ve ever wondered how to graph stupid actions vs one’s age, he’s got you covered.
In the saving best for last category, we have Misfile. It’s a totally original concept. For some reason, I just got hooked on it. It’s really, really good. This comic assumes that heaven exists, except some of the angels with important jobs enjoy a bit too much cannabis and accidentally misfile some folders. Unfortunately, the filing system defines the characteristics of the real thing and one girl wakes up having lost the last two years of her life… including her Harvard admission and a boy wakes up as… well… a girl. You can really emphasize with the characters and they are all really well done.
Well, I hope you enjoy one or two of these. If you do, be prepared to lose some productivity as you click next again and again.
