On Webcomics.

I'm going to put this straight out there; I really, really like comics. Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware of the implications of that statement. I'm also exactly the sort of person that has contemplated getting a Superman tattoo and can name about fifteen Green Lanterns. But despite the evidence, it's not the superhero genre I fell in love with. It's the format of the comic itself. All art tells a story - comics just take that fact literally. Raised on the Beano and the Spider-Man cartoons of the early nineties, I've since graduated to Watchmen and Maus. The classics. Truly great literature, coated in a sugary shell for our reading pleasure.

A few years ago I came across a gaming website that hosted a comic, Ctrl-Alt-Del (webcomic fans, please don't judge me. I was young and naive, but more on that later). Serialised and funny like a newspaper comic strip, the humour was much more adult and it told an ongoing story like a regular issue. It was also free, which really helped. I started going back to the site every day for a month, scraping the last few comics from the bottom of the archive barrel. A quick bit of digging revealed an entire community of net-famous comic writers, all keeping themselves afloat with their creations. From anthropomorphic shapes to stick-figures, ninjas to dinosaurs (sometimes both in one comic) the level of talent in both art and writing swung wildly from one extreme to the other. After extensive research I soon found a little group of absolute gems to keep up with. Some creators were using their comics as their sole means of income, adding entrepeneur to their list of talents. They all seemed very genial and funny people, giving their contemporaries a leg-up or a shout-out when needed. It was great. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays became a lot more interesting.

Fast-forward to present day, and most of my favourites are still going. I abandoned Ctrl-Alt-Del after the writer, Tim Buckley, infamously introduced a very serious, very out-of-place miscarrage storyline into his zany gaming comic. Serious stuff certainly has a place, but not in a comic aimed squarely at short-burst gamers looking for a cheap laugh. I read XKCD for a long time, but some of the more advanced maths jokes went straight over my head and I didn't appreciated Randall Monroe, the former NASA worker who writes the thing, giving me homework.

I do, however, have a few favourites that I think more people should read. A Softer World is great, as is the DC Comics spinoff A Softer DCU. It doesn't tell a story, but if it did it would be a tale of a caring, sensitive, bitterly ironic mass-murderer. The humour is very black and more then a little shocking, but I'm assuming that's part of the fun. The very funny Circle Versus Square is sadly no longer running, but the archive is definately worth looking at. Dr McNinja is much more in the format of a traditional superhero comic, while keeping the serialised funnies intact. As expected, it chronicles the events of a Doctor who is also a ninja (his PHD hangs just above his Katana). Cyanide and Happiness is terrific, providing your sense of humour is as disgusting as mine. Dinosaur Comics is the other biggee; full of brilliantly whimsical, gentle humour. It's recognisably Canadian in it's good-natured-ness.

If there's one comic I follow religiously, it's Questionable Content. At first, it seemed remarkably pretentious; the never-ending tale of a group of good-looking indie rockers, updated five days a week. I hated it. I still hated it ten strips into it. Fifty strips later I was absolutely hooked. Once the comic stopped relying on music jokes, the characters work very hard to win the reader over. And they are great characters; some of the funniest moments in the comic come from their established little idiosyncrasies.

I've really invested in this little microcosm of creativity. That's not to say every webcomic is a good one; for every Dinosaur Comics, there are hundreds of identikit turds bobbing around the toilet bowl of the web. Dodge the floaters by following the list above, and take some time to peruse a couple of these gems. You won't regret it.