What is one of your favorite webcomics, and why?

[mariotunic]

A lot of people like Questionable Content and Girls With Slingshots, from what I can tell. You can describe those, sure, but do you know lesser known comics?

For this opening post I'll choose Daily Owl. I love this comic. It ran for two years and unfortunately stopped in 2010; Ben Driscoll posted his reason why on the cracked.com forum. Essentially, it was something he loved to do but became something he HAD to do.

Aside from that - Daisy Owl had a charm unique to the world he created and the characters that inhabited it. I know this is high praise, but its distinguishing appeal would occasionally remind me of Calvin & Hobbes. I don't want to continue hyping it, so here.
http://daisyowl.com/

[PrettyPrincess]

I've always liked Schlock Mercenary! Why? Chupaqueso.

[davids4250]

I like Looking for Group (especially Richard), Luci Furr's Imps, Evil, Inc. (the puns), Twilight Lady (Interesting character), and many others. WS is by far my favorite, though.

[shadowinthelight]

Of the several comics I read one of the lesser known ones is the The Fancy Adventures of Jack Cannon. The art has evolved to having a good cartoonish feel and the overall absurdity of the reality warping Hackers is entertaining. Also, the character Max Facepuncher (Max is not short for Maximillian, but Maximum) has his own Twitter feed.

Another is Mushroom Go. The artwork (save for the time another artist covered drawing duties) and sometimes the writing are amaturish but the ideas of how the author reinterprets elements from the Super Mario world are pretty interesting.

[Julie]

I have a very short list of other comics I currently follow, and a shorter list of comics that have finished that I used to follow:

Still Going
Earthsong
Girl Genius
Looking for Group
The Dreamer
The Dreamland Chronicles
Wayward Sons: Legends

Completed (all three have the same artist...the first two were also written by her)
Inverloch
The Phoenix Requiem
Dreamless

On Hiatus
Xylia Tales

I've followed other comics over the years, but for various reasons I stopped reading many of them. *shrugs* Only these have held me for any length of time. Sometimes it's the story that holds me...sometimes it's the art...and sometimes it's the evolution of the art as the artist grows (I like to see that kind of change...saw it in Inverloch and Earthsong the most).

[Jürgen A. Erhard]

The comic I'm currently most in love with is Max Overacts Completely NSFW even! Yup, it's clean as a star-whistle.

And so adorable. Funny. Smart. Sweet. Wonderful, just wonderful. And quite little-known, sadly. Oh, and when you're there you can click the "Muppet Thor" link. This got Caanan a lot of visitors. It's a 24h-comic (he didn't get to ink all pages in 24 hours, but more then half).

Yup, advertising. I'm just wishing this comic and its creator to get more exposure, because he is incredible.

Another little-known (I think) comic I adore is Sequential Art. Very well drawn, very funny, and also... more than that. Which Wapsies love, right? The arc about the Denizens. Or the one about 5C4RL37 (Scarlet) and her sisters. Which is a mild spoiler right there, sorry.

Or the arc which features Uwe'Boll, a demon. Everything he touches turns into shit.

[scantrontb]

Girl Genius
Wapsi Square
Grrl Power
Freefall
Goblins
Rich's Dr. Who (plus all his other ones)

and at least 60 more...

[mariotunic]

Of the several comics I read one of the lesser known ones is the The Fancy Adventures of Jack Cannon. The art has evolved to having a good cartoonish feel and the overall absurdity of the reality warping Hackers is entertaining. Also, the character Max Facepuncher (Max is not short for Maximillian, but Maximum) has his own Twitter feed.

Another is Mushroom Go. The artwork (save for the time another artist covered drawing duties) and sometimes the writing are amaturish but the ideas of how the author reinterprets elements from the Super Mario world are pretty interesting.

I got through Jack Cannon, thanks for mentioning! That was fun to read through. As far as action goes, I loved http://www.airshipentertainment.com/buck.html. Same maker(s?) of Girl Genius, it's a great comic with intriguing plots and action that starts off with old-school comic strip art, but gradually forms into its own skin.

Man, I've got a lot of comics here to look up.

[Lee M]

Michael Stearns' Dawn of Time is a lot of fun, even though it only ran for three years, July 2008-2011, and 305 strips. It's the story of a crazy cavegirl and her adventures with dinosaurs, time travellers, and even the Grim Reapers. Both of them. (It makes sense in context.) The link is to the first strip.

Another strip that's also quite entertaining but definitely not safe for work is Ed Kline and Kishma Danielle's Nightshade, the Merry Widow on drunkduck. I'm not posting a direct link in case the NSFW content gets me into trouble, but if you're curious just go to the Duck and do a search. I could describe it facetiously as "A Bug's Sex Life", but that really wouldn't do it justice. It's about a world called Cyeatea, lovingly rendered in CG, which is inhabited by genetically-modified human/insect and human/arachnid species, all of which follow their arthropod ancestors' predator/prey relationships but subvert the deadlier aspects into a kind of sexual ritual. That's right, a world where everybody makes love, not war!

[Leak]

Well, besides the obvious(?) (Girls With Slingshots, Girl Genius, Sequential Art, Sinfest, Xkcd, ...) some of the probably lesser known webcomics I read regularly are

• Modest Medusa
• Freefall
• Bear Nuts
• Spinnerette
• Zebra Girl
• Subnormality
• Flaky Pastry
• The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats
• Edmund Finney's Quest To Find The Meaning Of Life
• Romantically Apocalyptic

plus the usual 50+ more...

[MerchManDan]

Besides the afore-mentioned QC, LFG, Spinnerette, Sinfest & Flaky Pastry, I regularly read:

Weregeek
Diesel Sweeties
Menage a 3
Octopus Pie

[Atomic]

I waited a while to see which of my regulars would show up, and they certainly have! Since nobody linked Sinfest, done.

My collection is based on delightful storytelling and good art, and especially both. But for several, the simple art amplifies the story. So...

• Gunnerkrigg Court (surprised nobody had mentioned this before)
  Quantum Vibe (sci-fi adventure)
  The Non-Adventures of Wonderella (Herioine/Valley girl -- oh dear!)
  Atland (sword/sorcery)
  Skin Horse (Science Friction! Lots of friction! From the "Narbonic" team)
  Kukuburi (sci-fi adventure)
  Tune (sci-fi -ish)
  Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic (Wild take on D&D/Adventure. Sometimes NSFW-ish due to nipples)
  Order of the Stick (D&D via delightful psychosis)

And, of course, the astounding:

• Olgaf - Hilarious, sometimes NSFW take on RPG/Medieval adventuing

For those with overwhelming curiosity about Olgaf but don't want to risk it, try Princess or Fountain of Doubt. Both SFW. Really. I promise!

Finally, a series that really got me back into writing and cartooning, Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan, (sometimes NSFW) Medieval adventure set about 1000 A.D. Currently on Hiatus as the author reworks some of his pages. The tale that did it for me was The Rite of Serfdom. It's well into the series, but stands alone well. A good place to start.

[waldosan]

there's the obvious ones;

girl genius
dominic-deegan
drowtales
gunnerkrigg court
yosh saga
xkcd
archipelago comic
dresden codak
cad-comic a good stand over from when i was but a wee boy
exterminateus now
questionablecontent
2kinds
looking for group
original life and better days before that
DMFA of course
mystic rev
megatokyo since 2005 ish
most of the fellows and gals at the katbox
vg cats back when it updated semi-reliably
blip comic not as known but amazingly good, doesn't update as much now because the artist got hurt somehow.
wapsi square of course
wasted talent since she was still talking about college
sam and fuzzy
sandra and woo and it's sister comic "gaia"
for the wicked: very happy it's trying to come back
no need for bushido: sad to see it go
three panel soul
penny-arcade

and a few of the lesser known:

the institute of metaphysics: this is a comic about a college full of various mythical beings, i started reading it when it was relatively young but i don't check it often so i read it's very distant updates in spurts.

derideal.com: this one is special to me though i haven't been following it like i want to, back when it first started the author was thinking about what he wanted to do with his life, his dad wanted him to go to college for med school or something and he wanted to be a mechanic or an artist or something like that. he happened to be on an irc client built in to his comic's site one night and i got to talk one on one with him and his broken English, he talked about how he wanted to do something that he wanted to do that wasn't what his dad wanted him to do, this actually reverberated with me at the time because i was a teenager and a lot more stupid than i am now. anyways he talked more about it and i left him the advice that it was his life and he should live it the way he wanted to but to be ready for the consequences of it. apparently he listened to my advice because last i knew the comic was still around and part of doing what his dad said meant forgetting about the comic, though it might have ended now.

time to go read it HUZZAH!

[waldosan]

oh and awkward zombie and dr mcninja!

[zachariah]

Tales of the Quester
Girl Genuis
Wapsi Square
Misfile
The Whiteboard
Kevin and Kell
PS238
Stone Soup
Sequential Art
GPF
9 Chickweed Lane

[jwhouk]

• Agnus Day - The Lectionary Comic
• Atomic Laundromat by Armando Valenzuela
• Candi Comics by Starline Hodge
• Dork Tower by John Kovalic
• The Dreamland Chronicles by Scott Christian Sava
• Evil Inc. by Brad Guigar
• Girl Genius by Phil & Kaja Foglio
• Girls With Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto
• Insert Image by Wes Molebash
• Pibgorn at GoComics by Brooke McEldowney
• PvPonline.com by Scott Kurtz
• Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques
• Real Life Comics - The Online Comic by Greg Dean
• Sequential Art by Phillip M. Jackson
• Sheldon Comics and DRIVE by Dave Kellett
• Times Like This by Thomas Overbeck
• The Whiteboard (courtesy of Doc's Paintball Shop)
• XKCD by Randall Munroe

[alj_ws]

Schlock mercenary
Kevin & Kell
Safe havens
Evil Inc.
Sluggy freelance
CRFH
Precocious
Girl Genius
GPF
A Girl and her Fed
Malaak

the last one is very good (a lebanon superhero !) and deal with supernatural
Quite irregular and with long hiatus tough

[Julie]

I just realized that all of us except Fairportfan failed the objective on this thread... What is one of your favorite comics and why? Oh well! We're just overzealous fans.

[Fairportfan]

I just realized that all of us except Fairportfan failed the objective on this thread... What is one of your favorite comics and why? Oh well! We're just overzealous fans.

Me? I don't see anything from me.

Yet.

Heh.

[Fairportfan]

Okay. Here's a bunch.

In no particular order (more or less alphabetic ... but don't count on it too much.)

Datachasers: Manymany years in the future, recurrent wars have rendered Earth almost uninhabitable. Then the Ais pulled a reverse Skynet and made the Humans stop fighting. There are three city (states) on the American continent, all of them more-or-less dependent on AIs. The whole thing begins when the daughter of the technocrat who keeps the infrastructure of one city is kidnapped on a solo trip to one of the other cities. Dolly (an early-model android who has been the family's bodyguard and nursemaid/governess for many years) has her consciousness transferred into a new body that is better than anything else previous (and indistinguishable from a true human by any but the most precise tests) and sets out to rescue the girl. That's the central thread, but the author has at least two or three other balls in the air at any given moment.

Luna Star: Sort of a prequel to the world of Datachasers. Same history, set a few hundred years earlier, before the wars got completely out of hand. Galina Kotko is the sole human(?) survivor of a Russian Moon base whose personnel are wiped out in some sort of (apparently) internal strife. With the help of a snarky robodoc and an earnest but dense maintenance robot, she manages to make it to an American base. Then things start getting ... complicated.

Misfile - so there's this slacker angel who has an important-sounding but essentially meaningless job in the Celestial Filing System. (Well, he's Gabriel's son; gotta give him something to do.) One day his supervisor comes in and catches him toking up on the job. That's bad enough, but he's got some files disarrayed. There are two loose pages on the floor that he kicks behind a cabinet, and a file sitting on the desk that he just crams into a drawer at random while nobody's looking. Unfortunately, the two pages on the floor were the Junior and Senior high school of a brilliant but somewhat shy girl - including her acceptance to Harvard. Since the pages are no longer in her file? The years are gone, she's two years younger, and nobody but her remembers she ever lived those years. Well, except for Rumisiel and one other. The file in the wrong cabinet belongs to a boy just about to start his Senior year, who's a street racer. But it went into the "Girl" cabinet. Suddenly, he's a her, and that's what the entire world remembers for "her" whole life. So Ash (the racer), Emily (the no-longer-Harvard-bound girl) and Rumisiel (the angel) Have to figure out how to resolve this before any of his bosses notice and "solve" it in a way that nobody will like...

Namesake -

From the "About" page: Namesake is the story of Emma Crewe, a woman who discovers she can visit other worlds. She finds out that these are places she already knows – fantasy and fairy lands made famous through the spoken word, literature and cinema. Her power as a Namesake forces her to act as a protagonist in these familiar stories as she figures out how to get home. But as she travels, she discovers that those controlling her story have their own selfish goals in mind – and her fate is the key to everyone's happy ending.

Footloose - Keti is a young woman whose heritage is half were wolf, one-quarter human and one-quarter nymph. Her mother and honorary "aunt" (much more than she seems, of course) know that she suffers from Primary Protagonist Syndrome, The fae know that they live in a Narrative (they're Genre Savvy) - and they know that the Narrative will warp around people with PPS. SO Keti is taken to Faerie to Princess Flibbage's Dojo, to learn how to control her PPS. There she is enrolled in the Kung Shoe class. Yes - hitting with and throwing shoes. Other curricula include Indiscriminate Whacking and Marketable Magic (which has all the Magical Girls no team would have on a bet ... plus Magical Transvestite Cherry, who everyone assumes is gay. He's not - but he isn't telling anyone because he gets to use the girls' locker room.

Too Much Information Likely NSFW) - Ace is an eighteen-year-old computer geek. His mother catches him camping the rune in some MMORPG and kicks him out of the house. He winds up sharing a house with Carly (who's Japanese born, and, as we later find out. banned from entering France because of family connections back in Okinawa) the receptionist at his uncle's company (where Ace is the IT department) and Rocky, a six-foot-seven bodybuilder. Except he hadn't realised that Carly's real name is Carl Lee, and "she" is a transvestite, or that Rocky's real name is "Roxanne" and she's a flat-chested woman. Then the ghost shows up, Ace finally finds out who his father was, a nurse/exotic dancer and a sexy female cop become part of the cast (not necessarily in that order)... and then it gets weird.

Code Name: Hunter - In an alternate universe where anthropmorphic characters are the "people", a near-miss at St Paul's during the Blitz broke a stained-glass window that was a seal keeping magic out of the natural word. The Crown Princess organises a special secret force, that reports directly to her, to protect Britain from magical menaces. The main protagonist is "Hunter", a mouse who is one of RCSI's top agents. It's fun.

Gregor Comics - What if the Hulk were grey, and smart, and had a lifetime pass to Disneyland?

Grrl Power - "A webcomic about superheroines." Yeah. "The Pacific Ocean - "A small body of slightly salty water." On-site description:

Grrl Power is a comic about a crazy nerdette that becomes a superheroine. Humor, action, cheesecake, beefcake, 'splosions, and maybe some drama. Possibly ninjas. Rated PG-13 for violence and gratuitous cheesecake (and beefcake) Rated R for language. Seriously, Sydney has a filthy mouth

.

Guilded Age - Fantasy comic that resembles an MMORPG. Very Closely. (By which i do not mean that the comic is based on an MMORPG.)

The Devil's Panties ("It's not Satanic Porn!") - Atlanta's own Jennie Breeden's twisted take on something that sort of resembles her own life.

I Dream of a Jeannie Bottle (Same author as "Sailor Sun": the art is adequate, and the author is Very Lysdexic ... but the silliness is sublime) - sexist guy finds bottle that looks amazingly like the one that Barbara Eden came out of. Opens it. Becomes sexy blonde genie bound to the bottle. Hilarity Ensues.

SailorSun.org - "See the backstage of the Webcomics Industry" - Webcomics are made by studios that employ actors (rather like "Roger Rabbit") Young Canadian actor Brad Smith fails to read the Fine Print, and winds up transformed into Bay Smith, a hyper-sexy actress. And she has a daughter who's only a couple of years younger than she is herself. And then the studio goes out of business. And then things get strange.

Mysteries of the Arcana (Hasn't updated since early June, but will richly reward an archive binge) - AS the story opens, Theresa (roughly eighteen, very much a tomboy and quite comfortable with guns) is symbolically brung her life - a scrapbook - and heading deep into an abandoned subway tunnel to commit suicide. Having been raised Catholic, she knows that she will go to Hell, but living is worse. And then she comes upon a fight between a killer robot and a beautiful elf girl in buckskin pants. Intervening, she manages to save the girl, but then finds herself shanghaied into a magical universe.

Alice! (Died years ago - archive is still on line - again, well worth a binge) - story of a Canadian middle-schooler with (A) an overactive imagination and (B) an apparent case of PPS (see: Footloose, above). Alice and her best friend Dot Get Into Stuff. [And the author is apparently going to revive it - the first new strip in years, i just discovered, was posted yesterday (15 August 12)!]

Punch an' Pie - Sequel to earlier comic, Queen of Wands, featuring secondary characters from that strip. Angela, one of the main chaacters is referenced on the TVTropes page titled "Transparent Closet". She says of her friends: "They knew before I did. There's nothing like a loud chorus of 'Christ, FINALLY' to take the wind out of your sails."

Quiltbag - Sequel to Pennie & Aggie. Title is an acronym for "Queer/Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender, Bisexual, Asexual, Gay." I like it, but wouldn't attempt to describe it.

Sister Claire - Originally subtitled "Pregnant Nun - Holy Crap!" Seriously silly. Another one i wouldn't attempt to describe - it has Nun Fu, witches, a blue-skinned soi-disant angel named Gabrielle ...and then there's the silly stuff. Often Very Funny.

Sombulus - I just posted a long piece about this one, which i just found last night, over at the Comfy Couch.

Spare Keys for Strange Doors - In Britain, the Lifeboat Service is mostly-volunteer, funded through public donations. Apparently the Brit approach to Men in Black-type operations is similar. The adventures of one pair of agents.

Sunset Grill = The titular bar & grill is in a far-future analog of the seamier parts of New Orleans, and is run by two veterans - a legless human and his partner/girlfriend, who is a "Sunlander" - a green-skinned artificially-created subrace of humanity, bred to live and work in extreme conditions and the story's analog of blacks. The story begins with a young and somewhat naive "Blue Boy" (an Imperial Army trooper) wandering into the Grill without realising what he was getting into. Rather like Datachasers (see above), the story grew branches and twists and turns an is close to what TVTropes describes as a "Kudzu Plot". But it's very tasty kudzu.

Widdershins - Widdershins is a university city in an alternate-universe Victorian England where magic works. Which is what the University specialises in teaching. However, the closest we've come to the University itself is a young wizard who was Sent Down because he developed what can only be called involuntary magical kleptomania. Without any intent on his part, his magic keeps stealing small objects from people around him. Which leads to Big Trouble for him and a female Sherlock Holmes analog when he accidentally steals the magical bracelet that is the mark of the Thief King from said Thief King, Macavity (yes, i know), as Macavity picks his pocket. As with so many of my favourites, that's the least outrageous aspect of the story... (By the same author as the completed {and recommended} fantasy comic, Darken.)

Zortic - Zortic is a little green alien in a universe obsessed with Earth pop culture. He goes on a TV trivia quiz show and wins the top prize ... a Consolation-class starship. ("That's it?" "Yep - it's the entire prize!") Well, actually, he wins a weekend at a famous resort with actress Zoie Zolster (she has purple skin), portrayer of Suzie Starstress, sidekick to action hero Blast Rocketron in a series of popular films ... who's just finished shooting the first "Suzie Starstress feature. She's a snob and a bit of a bitch, but eventually comes to see that Zortic is a Good Guy. She also learns an important lesson that Harry Caine could have warned her about - never break up with your producer before your film is edited and in release. And so she and Zortic (and engineer/general crew Splink) are off on adventures galore. (There was an earlier series oz Zortic - same characters, similar elements - that was more parody and less narrative; Zortic and Zoie were co-workers at a fast-food joint before he won the ship. The series tagline was "If parody has a name, it must be Zortic!" That series is available online beginning here...

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Whoa. I talk a lot...