Webcomic Deer Rectory

Originally posted by a deleted user

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Webcomics You Should Check Out, Maybe :

Paranatural https://paranatural.net/
Nimona https://gingerhaze.com/nimona/comic/page-1
Helvetica https://helvetica.jnwiedle.com/2011/06/2...it-begins/
Cucumber Quest https://cucumber.gigidigi.com/
Johnny Wander https://www.johnnywander.com/
Monster Pulse  https://www.monster-pulse.com/
Gunnerkrigg https://www.gunnerkrigg.com
Rice boy https://www.rice-boy.com/
what birds know https://fribergthorelli.com/wbk/
jailbird https://an.oddlookingbird.com/archive/page-1/
jaybird https://forums.somethingawful.com/showth...genumber=1
copper https://www.boltcity.com/copper/
el goonish shive https://www.egscomics.com/
Romantically Apocalyptic https://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/
Superego https://mspfanventures.com/?adv=275
Daddy Long Legs https://daddylonglegs.smackjeeves.com/comics/
Ava's Demon https://www.avasdemon.com/
Witch and Knight https://www.witchandknight.com/
the bouletcorp https://english.bouletcorp.com/
Darkness https://english.bouletcorp.com/2012/02/01/darkness/
Powernap https://www.powernapcomic.com/d/20110617.html
Malky Dungeon https://malkydungeon.com/wordpress/?p=7
Cat and Girl https://catandgirl.com/
Nedroid https://nedroid.com/
An American Elf https://www.americanelf.com/comics
Beeserker https://www.beeserker.com/comics/the-scienceman/
Dinosaur Comics https://qwantz.com/index.php
My Cardboard Life https://mycardboardlife.com/1601
Gunshow https://gunshowcomic.com/ NSFW
Forming https://jessemoynihan.com/?p=11 NSFW
Three Word Phrase https://threewordphrase.com/ NSFW
Eegra https://www.eegra.com/show/sub/do/browse...omics/id/4 NSFW



Q: What is a whebcomic?

A: A "web comic" is a piece of arted fiction that a human being, intelligent animal or markov chain creates in order to create humors, tell a compelling story, tell a mundane story, lonelily ramble to oneself, reinforce a seriously flawed worldview, compensate for personal failings, stick it to a person or group that made you feel bad that one time, build a following of likewise-flawed people, or create a vehicle ith which to sell shirts that make aimless suburbanites feel a part of some kind of culture.  There's an ample abundance of these lovely little chippies out there waiting to be discovered.  Though, like everything else on the internet, most of it is obnoxious dreck. Every gold nugget is separated by miles in an endless field of wormy, shitty, murder-victims'-bones-filled dirt.

In this thread, maybe we can discuss some of them?  I hope the list in this OP can help people find new webcomics of interest.  Once enough opinions about how to describe a webcomic have been gathered, a link to it can be added to the OP!  Talk about how a webcomic makes you feel, what it's about (don't spoil too much), what parts you like and don't like, and its general quality on a sliding scale.  Hopefully, we can list a lot of them!

If a comic is discussed and a consensus of badness is reached, its name will be locked into The Shame Cellar below, where it shall receive no link; only a description of what it has done to deserve such a fate.

The Shame Cellar

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stupid pontification removed

Oh boy! Webcomics! :D

I've already plugged Nimona before on this forum, but I'll do it again now that there's a proper thread and everything.

Nimona is a webcomic about a shapeshifter with dreams of supervillainy, and to this end convinces Lord Ballister Blackheart, the biggest Big Bad of them all, to take her on as a sidekick (squire?). The artwork is cute and expressive, and the anachronisms are pretty charming. (For example, most people are wearing medieval armour and chainmail, but TVs and fridges are apparently commonplace.)

The characters are excellent. The main character is bloodthirsty and generally brilliant, while the relationship between Lord Blackheart and Sir Goldenloin (not a misspelling) is actually pretty touching. (Bro-foes? Foe-bros? There's a term to be coined around her somewhere.)

Basically Nimona is great and I love it (and the artist is likewise awesome, her tumblr is here) and the only thing that makes me sad is that it isn't very long yet. (Although Chapter Four just wrapped up, with an ominous cliffhanger to boot.) Fortunately updates are fairly frequent.


Another lovely comic that I've recently discovered is Helvetica. The main problem with Helvetica is that it updates slowly and is only 50 pages long.

On the plus side, this is a webcomic about adorable skeletons with absolutely gorgeous art. The premise is that there is an afterlife, which isn't that much different from life, all things considered. Although everyone is a skeleton, which leads to a lot of situations where it's best to not think too hard about how people do the things they do. (i.e, eating, smoking, blushing, filling out clothes, etc.) The story follows Helvetica, who has recently died and wants to know who he was previously, even though nobody can remember their lives. Not much has happened, but it's well written and the characters are interesting. It's also got the most appealing take on the afterlife I think I've ever seen.

Oooh can we put everything I've had beef with forever in the Shame Cellar, regardless of its actual merits as a story or a webcomic or a collection of arts or what have you?

No? I agree with Whoosh's assessments of Helvetica and Nimona and personally pimp Monster Pulse for kooky organ monsters and the delightfully characterised children to which they're attached. The kids act like actual kids might do in a situation like the one they're in!

(Apologies if that was a poor recommend; it's 4.30 in the morning and I'm pretty beat).

Why isnt homestuck already in the shame cellar

Probably because a not-insignificant number of Eagle Timers are still Homestuck fans.

Cucumber Quest is a comic that has Liquus in it which automatically makes it twice as good as all of the other comics here.

On a more serious note, it is a homage to the sort of adventure taken in the Paper Mario and Kirby games, where a hero, this one being reluctant, goes across the land in search of various Things to beat up Bad Guys and save the word from an Evil. The art style is amazing and cute, the characters are funny and great, and I have made a lot of avatars from the images in the comic.

Someday Solaris will turn into a rabbit kid for real.
I nominate Johnny Wander. It is good. I enjoy it. Delicious slices of life.

Might as well get gunnerkrigg out of the way.

I say homestuck should be in it's own category, not because "IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN TERRIBLE LMFAO" but because it is literally it's own thing. It's not a simple webcomic anymore, it's like a social network, an american idol "see what lucky member of the fandom will get the spotlight now" kind of contest. It's unfair to compare it to the more traditional, humble webcomics.

Whaaat people already put up Nimona and Helvetica and Johnny Wander shit what am I supposed to suggest now.

OH I KNOW.

RICE BOY.

Fantasy adventure with odd creatures and a world that feels rather rich and like it has an actual history and background and shit. 'Sgood. I will stop now because I have a headache.

I have to go out now but I'm going to drop What Birds Know in here and recommend that everyone reads it because its amazing and messed up and it's current hiatus is killing me D:

I'm always one to appreciate a little ingenuity in interactivity and prequel has been doing a pretty solid job of that as of late.

Perhaps it's in the delivery? A few pages a day doesn't seem like much, and you can keep writing it off as 'nothing's happened really, but it's only a few pages' deal. And before you know it...this.

To stay on topic, here's one of my favorites: El Goonish Shive. And no, it isn't just because genderies.

They may be sincere in their appreciation of the webcomic but some of those are pretty clearly untrue, sincerity doesn't necessarily breed understanding
One of them in fact (they were unable to guess why someone might include recaps) doesn't even seem to be about the webcomic at all? It just describes the person you were talking to...

It's just... I'm pretty sure people have tried to say it more subtley than I'm going to but I'd personally rather not turn this topic into "Homestuck General Discussion" because that's what is going to happen if we continue down this road.

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We've already covered a good deal of what I read and what I plan to read (I've had Rice Boy bookmarked for a good several months and not got around to the archive yet) but Romantically Apocalyptic is always worth a look if only for their interesting style of comic creation (I'm reasonably certain most of the human characters are created through photomanipulation rather than straight drawing) and its wonderful set pieces.
As the title might suggest it's set after the end of the world, though it's a comedy comic rather than anything even slightly serious.

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Ava's Demon I was linked to recently through Tumblr and is very pretty in a more traditional sense. Can't say I personally particularly enjoy the "one panel at a time, no navigation bar" approach but the actual comic is nice. It's still pretty close to the beginning of the story but the main character is possessed and everyone seems to live in space.

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I always loved Daddy Long Legs for the characters and also because it was drawn by my "uses only MSPaint" idols but it's stopped updating now :(
It's about anthromorphised spiders, if you hadn't guessed.

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Oh and of course there's Superego but if you weren't already reading that there's clearly something wrong with you.

Homestuck is oversold, but not a bad product. Nor would I say it's a great product, but it certainly doesn't deserve to be officially shut into the shame cellar by the Official Eagle-Time Counsel or whatever that category means.

Homestuck is oversold, but not a bad product. Nor would I say it's a great product, but it certainly doesn't deserve to be officially shut into the shame cellar by the Official Eagle-Time Counsel or whatever that category means.

Could you explain why though? There are a lot of great arguments as to why Homestuck is flawed from a storytelling perspective on a lot of different levels, both in what it's doing and how it's doing it, so I'm interested in seeing the positive side of it.

Homestuck is good at what it is trying to do, which is get people to read it and want to have others read it. Most of it is because of the structure, ideas, and the bait-and-switch.

The rest of this is pretty disorganized, some of it is lifted from things wheats said, and it isn't the best defense.

The updating schedule is easy to digest, assuming you are a serial reader, and the visuals are good. Most of the characters are pretty blank, but that is intentional, to let you project things on to them. The character design is easy to understand and emulate, (the most complex character that there was, was probably Jack Noir when he had the wings and tentacles, and most of that was just an all black dude), and if you put all of the characters in a line, but only differentiated them by what colors go where you would be able to tell them apart. You have a face, a hair, a shirt, a pants, a symbol, and whatever more you want to add. Look at how easy it is.

The main selling point of it in terms of story is the start. There are so many places that it can go from the beginning and that leads to wanting more and that leads to spending some odd hours or days reading a thing that you are less than willing to just forget about given the investment.

The Sburb/troll things are, as the mspafa and trollslum very much show us, literally made to be emulated. You are supposed to look at this adventure starring the boy with glasses and you are supposed to go, 'i should do something like that with my friends that would be cool.' To that end we've got a number of things that reflect on the players of the game that you want to have for yourself! What is my land? What is my title? What are my consorts? These are all questions that the story makes you ask!

The way that these things are introduced and explained, slowly over the course of the whole thing, is a good tactic for keeping you reading and junk, if Andrew just released a big book on how to Sburb i'd probably just read that instead of the comic, but at this point, I've spent so much time with it, and I have so many people who'd want to talk to me about it, that I'd read it till it ends.

There's other stuff, some way more positive probably, but meh.

Also, despite my pessimisming, I wouldn't call Hamsteak the worst thing I've ever read, although I might call it the worst out of the things i read? I don't luv it, but I don't really dislike it that much.

Witch and Knight is a fun little comic about a witch and a knight who go on cool adventures and do cool things in a world that is pretty nice and silly. It is very pleasant and cute.

I'm not sure what debate you want to have here. You brought up several story related problems with homestuck,and in many ways I agree with you. However as pointed out by Solaris the narrative quality of homestuck is not really the reason people read it. People can easily read and enjoy it and that alone is enough reason to keep it out of our StayAwayCellar. Any discussion about other aspects of the story is tangential .

Edit: Okay so I re-read Wheat's opening post and saw that this was a Webcomic Disscussion Thread and not just a link to commonly enjoyed webcomics, hence my initial dismissal of your complaints.

While, like I said, I generally agree with you, lets talk about your HS points, in the spoilers below.

HOWMESTWAK BALLOW

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Less than 50%" of the 5000+ pages so far have advanced the story

Talking about pagecount in HS isn't really a fair comparision for other mediums. Many pages are single panel events, in long series of other single panel events. A new page could consist simply of a slightly more pixilated, zoomed in version of a previous panel. Using "pages" in homestuck as the traditional means for story volume or size doesn't really apply.

I think a more appropriate description of the pacing in homestuck would be "sporadic", for instance, a page which moves the plot forward could be as simple as "John > go downstairs", and you can have dozens of those tiny plot advancements in a row with no serious plot-jump. Then, up pops a flash movie and suddenly everybody is dying and the plot is racing at an almost uncomfortable speed.

The motive of the primary antagonist is "yet to be revealed" after 5000+ pages.

Yes, but this fits in with the nature of the story. Homestuck characters are generally more simplistic than other characters. Creating a well-flushed out villian whose primary motive extends beyond just "likes to make people suffer" isn't something you'd find in homestuck and the typical homestuck characterization wouldn't work in a multi-year story. There needs to be an element of mystery.

This element of mystery has been pervasive throughout the webcomic's history. "What does John's friend look like?", "Who are these aliens bothering them?", "What does each prototyping look like?", "What is the scratch", "What does Lord English look like?"

There is always a mystery yet to be revealed, and each one tends to be "bigger" in some way. With that pattern it makes sense that details about Homestucks Big Bad would be withheld until much later in the story.

The motive given for the secondary antagonist is he is a bad guy.

I think this one probably the biggest oversimplification of the bunch. Jack is established as a character who is prone to violence, hates the hierarchy in place above him, but more than anything is ambitious. When he gets his power-up, the first thing he does is attack the leaders of his hierarchy, while killing anyone in his way. When he gets even more capabilities, he then tries to destroy the members of the even larger, universe-building hiearchy. When he "escapes" that universe, he finds himself trapped in yet another iteration and begins to tear that one down as well.

Those three characteristics motivate every iteration of Jack. In trollverse, he strikes up a deal based on being able to tear down the hierarchy, then leaves to go establish his own. In old-kid verse, the powers that be let him try and cheat the system by murdering those who represent the larger universe-building group. He enjoys that.

The story advances the characters. Yes, you read that correctly.

I'd say this seems true. The problem here is that the "Universe" is as much a character as any other in homestuck verse. It has motives and characteristics which it uses to advance the plot towards its own means. Terms like "paradox-space" and "Skiaia" are often talked about by other characters as if they were active individuals. "Skiaia will protect itself." "paradox-space won't allow it". When a plot advancement occurs that isn't driven by one of the walking breathing characters, it's because of some driving force of the "universe" character.

None of the characters have undergone any sort of development or changed after 5000+ pages. Their arcs are "in progress".

False. i.e. Rose

When asked why Andrew Hussie includes regular recaps since nobody they knew had trouble understanding the story, they did not know and could not guess.

Okay, I admit. There were some story points that were difficult for me to understand until I went and actually read through the "recap". I don't recall the exact point, but I think it had something to do with something implied in a movie sequence but not fully expounded on.

John Egbert is a "useless" "decoy protagonist", has no motive or personality, and is just "along for the ride". His entire purpose for existing is to produce and receive dialog that is not relevant to the plot in any way. The motives of the other protagonists are to avoid the dickery of the antagonists, which they have no motivation for.

I like the term "decoy protagonist". I sort of feel that hussie will shoe-horn in some way for John to be the hero at the end of the day, but he really hasn't done that so far. Now saying his entire purpose is to be ancillary to the story isn't completely accurate. Remember "wind drill"? That was a thing he did. Also he received a package from someone once.

As for the other protagonists, and hussey's characters in general. Solaris said it pretty well. They have a few key characterization points and don't go much beyond that. When they have an opportunity to take a break from avoiding death, that's when those characterization points begin to determine how they will react in dialogue and other situations.

There is no central protagonist. If one had to be pinned down it is "probably Rose or maybe Vriska".

I agree with the first statement. Though I think that Rose or Vriska make poor choices for primary protagonists. They have the advantage of being a pair of the few characters that have actually been shown to have deeper characterization or character changes in the story.

The story "isn't very important", and it doesn't matter how long Andrew Hussie takes to tell it.

Yup. People will tend to like this regardless of story quality. The main selling point in Homestuck has never been it's story, and really it doesn't need to be.

It is not possible to define the characters through their actions, only their dialog.

While there are some characters where this is true, there are some whose actions take up the larger part of their characterization. i.e. Jack.

On a side note: Not sure it's good form to tout your own story above another. There are plenty of other comics and stories to choose from and picking one you've designed hurts your argument, and makes you seem a tad conceited. Which is also my biggest complaint against mr. hussie.

So I've been reading a mostly autobio comic (Johnny Wander style) by the comic artist Boulet lately. I think it has a lot of charm! There's a lot of content there, partially because he's had an art blog for years and has accumulated a lot of stuff, and now it's being translated to English bit by bit. The French stuff is still another four years ahead of that though. Give it a look! This is the first thing of his I ever saw and is still prrrrooooooobably still my favorite. It was done for the 24-hour comics day this year, so I suppose some of his stuff is translated at the same time as his French stuff.

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"Montague punched Capulet so hard that they died."

I think this by itself would make an amazing webcomic. It has every element of a story that I enjoy. I'm looking forward to where you take this idea.

So Homestuck's getting an actual game now. That's a thing.
And in the space of roughly 15 minutes it's already got to $10,000.

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Pledge $80 or more

GAMEPAK1 plus a physical copy of Andrew Hussie

Don't you just hate when your brain skips ahead a few words


I will hazard the expectation, however erroneus it may prove, that most persons with fantrolls are not in possession of ten-thousand dollars' disposable income

Maaaaaan you guys keep already reading the webcomics I read! How'm I s'posed to get the things I like into the shame cellar if everyone else already likes them :<

Well, let's try Power Nap on for size.
It's an action-drama set in the near-future about a guy working at the office, and sometimes sleeping. More exciting than I've made it sound. Not very far along yet, but quite a bit of promise!

Alright, I think that's probably enough Homestuck for the time being.

How about we discuss Problem Sleuth?

PS was alright

I like how the kickstarter's video has nothing to do with the actual videogame, it's just a montage of all the flash movies.

Also, haha, what?

those two are most likely jokes at the expense of the penny arcade kickstarter