CTRL+ALT+DEL

(great long running web comic)
(based on video gamers)

Okay, list time. Here it is, in a rough order of descending quality:

Schlock Mercenary - Comic about a Sci-Fi Mercenary company. Great ongoing story.
Girl Genius - Steampunk Mad Science Awesomeness!
Penny Arcade - Arguably the video gaming comic.
The Adventures of Dr. McNinja - He's a Doctor who is also a Ninja. Need I say more?
Questionable Content - Kind of soap-opera-ish. I don't know why this comic is so interesting. It just is.
xkcd - Math Jokes + Stick Figures = Awesome
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Hilarious
Sluggy Freelance - The life of a humble web designer looks more exciting when you add mad science, aliens, alternate dimensions, shadowy conspiracies, vampires, and everything else you can imagine.
Narbonic - One of my favourite comics of all time. Mad science! Unlike most webcomics, it has a definite story with a 6 year arc. Brilliant stuff.
Skin Horse - From the mind that brought you Narbonic
Dresden Codak - hard to follow the continuity sometimes, but it's humour is pretty science-y, and it's art is pretty pretty.
Order of the Stick - Tabletop RPG humour
A Girl and her Fed - Great story-based comic
Shortpacked - Last time I checked, this was still nominally about a bunch of misfits who work at a toy shop, but now, who knows?
Antihero For Hire - Follows the adventures of an antihero named Shadehawk through a cyberpunk futuristic setting. Good stuff.
A Miracle of Science Mad Science! In The Future! This was one of my favourite comics for a while. Sadly, it ended after a 5 year run.
Ctrl-Alt-Del - Video Gaming Webcomic
Full Frontal Nerdity - Tabletop RPG Nerd Jokes. Brilliant. Made by the same guys who do Nodwick
Goblins - What happens when the NPCs decide to become adventurers.
Bad Machinery - This has been going a while, previously as Scary-Go-Round, and I believe even before that under another name, but some characters keep getting held over into the new comics, and they do seem to maintain continuity.
Overcompensating - by the same guy who made Wigu, but I prefer his autobiographical stuff, it's funnier.
Erfworld - lots of tabletop and board gaming references and jokes.
Real Life - Wow, is Greg Dean still going? Okay, I guess.
Bigger Than Cheeses - I quite liked this one, was sorry to see it end. Still, the archives are worth a browse. Very random, and very funny.
Hijinks Ensue - Nerds, Jokes, etc.
Dreamless - So. Pretty. Great story too.
Radioactive Panda! - More Science, possibly of the Mad Variety.
El Goonish Shrive - This comic goes to some odd places. Still, readable.
Home On The Strange - Comic about a group of nerdy friends.
8-Bit Theater - I think this one has finished up. Worth a read for the RPG jokes and references.
Looking For Group - Another RPG Comic
The Zombie Hunters - Nice little story comic about fighting zombies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
VG Cats - Yet another video gaming comic.
PVP - Ditto

... and that's probably a good place to stop.

Darn it, now you guys made me remember I have a backlist of things I haven't read yet either.

Damn now that's a list. i'll have to look into some of these, they seem like an excellent waste of time

N810 wrote:CTRL+ALT+DEL

(great long running web comic)
(based on video gamers)

Seconded

This is what I mean about feeling ancient. Doesn't anybody read paper and ink superhero comics anymore? Not even their digital equivalents?

I know some of the offerings here are reasonably well done but they don't hold a candle to the real thing (pokes other posters here with a stick).

I obviously stumbled into this thread by mistake.

I'll get my coat.*



*The posh version of the original British, "I'll get me coat".

Victor Tombs wrote:This is what I mean about feeling ancient. Doesn't anybody read paper and ink superhero comics anymore? Not even their digital equivalents?

I know some of the offerings here are reasonably well done but they don't hold a candle to the real thing (pokes other posters here with a stick).

I obviously stumbled into this thread by mistake.

I'll get my coat.*



*The posh version of the original British, "I'll get me coat".

Paper and Ink comics? Are you kidding? Some of those are great, but a lot aren't fit to line a litterbox.

Webcomics are the same - there's a lot of bad ones, but the good ones, they can be fantastic. There's a lot of talent online.

Just_Ice_au wrote:Paper and Ink comics? Are you kidding? Some of those are great, but a lot aren't fit to line a litterbox.

Webcomics are the same - there's a lot of bad ones, but the good ones, they can be fantastic. There's a lot of talent online.

Phew! That's a relief Just_Ice. Thank you for that. I know there are some dire offering from the paper and ink publishers nowadays. I am more of a Golden Age/Silver Age man myself.

Another list of titles you have supplied me with. I will taste your wares and see if I agree with these new fangled publications.

AND I have to go before I start derailing yet another thread.

Victor Tombs wrote:This is what I mean about feeling ancient. Doesn't anybody read paper and ink superhero comics anymore? Not even their digital equivalents?

My gf does... And she's younger than me. I just never was into comics.

Katorone wrote:

Victor Tombs wrote:This is what I mean about feeling ancient. Doesn't anybody read paper and ink superhero comics anymore? Not even their digital equivalents?

My gf does... And she's younger than me. I just never was into comics.

Your girlfriend sounds very wise. I hope she convinces you that a life without comics is empty and gray.

Victor Tombs wrote:Your girlfriend sounds very wise. I hope she convinces you that a life without comics is empty and gray.

It will probably sound weird... But I just have great difficulty in reading a comic. Had this problem since I was a kid. I just watched the drawings without even trying to read the text anymore.
I'm not really sure where the problem lies exactly. Though I'm pretty sure the serif fonts, the unclarity about which speech bubble I should read first are part of it. I also might be a tad dyslexic, who knows.

These things are even worse in webcomics, though the authors might have great ideas and drawing skills, laying out and designing a comic is a different job altogether.

TL;DR: I get frustrated when trying to read comics.

Katorone wrote:It will probably sound weird... But I just have great difficulty in reading a comic. Had this problem since I was a kid. I just watched the drawings without even trying to read the text anymore.
I'm not really sure where the problem lies exactly. Though I'm pretty sure the serif fonts, the unclarity about which speech bubble I should read first are part of it. I also might be a tad dyslexic, who knows.

These things are even worse in webcomics, though the authors might have great ideas and drawing skills, laying out and designing a comic is a different job altogether.

TL;DR: I get frustrated when trying to read comics.

It's not the first time I've heard about that problem Katarone. I must admit they made it easier for you to follow in the earlier comics as nearly everything, art and relevant text, was in the same box. (before your time probably). Nowadays it's sometimes better to ignore the story altogether and concentrate on the art. Some of the storylines lately are appalling.

I used to use a large magnifying lens until I switched to the digital versions. Paper printed text is a real pain for me nowadays.

Victor there's a lot of culture around your "paper and ink comics", most of my friends are actually into that stuff, but i rarely read... and when i do it's only the best quality manga i find, manga being the more popular and japanese equivalent of the comics you're thinking about. Might not be as appealing to you though since they're usually not colored, but that's just for more rapid production.

The people that are the most into comics though have a tendency to be non-gamers, they perhaps do play games, but to my experience they don't do it as frequently as well.. gamer-nerds they're usually into more literate stuff like D&D and similar games as well as reading books. I can't read books for some reason, i used to do it so much but now i just cant. I can read endless walls of text on the internet though to gather information, but... not books.

CTRL+ALT+DEL used to be by far my favorite but I'm not into what he's doing now. When I read a web comic I'm just looking for maybe up to 4 panes with a visual joke or a witty comment or something. Whatever he's doing now is always preceded by a giant wall of text which is not something I want from a web comic. Hopefully he'll get back to doing web comics and stop releasing an illustrated fantasy novel... one page at a time... sometime soon. I liked the old long running series featuring Ethan and even the new Console Wars series as well as a lot of the one-offs.

Far and away my favorite web-comic is The Order of the Stick. The combination of good storytelling (including both humor and serious plot-lines) with D&D references is like kryptonite for me.


Other web-comics I follow on a regular basis are Dork Tower (although it's not been updated very often the last several months), PVP Online, Questionable Content, Terminal Lance, and xkcd. Two webcomics that I love, but have somehow managed to get *way* behind on (as in it's been at least a year now), are Erfworld and Penny Arcade.

ARISE THREAD!!!
Ahem.
To not derail this thread any further, I thought to take the webcomic discussion over here. So this is what I'm reading:

Gunnerkrigg Court, on Scytale's recommendation. I'm all caught up now (Comic Rocket makes binge reading way too easy ) and it's very good indeed!
Abstruse Goose A bit like xkcd. Currently on hiatus it seems
Awkward Zombie A comic about sily things in games
Clique Refresh A comic about trying to be an adult and friends you've only ever met online
FoxTrot A comic about a not that normal family
Gaia A very good fantasy comic
Junior Scientist Power Hour Slice of life comic thingy, humorous exaggerations
Kiwi Blitz A comic about robots, teenagers and mechs in a not that dystopian near future
Loading Artist A bit of everything
Penny Arcade although I don't really think it's funny most of the times lately
Phuzzy Comics Slice of life, currently on hiatus
Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD) a comic about academia
Sandra and Woo A rather nice comic about a girl and her pet raccoon
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal needs no introduction, right
Stranger Danger Slice of life
Sufficiently Remarkable Comic about everyday life of some people, with quite a bit of science
Tenko King A comic set in a Zelda-like world. Still starting up though
XKCD If you don't know this...
Edit: forgot Boxplot, previously Sci-ence, a great science comic