Is it just me or has KeenSpot been slower than insert-whimsical-southern-simile-here lately? Man alive, nothing wrecks my RSS mojo than having to wait for a site to load. Less loady, more clicky!
In an odd turn, though, the world’s slowest loading comic, Rooster Teeth, came up immediately this morning. My only conclusion is that RT has somehow stolen KeenSpot’s bandwidth. 
Most who read web comics have at least heard reference to Bunny by Lem Davies. It is one of those comics that has a nice mixture of funny and geeky. Sometimes it is a little too smart for itself, but all said I look forward to it popping up in my RSS (the link for Bunny’s RSS is here). That reminds me. I have to pull that one out of my Comic Alert! feed and start using his own RSS to free up a little space for something else.
All said I think the best thing with Bunny is that they aren’t overly wordy as some tend to be. Reading Bunny is a nice, quick, pleasurable experience. Just what you need on a dreary day like the one we’re having in Buffalo today.
What to say about Least I Could Do. Well, first off Rayne, the lead character, is a pig, plain and simple. But he’s a lovable pig. Some would even be so nice as to call him a dog. But that’s the charm of the comic. Rayne and his circle of friends are quite different from most comic characters. You know that guy who is constantly hooking up with just about any woman he can get his hands on and once done he’s on to his next conquest? This is him.
I know, it is easy to have a character like this who doesn’t really have any charm to him, but in this case he does. All said he reminds me of a friend from high school…perhaps that is some of the reason I enjoy reading it so much. Much like my old friend, though, deep inside Rayne means well even though what he is up to most of the time is questionable.
LICD also has the added charm of having a group of friends that on the surface seems quite dysfunctional, but in the end works out well, once again reminding me of my friends. We’re awful to each other most of the time, but it is all in good fun.
I almost stopped reading when the author, Ryan Sohmer, switched artists from Trevor Adams to Lar Desouza. I’m not quite sure what the reason behind it was, but it took a little getting used to. All said it worked out so I’m happy. As with many comics that split up the writing and artwork we get to see some pretty complex storylines and recurring characters. No small feat for a standard 4 panel comic.
LICD is published six days a week like clockwork (they take Sundays off) and has a properly working RSS through Feedburner.
I started reading Rob and Elliot by Clay and Hampton Yount around the same time I got into Bigger than Cheeses. Much like it and many other comics it deals mostly with two friends living together causing all manner of mayhem. So what makes Rob and Elliot different?
First of all there’s a certain air of maliciousness you usually don’t see in the others. Yeah, you do get some overall nastiness in the others, but the shear ill temper of Rob and Elliot is a marvel to behold.
The humor is quite unique. Some of the buddy comics, for lack of a better term, show a definite derivative bend, but Rob and Elliot hits new chords and finds different angles of attack, much like most of the similar comics I read. I tend to get bored with the crap out there rather quickly.
The quality of the artwork is also quite nice. You do get to see some improvement over time, but honestly the work started off strong so it didn’t have incredible room for improvement without skipping out of style.
Fans of Sluggy Freelance may recognize Clay’s artwork from the Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days comics. If you’re familiar with that I think the level of humor and quality of the drawing will be quite familiar to you.
Oh yeah, and we can’t forget blah blah blah RSS blah, usually updated Monday and Friday blah.
And again some comics are just plain silly. Bigger than Cheeses started off being done in MS Paint, and trust me it got a lot better from there. Well…it kind of had to. 
One thing has remained constant throughout its history, and that is the silly sense of humor that pervades it. Several of the other comics I read deal with some of the same themes and plot ideas: a couple of guy friends, hot chicks, and the strange world they live in. Bigger than Cheeses goes well beyond that, though. Sometimes there is a storyline, sometimes it is just one frame of complete silliness.
Unpredictable to the point of almost complete randomness Desmond Seah’s comic keeps a smile on my face every time it shows up. Of course after almost 700 installments that can be a bit intermittent. I really wish that real life would stop interfering with my web comics. Perhaps the government should start subsidizing them under the auspices that if anything reading web comics keeps people like me amused and distracted.
Oh yeah…Desmond has a working RSS feed, not that I like to harp on that or anything.
Some comics are masterworks of art. Some contain pertinent social criticism. Some, well…are like Punks and Nerds.
Punks and Nerds, much like many comics, is about the author and his friends…to some extent. They find themselves in all manner of strange circumstances doing all manner of strange things involving underwear clad superheroes and being replaced by robots. Mike and Brad have a sense of humor that is quite unique, and I have a great time reading their work. Plus, as is always important to me, they have both a standard RSS feed, and a LiveJournal syndication feed to make sure they cover all of the bases.
My favorite comic of theirs pertains to a retelling of something that happened in Questionable Content. It was so…so…wrong. I think I was laughing about it for a good twenty minutes or so. Consequentially I wouldn’t catch up on P&N until you’re done with QC (if you’re catching up on QC’s archives) just to get the maximum “umph” for your buck. If you’ve already caught up on QC the comic is here. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to snicker about that one for a while.
What can I say about Orneryboy? Michael Lalonde has one of the more interesting web comics out there. By theme there it is unquestionably goth, but not in a mopey I-listen-to-nothing-but-the-cure kind of way. He definitely has industrially influenced goth underpinnings, and that makes me happy for obvious reasons.
The story centers around two main characters: Orneryboy and Dirtygir, two gothy folks in a nice relationship. Of course that relationship includes demonic cats and zombies, but hey, no relationship is perfect. The characters are based to some extent on the author and his…er…partner? Lover? Wife? Girlfriend? I’m not sure how they categorize themselves. His site is very slick, I must admit. It isn’t the usual prefabricated web comic setup, and though a good number of the web comics I read do work off of their own setups his shines as one of the better ones. Not that it is terribly important to the comic itself, but let’s face it, a good steak is better if the rest of the plate looks nice, too. And of course, since I’m such an RSS fiend, his site’s RSS feed works fantastically.
If I were to pick the one thing I really love about the comic it is how Michael manages to spin a fantastically crazy-ass tale without having all manner of strange jumps in the story. If you’ve kept up on things you know what’s happening. In doing this, though, he still manages to keep things very interesting because in the end, nothing is predictable in Orneryboy. Give it a shot…you may like it.
Although he only manages to crank out a comic about once every two weeks Garth makes an all said fantastic comic. The artwork is quite nice, and his characterizations show the type of depth I tend to enjoy in my web comics.
The basic idea behind Comedity is that it is largely a slice of life comic with the twist of the protagonist’s personality characteristic being actual characters. It shares some similarities with AppleGeeks in content and computers being transformed into hot females (in this case Intel based), but beyond a few surface elements it is quite original.
One good note about Garth’s slow schedule is that it doesn’t take long to catch up on the archives. For those of us who RSS our comics Comedity is fantastic. It has its own RSS feed that works quite nicely so when he puts stuff up I read it, and usually get a good chuckle.
Though it doesn’t update as often as it used to Chugworth Academy is still one of my favorite web comics because of the quality nonsense and fun going on in every frame. I can understand comics either winding down or going through dry spells. Real life hits comic artists as much as it does any of us, so I can’t really complain about it. This one is definitely worth going through the archives to keep track of who is who, and to enjoy the incredible overarching funny behind it all. Dave and Jamal have managed to deliver over and over again, so I’m really hoping that things clear up for them and Chugworth lives on.
Whenever I think about the comic one always comes to mind: Comic 192. I’d insert it inline here, but the skin I’m using is too narrow. I’ll have to fix that at some point.
I’m not sure why, but it struck me as the funniest thing in the Universe the first time I saw it. Something about the progression of facial expressions and whatnot is hysterical to me.
The only downside to CA is that their rss feed loses big time. Either they changed the URL without leaving the old one behind with one last update about where the new one is or it simply isn’t working, but I had all manner of issues with it. Fortunately Comic Alert! syndicates them so I’ve been using that.
What kind of blogger would I be if I didn’t start posting up my favorite web comics? Because I can’t think of any good order to do them in I’m going about this in a rather random fashion. The first one to come to mind is Questionable Content by J. Jaques.
Some comics I read in the hopes that on any given day they’ll have a good one, some I read because they used to be really good and I hope they’ll get better. Others, like QC, haven’t ever really disappointed me. In the early days of the archive you get to see Jeph’s art style in its more formative stages, but the quality of the writing easily makes up for any of his early art’s failings. Over time his artwork has improved and is one of the better drawn comics I read.
What really keeps me going, though, are two things. One is his ability to mix comedy and drama in a way that’s actually funny and interesting. Thus it isn’t just a loose plot to support jokes, or a constant tear jerking oh-woe-is-me drama fest. The other is that the characters are actually interesting. Even people who have only showed up in a few frames have a life about them, and the regular cast are real people who grow, learn, and of course do incredibly stupid shit.
I also like how he gives me a view into the world I find constantly surrounding me working at a college: youngeons. The students here are over a decade younger than me and honestly I don’t want to be one of those old fucks who can’t relate to people who are of a different age than him. I try to at least be aware of what is going on with people of other “generations” (in quotes because a generation is really 30 years, but in our day and age 10 years makes a hell of a difference), and QC is one of the ways I do that.
Like all good comics he has an rss feed (and don’t miss his QC Livejournal). I highly recommend linking to it (publishes weekdays like clockwork), and catching up on the archives. Enjoyable at every turn!