chanson

A contest! Of course! (Girls with Slingshots)

asperityq got me reading The Comics Curmudgeon last weekend, which in turn started me reading For Better Or For Worse again.

Especially after reading all of the FBOFW material on The Comics Curmudgeon last weekend, I'm really enjoying it. I haven't read it since I went off to college in 1994, though I was a regular reader (though not a devoted fan) before then.

Now, though, I'm reading it with a more critical eye. Of course asperityq and TCC have a bit to do with that, but there's also the fact that I read a lot of online comics these days. And, uh, wow. Most of the comics in the newspaper suck. Hard. I hadn't really thought in much depth about just how badly they sucked, but wow. Compared to even the more obscure stuff I've been reading — like, say, Girls with Slingshots, Applegeeks, Wapsi Square, Flipside, or Falcon Twin — many of the "newspaper comics" discussed on TCC are just awful. Story, art, pacing, planning — it's just bad. The Internet most definitely is the future of the medium.

For Better Or For Worse holds up pretty well. It's made it into my daily reading, along with a host of other comics. But if it weren't available online, I wouldn't seek it out in print. Some of the other comics I read, though — like Something Positive and MegaTokyo — I would in a heartbeat.

I've started reading Maliki even though I don't read or speak French. I know just enough between casual exposure and knowing Spanish to get by and enjoy the comics.

It's so pretty. And she has just the right mix of lovely and silly and fun and melancholy and crazy that makes me want more more more!

From part 1:

I'm trying to work my way through my huge to-read pile. Well, piles. I have an end table dedicated to it, and boy howdy are there a lot of books on it. I need to not get any more books until I've worked through at least about a third of the pile.

I'm now maintaining my reading list on my personal web site, Eschatologist.net. So much to read...

I just saw Alpha Shade thanks to an ad on Chugworth Academy.

I haven't read it yet, but it sure looks pretty.

One of the best things about online comics is that you can watch an artist get good, or really good. Another of the best things about online comics is that artists link to each other. So with that in mind at some point I'm also going to read Marilith. On the strength of an ad on a comic I haven't even read yet.

What? Problem? I can stop any time I want!

Must not read them all in one sitting. Too much to do to read them all in one sitting. Need too much sleep to read them all in one sitting.

I finally got the first three trades of The Maxx by Sam Keith, one of the seminal comics of my youth. The Maxx is the comic that really showed me, over a dozen years ago, that sequential art was a mature medium for mature readers. And now I own all of it in trade paperback, in addition to many (but not all) of the original issues (of the first storyline)!

If you haven't read it, and you like comics, or you think you might like comics, you need to read it. Get it at your local library, or have them order it via interlibrary loan. Someone is bound to have it since many libraries have surprisingly good graphic novel sections, though they're sometimes filed under "teen" or "young adult." And it's really, really good.

I also just got the first four volumes of the Shadow Star manga from Dark Horse. It's the manga upon which the anime Shadow Star Narutaru (which I mentioned a couple days ago) is based.

I finished watching the anime, which only sparsely covers a few volumes of the Japanese edition of the manga. And damn was it disturbing. So of course I needed more. I just need to be sure to pace myself.

Hawk over at Applegeeks is running a multi-part series describing his artistic process for the comic. It's pretty cool — I'm completely surprised by how he inks!

There are three posts in the series so far: Sketch, Inking, and Flats. And while he's doing the work, he's updating the comic. The entire process is being archived too, along with the images along the way, in a forum thread.

Check it out!

I may be covering Scott McCloud's territory with this, but does anyone else feel that online comics represent a sort of media sea change?

There are thousands of online comics out there. They're all over, covering every topic and genre imaginable. Some are good. Some are bad. Some are great. Some will spark a little and fizzle out quickly. Others will last a long, long time. Some will be amateur efforts. Some will be as close to professional as any comics are. Some will support their creators well. Some will be labors of love.

But to a first-order approximation, virtually none of them would have been able to get in front of an audience of any significance in all of their deeply-flawed, deeply-human glory prior to 1994.

Online comics I read regularly:

• Something Positive
• MegaTokyo
• Girl Genius
• AppleGeeks
• Penny Arcade
• Goats
• Mac Hall
• Penny and Aggie
• Chugworth Academy
• Questionable Content
• Queen of Wands

One of things that the medium is just starting to enable is search. It's not integrated well with the rest of the Internet yet — after all, Google doesn't yet index text within images — but a new service, OhNoRobot is providing searches of comic transcriptions. Not only that, but it's enabling both the authors and the community of readers to participate in a meaningful fashion, by enabling properly-targeted advertising and by providing transcription services.

In other words, online comics are a grand experiment in win-win media.

Questionable Content is going to be my new obsession, at least until I'm caught up on it. This despite knowing next to none of the bands whose names they're always dropping.

The First Law of Sexual Dynamics

In a given dispute, the female is more likely to be correct.

The Second Law of Sexual Dynamics

If you think a girl is attracted to you, you are wrong.

Thanks to Emilie for the pointer!

I have now read all of Mac Hall. Past and present. With a detour through a couple years of Goats as well.

Just a couple of thoughts herewith:

What about "philosophically-compatible?"

And it's not just about that. Well, OK, it's entirely about that. Fuck yeah it's about that. But why would you ever stop? I mean, come on! Why? Ever?

(By the way, I'm good. I'm very, very good. I come with multiple references who would testify to that if they were even marginally willing to share.)

If you're caught up on Megatokyo as of Monday, read today's.

If you aren't caught up on Megatokyo as of Monday, then catch up, damn it! I realize that this might mean starting at the very first strip. Come on, there's only 700 of them and if you're reading this it's not like there's anything more exciting going on! The power of Chris compels you!

A few months back, I started reading a whole lot of manga. In fact, at the beginning of 2004 I had barely read any.

Yeah, I'm talking about me. Surprising, huh?

To have something to read during a couple plane flights, around the beginning of 2004 I picked up the FLCL adaptations. Cute, fun, but not the same as the anime. Then to have some reading material before my things arrived in California, I bought the first two Megatokyo books. That was it for a while, until I picked up the original Japanese editions of FLCL in September at JTAF. They had furigana, which meant that they were almost like a study aid, right? (Right.)

For some reason, a few months ago I got back into Chobits. I rented it not long after I moved out here, but this time I wanted more. So I picked up the manga. It was a bit deeper than the anime, and made a bit more sense. That's about the same time I started to get in touch with my inner Japanese schoolgirl. (Everyone has an inner Japanese schoolgirl, you know. Everyone.)

So I started looking for more. I didn't actually read the Azumanga Daioh manga (still haven't) but I think asperityq recommended Kare Kano. I rented the anime, I wanted to find out how the damn story ended and then I got hooked.

Now I have several series I'm reading: Kare Kano, Hot Gimmick, Doubt!!, Love Hina, and Saikano. Of them, my favories are Kare Kano, Hot Gimmick and Saikano. Saikano I just started, and it's all wistful and sad so I'm definitely going to be hooked. Doubt!! I'm less sure about. And yes, I like shoujo. A lot. Inner Japanese schoolgirl, remember? But I don't play dating sims, so don't start calling me Piro.

It has nothing to do with the lack of dating sims for Mac OS X. Really.

There's both a great Queen of Wands and Megatokyo today!

All glory to Great Teacher Largo!

Thanks to kasra_c and R&K Comics in Sunnyvale, I now have new Last Exile to watch!

I also have a copy of the second print volume of MegaTokyo.

Applegeeks: Quality fanboys providing quality fan service.

I so need a Power T-shirt.

m_chris_stevens will soon learn that household appliances don't really need to be bathed.

And actually, Wolfwood's a good icon for Chris. Despite his claims to the contrary, he looks more like Nicholas Wolfwood of Trigun than Davan MacIntire of Something Positive. Even though he dresses like Davan, and has since before S*P.

(I bet the chicks would really dig it if he started dressing like Wolfwood...)

Thanks to asperityq for pointing me at Something Positive yesterday.

Go read it! There's only a year's worth of strips.