Uhh... Yeah... So... and More Reading Refinement

For the past two weeks I have had almost complete freedom to do as I please. There have been a lot of errands to complicate things certainly, and my search for a house has definitely occupied a greater portion of the month, but by and large I've had a whooole lot of free time. With which to watch previous episodes of The Office! It seems my one great accomplishment during this period of time was the further characterization of the relationship between free time and good times. It turns out that they are not always directly related. It seems that at a certain threshold of free time, a point I like to call "McBurney's point", the relationship becomes inverse such that greater free time leads not to more good times, but rather more idle lying around. Although I cannot prove it I would imagine each person has a different McBurney's point, but, wherever it is, I certainly crossed it sometime in the last fourteen days. I have obtained a level 40 home city for France on Age of Empires III, but when I'm playing the game three hours a day should I really expect anything less? No, I have become fat and lazy, or rather just lazy, and now I don't have much to say. I could discuss mortgages and new home buying, but I imagine that would be about as exciting as a lecture in economics. So instead I will briefly mention my one great discovery these past few weeks -- completely unrelated to my one great accomplishment.

It's History Comics by Kate Beaton at... well... whatever her Internet address is -- just follow the link. While I have an extensive list of comics linked on the right hand side of my page, most are admittedly rubbish and used only to feed the odd addiction that I seem to have acquired for these things over the years. History Comics, however, are different. Or at the very least they're the pure uncut heroin to the rest of my uhh... very cut heroin.... Anyway, each comic is generally about some random historical figure, frequently Canadian, and is at the very least amusing and informative if nothing else. I'd say it's both fun and educational, but I'm sure you've already thunk it.

Reading Refinement: The Rest

In the spirit of getting this over with I will quickly summarize the remaining webcomics linked.

Dresden Codak: Greatly drawn, interesting, educational, funny, and rarely updated. Sometimes it's also hard to tell what exactly is going on, but, by the standards of the rest of the web it's pretty good. Brief plot summary is the main character, Kimiko, is some sort of introverted yet remarkably curved super genius who, with two friends who seem to have powers from who knows where, have stumbled upon time travelers from the future. That's really it so far. Not much else has happened. It's been kind of slow. So....

Pictures For Sad Children: Initially it seemed to be good, simple, and humorous; then as multiple story lines developed I began to have my reservations, and now finally it has become so confusing that I cannot honestly say what's what. Thankfully most the storylines don't seem to repeat so my inability to explain much of it can be overlooked, but the one plot that does seem to repeat is that the main character, Paul, is recently deceased and has since become a ghost only to wander about his life much as he did before. Like most the mediocre comics I've described so far it does have its moments and up until recently it uploaded daily. Now it's just Mon-Wed-Fri. Apparently it's hard work drawing stick figure based stories incomprehensibly.

Rob and Elliot: A blond-haired guy, Rob, and a brown-haired guy, Elliot, live in an apartment together and wacky hijinks ensue. That's really all you need to know.

Questionable Content: In many ways your stereotypical webcomic as described previously, but done surprisingly well. The story has become rather intricate with time, and so while you may be able to appreciate the joke in a random comic you most likely won't have any idea what's going on. In as short a synopsis as possible the main character, Marten, is an awkward wannabe Indie rocker. He is dating a nondescript girl named Dora who owns a coffee shop where Raven, a flighty girl of mostly little significance to the story, and Faye work. Marten initially wanted some Faye lovin' but Faye has issues related to her father committing suicide when she was a child. And wacky hijinks ensue. There's also an OCD neighbor named Hannelore who seems to be becoming a bigger character, and a couple what seem to be talking iPods to serve as the comic's talking animals, but I think I've said enough.

That's it. Makes you want to read them right? Nah, me neither.

Reading Refinement: Dr. McNinja & Dinosaur Comics

Alright. For those further wanting to indulge me on webcomics -- and I really wish you would -- a few brief comments and background on each respective one.

Dr. McNinja is, overall, easily the best of the webcomics that I have encountered. Unusual in that the illustrations are great, the stories are entertaining and the jokes generally pretty funny and original. Dr. McNinja himself comes from a family of ninja and so has natural ninja abilities even though he has chosen the life of a physician. His enemies vary from Ronald McDonald to other ninja to Mexicans on velociraptors to zombies, and he has two main companions: Gordito (a mustached young boy with two revolvers) and Benjamin Franklin (cloned or reborn or undead it's hard to say.) He also has a gorilla receptionist at the clinic.

Dinosaur Comics is my second favorite webcomic and involves absolutely no illustration whatsoever. The guy just reposts the same clip art in the same sequence every comic. What makes him a winner -- and he is a winner -- are the jokes. The comedy is, to me at least, sophisticated and yet surprisingly educational at the same time. Moreover as the dinosaurs and some of the off screen cast (a raccoon and a cephalopod) develop character the jokes get even better. There usually aren't much in the way of stories lines -- so you can usually pick any comic at random at fully enjoy it -- but despite this quite a back story seems to have built up over time. It has seemed recently that he's been resorting less to actual crafted jokes and more on absurd comments from the T-Rex or the inclusion of random one time characters off screen, but perhaps a thousand comics in the same daily setup has finally run its course.

A Webcomic Primer

Now that I've had a collection of links to various webcomics up for at least a few months I feel it's time I paused briefly to explain them. And myself for that matter as webcomics can be a bit... oh... peculiar.

I have always enjoyed comics. Not so much the Cathys and Family Circuses of the comic world -- I truly wish they were never shown in the printed press again -- but as a youngin' I loved to read Garfield and Peanuts, and, now that my tastes have become more refined -- or ridiculous depending on your vantage point -- I enjoy many printed comics like Doonesbury, Boondocks, and others. With the Internet has come access to a whole different world of illustrated joke and story telling with which to pass the time. Without the censorship and needs for broad appeal that comes with massive print subscriptions the humor can be much more creative -- and profane as the case may be. As it seems even many who are quite familiar with the Internet are not terribly familiar with its webcomics, however, I decided to share the ones I like with you all. And also so I could have a convenient set of bookmarks for whenever I am not on my own computer -- but hey let's focus on how considerate I am.

So to get a better appreciation of webcomics I feel certain general characteristics should be known. For example the authors of most webcomics tend to be young males in their mid to late twenties with a few in their early thirties. There are some older writers as well in addition to a few women here and there, but mostly it's young guys. The target audience for these comics is similarly also young males in their mid to late twenties probably because, perhaps obviously, young males tend to be the ones who waste the most time on the Internet. Many comics have significant appeal to women as well, and I imagine most aim for gender neutrality in their appeal, but by and large I would gamble the comedy of webcomics is much the comedy of male computer geeks. With these facts in mind it should probably not come as any great surprise then that the characters in many stories are doofy guys and well endowed ladies. Again these are generalizations and there are certainly many webcomics without an inept but lovable male protagonists or any conveniently large breasted women, but pick one at random and you'll see.

After reading a few you'll probably notice a few other common threads. The actual artistic capabilities of most webcomic artists, for example, tends to be lacking. The humor tends to be based largely on the random and ironic most the time though some puns unfortunately do frequently find their way in. And there for whatever reason tends to be a large volume of webcomics with talking animals or robots in them. Is this because nonhuman characters can voice opinions and provide views of ourselves that we would not easily accept if it were to come from another in our species? Probably not. They mostly seem to pull comic relief duties, but, hey, animals can be introspective too.

Before I close I'd like to share two more things. First is that the webcomics I have listed tend to buck much of the trend I've just gone over mainly because it got old reading the same comic with different names over and over again so the more unique ones had more lasting appeal. As such I feel the amount of comics centered around some sort of ridiculous fantasy, sci-fi, or "normal life" are not very well represented. Thank goodness.

And lastly, if you think these comics suck. Check out this guy. He's got issues. Mental issues.