Need Suggestions: Webcomics

[Pappytech]

In no particular order, and for no particular reason:

- Paranatural [http://www.paranatural.net/]: Good comedy, good characters, intriguing emerging story. Basically a parody and love letter to superpowered high school student stories.
- Cucumber Quest [http://cucumber.gigidigi.com/]: A parody of all things JRPG. The kid-friendly ones, at least.

Oh, definitely seconding both of these. Paranatural has some of the best art and facial expressions I've ever seen in a webcomic, on top of just being hilarious most of the time.

Cucumber Quest is absolutely adorable and is drawn and written by Hiimdaisy, of Let's Destroy Metal Gear [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YH3o2pf-Bc] and her Persona 4 comic [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCHyAvHRKJU] fame. At least, I think she's a she... Regardless, great sense of humor, great artist.

I'd also like to suggest Unsounded [http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/], a fantasy series with more of an emphasis on characters and story than humor. That's not to say it isn't funny; most of the characters are snarky or silly as they want to be, but the series certainly doesn't shy away from the darker side of things.

Finally, I'm not sure if Lackadaisy [http://www.lackadaisycats.com/index.php] has already been mentioned. If it hasn't, then it certainly deserves to be. Set in St. Louis during the Prohibition era, it follows the crew of a speakeasy that's down on its luck, as they try to evade agents from the US Treasury, rival moonshiners, and completely running out of funds. The kicker? All the characters are anthropomorphic cats. It's not that the artist can't draw humans. She can, and does it incredibly well; she's just gone on record saying that she thinks cats are more expressive.

Sadly, the webcomic is a bit of a side-gig to her other work, so the gap between updates can be massive at times. Still, what she does make is insanely high quality entertainment.

 

[trollnystan]

SNIP

I'm always surprised to see no one else recommend Guilded Age; I really enjoy it myself! It's changed artist once so it looks a bit different now than it did in the beginning, but the writers are the same. I bad at not spoiling things so that's all I'll say about that.

Another one is Manly Guys Doing Manly Things. Basically takes (male) video game characters out of their milieu and tries to rehabilitate them to everyday life. Great fun.

I have a few more I like but I don't think you're a Girls With Slingshots kind of person for example.

Spoiler: It DOES feature a Scottish cactus, seen here eating HoHos, if that's your thing

 

[NightmareWarden]

- Paranatural [http://www.paranatural.net/]: Wonderful characters, great story, and absolutely hilarious.
-Ava's Demon [http://www.avasdemon.com/]: In terms of art this is the most beautiful webcomic I've seen so far. Explores loss, mental illness, friendships, family and more in spaaaaaace! Very little comedy, but it can be light-hearted at times.
-Freefall [http://freefall.purrsia.com/archives/arcd1998/carc1998.htm]: A light-hearted but deep story which explores a newly terraformed planet and the society they are building. The main characters are female wolf/furry/android, the first alien to make contact with humans, and a loveable robot. Updates three days per week since 1998.
-Unsounded [http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/chapters01-03]: Professional-level graphic novel. Very dark themes, occasional gore but very disturbing when used, and the main duo's character dynamic works very well.
-Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire [http://www.dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2002-05-21]: In a mystical world of magic is a grumpy seer and his cat. This comic finished (not stopped abruptly) last year after 11 years of puns, adventure, and admittedly a few jarring similarities with the real world (my opinion, but worth mentioning). Pretty good overall.
=Will Save World for Gold [http://willsaveworldforgold.com/]: I feel a warning on the site describes this one best: "The following comic contains violence, foul language, nudity, and 4th edition D&D jokes. Some readers may find it offensive." From the MOST dysfunctional party of adventurers lead by the most unique leader I've ever seen is this pixel art webcomic. Overall funny, not to serious, and currently going strong after three years.

 

[happyninja42]

http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/ Is one of my current favorites

Beat me to promoting this one. It's hilarious. Video game and pop culture related. Really funny and witty. Highly recommend it.

Also, Darths and Droids is a fun Star Wars themed one. http://darthsanddroids.net/

Similar to GM of the Rings, the writers take still shots from the movies, and repurpose the dialogue for comedic effect.

They're up to Empire Strikes Back now, and they started with Phantom Menace. It's a fun read. xD

 

[Someone Depressing]

Lackadaisy - seriously, why have you not read this yet?

Girls With Slingshots - quirky comedy stuff about lesbians. Said lesbians lack slingshots. Disappointed, but otherwise a great comic

Homestuck - it's tedious and at times not very funny, but it's worth reading simply because of its legacy and hilariously complex story that just kind of gives up on making sense halfway through. It's hard to describe in just one sentence, so let me just call it a "thing". It's a thing with GIFs. It's a thing with hours of flash animation. It's a thing with a movie-length soundtrack. It's a thing with about 4 protagonists to 16 central characters (though still focusing on the 4 main characters most of time) in about an arc and a half. It's a thing, a thing that is basically one ridiculously long, complex, and batshit insane love letter to Earthbound.

Zoophobia - gorgeously illustrated and charming in its simplicity, it's not particularly dramatic and its main focus is comedy, with a dash of nightmarish horror time and time again

Cucumber Quest - by that woman who did Hiimdaisy (that's Hi, I'm Daisy). It's charming, silly and funny, and the art's a nice blend of retro and video-game inspired scribbling

Gunnerkrig Court - a fantasy, genre-blending thing. While the art starts of as simplistic and a little jarring, it improves rapidly, to a professional level. I reccomend that everybody reads this wonderful comic.

Ozzie and Millie - it's a comic about children. That's, like, it. Just about children. Doing children things. No time travel, universal retcons, coming out stories or the abritrarily complex plots. It's just... about children being adorable. That's it, really.

The Fox Sister - it's a fairly new comic by an artist I love.

Kiskaloo - by the guy who directed the story and art for Lilo and Stitch. That enough should tell you whether you'll like it.

Minus - a rather prolific comic about a reality-warping little girl. It talks about subjects such as art, science, religion and pretty much anything cultural.

Cat and Girl - a long-running comic about an optimist and a Nietzche wannabe. It uses the style of a comic strip, having no real overarching story. Still a very good comic.

The Meek - a fantasy comic by a biology teacher. It's beautiful and complicated, so you'll need to pay attention if you want to understand it. Seriously, nothing makes sense if you just mull over it, and it's entirely intentional.

Hark, A Vagrant! - it's a comic about history, literature and feminists. Occasionally includes artsy nipples and has provided many a meme. The author is also a legit historian and artist, so you might learn a thing amidst the hilarious satire.

A few NSFW ones include DAR! and the other works of Erika Moen (all of which are horrendously NSFW. Not pornographic as much as they are erotic, including things like sex information and covering pretty much everything to do with the sex industry), and Oglaf (again, insanely NSFW. It's a sex comedy full of fanservice of any kind you could name, and it doesn't have any shame).

 

[WindKnight]

ignoring ones already mentioned (such as gunnerkrigg court, order of the stick, darths and droids)

Id suggest
Schlock Mercenary [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/], epic space opera with a dash of hard science and lots of dry wit (and a main character who's best described as looking like a big pile of sentient crap)

Erfworld [http://www.erfworld.com/erf_stream/view] fantasy wargame comic where a Killer GM gets dragged into a fantasy world that runs on game rules.

PS238, Nodwick, Use Sword on Monster and Full Frontal nerdity [www.nodwick.com]. I lot of these were actual indie published print comics initially (so a number will be broken up with cover images from the print issues). Again, mostly dry, gentle humour. My favorite is PS238, about a primary school for kids with super powers, whatever form they take. Some sharp edged satire lurks in places (the Captain America kids are results of political think tanks from both major parties to have an appropriately themed meta-hero for their values and goals, and have ultimately turned preteen kids into propaganda spewing mouthpieces, and their respective handlers make it clear they are going to treat the other kid as if they were a grown adult politician if it can be used to score political points), a clever use of minimal storytelling (the students are for the most part all in the basic details kids of/versions of major and indie super heroes (including spiderman, superman, green lantern, batman, morpheus[footnote]yes, the Neil Gaiman one[/footnote] and spawn), so a couple of plot-lines that feature Atlas, the obvious superman parallel, uses what everyone knows about superman's backstory to build in some audacious twists on the mythos) and some neat ideas and expansions on the possibilites of superpowers from differant sources.

Spinnerette [http://www.spinnyverse.com/] Another superhero comic with a dash of self awareness and genre savvy. Our heroine finds herself mutated with spider DNA, giving her proportional strength of the spider, six arms and an 'organic web shooter' thats in a more... anatomically appropriate place for a spider than on the wrists.

Taking place in a world where superheroes exist alongside superhero media, this tends to go interesting and wryly humorous places (our heroine initially fights crime dressed in a modified Venom halloween costume, and promptly gets a cease and desist letter from marvel over her resemblance to one of the Spiderwoman versions, and we're told DC tried to force a powergirl analogue to get a boob reduction)

It has to be said, there is a strong fan-service element to some of the designs, but the characters are all well rounded characters in their own right.

 

[agent9]

I need to check some of these out.

Personally: Kiwi blitz, paranatural, blazen, grim tales, spinnerette, blind springs, manly men doing manly things, evas demon, oglaf(NSFW), skin deep, monster kind, supernormal step, looking for group.

there are a lot out there. if you can also find it, dig dug from shifty look, but they're done if I'm not mistaken they're dead.

 

[Twintix]

Well, someone beat be to mentioning Exterminatus Now. It's essentially a Sonic/Warhammer 4000 crossover thing. I can't possibly recommend it enough. It's really funny and has a great art style that's evolved into its own little thing while still feeling familiar. It's probably my favorite webcomic at the moment.

I can also recommend HousePets!. Is it furry? Yeah. Is it adult? Absolutely not; The author has a self-imposed PG-rating. Basically, in this universe, pets can talk, walk on their hind legs and are about the size and mental age of children. It's very charming, cute and funny. Especially the Imaginate! arcs. God, I get a giggle fit everytime I read the MacBeth one.

I might be in a minority here, but I like Sequential Art. It's about an artist who lives with a bunch of anthropomorphic animals; A cat who works as a photographer, a nerdy penguin and a brilliant but easily distracted squirrel. The art is good and the stories are funny. Beware, though; The author has a tendency to strawman people he disagrees with, which can be off-putting. But stay away from his deviantArt page and you should be mostly fine. Oh, if I want to laugh at something stupid, I read Spider and Scorpion which is hosted on the same website as Sequential Art. Stylistic Suck at its best.

Ah, and Brawl In The Family, of course. It's a shame that it's coming to a close, but it's probably better that it finishes now that the author feels like he's running out of ideas. Nevertheless, it's a very enjoyable read.

No one has mentioned Axe Cop yet? It follows the story of a cop wielding an axe and fighting evil with his team of superheroes. The stories are invented by a 7-year old and drawn by his much older brother. It's quite fascinating to see the vivid imagination of a small child turning into such a great project.

If you're up for some black comedy, Cyanide and Happiness might be for you. I feel like the jokes sometimes are a bit hit and miss (And if you're sensitive about subjects like eating disorders, I wouldn't recommend it. These guys make fun of everything), but when they hit, boy do they hit! It's also a bit weird seeing such well-drawn stick figures.

...I'll be lurking here and check out other people's suggestions. I love webcomics.

 

[Me55enger]

One word: Erfworld.

http://archives.erfworld.com/

Absolutely fantastic and deeply original - if paradoric - webcomic about a board game designer who is summoned inside his own board game world and hailed as the master tactician. it's like, 4 years in now, hasn't got boring for a second.

One of my personal favorites? Freakangels. Adult themes, original setting and narrative, adorable characters and a proper ending. I have carbon copies of it now, but it's available in its entirety here: http://www.freakangels.com/?p=23

 

[dragoongfa]

I think I am going to bookmark this thread, a lot of the comics are amazing.

 

[MeatMachine]

http://www.tinykittenteeth.com/2009/01/26/gene-kelly/

Tiny Kitten Teeth is a rather adorable, stylized break from all the video game and pop-culture centric web comics out there.

Unfortunately, the ACTUAL web comic, which is very interesting and has some truly great and unique characters in it, takes a backseat half the time to to far inferior spin-offs, off-topic one-panels and an egregious amount of self-advertising for custom prints, books and event panels.