rowyn

Someone on Twitter -- I forget who, alas -- posted a recent strip from Strong Female Protagonist with a link to the comic. I read the strip out of context and then went back to read the archives. Despite the genre-savvy name, it's a serious strip, more drama than anything else. It's a superhero comic that's not, for the most part, about winning by punching things. It's different people with superpowers, most of them trying to Do the Right Thing, often in vastly different ways. There's a lot of slice-of-life stuff, "ordinary day in the life of a person with superpowers". There's also some superhero vs villain fights, and hero vs vigilante, and people with superpowers trying to figure out how to effect real change rather than using their powers to punch stuff.

There's some dystopia in it, in the sense that "most people have no powers and a few can do amazing things" is always a dystopian premise. I almost quit reading over an early revelation of 'big world-spanning evil plot' but I stuck with it. The comic also has long discussions of philosophy and ethics. It reminds me a little of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but with more recognition that a single person can't clever their way into solving all the world's problems.

There's quite a lot of archives to read -- 800+ pages, I'd guess. It took me a few days to get through. Good stuff, definitely recommended. No idea when or if the major plot line is going to wrap up, although individual story lines do run their course.

I wasn't feeling well yesterday, so I stayed home from work. I wasn't feeling up to writing or doing anything productive at home either. Normally I play computer games when I'm sick, but Flight Rising was down and I didn't feel like playing that much SolForge, or anything else. So I cast about for something else to do. "What are some of the things I kind of want to do but don't get around to because there's always a higher-priority thing? Aha, I know! I'll read one of those webcomic archives that have been recommended to me but that I never get through."

So I opened my folder of comics bookmarks, and arbitrarily selected the first one I came to: the Goblins webcomic. Some time ago I'd read the first 20 or so strips but got no farther. I started over again from the beginning. It's a fantasy gamer webcomic in the mold of treating D&D rules as not only the characters' reality but one they are conscious of. It also has both monster groups and traditional PC groups as protagonists, making it more like Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic than Order of the Stick. (Yes, "fantasy gamer" is an actual subgenre.)

The first 50 strips or so have a lot of predictable jokes about D&D rules, conventions, and players, but as with YAFGC and OotS, Goblins soon transcends its gag-strip origins. I think it makes a better graphic novel than webcomic series, because many of the pages do not stand well on their own -- no punchline or other sense of closure to them.

The work as a whole is impressive and makes for a powerful story. It interweaves the adventures of several different groups, primarily focused on three: the original group of goblins, one goblin who was split from them, and a dwarf cleric / human warrior pair. Some times it goes a long time between checking in on protagonist groups:

terrycloth commented on a character returning again "after being gone for a year or more"; I checked, and it had actually been nearly three years since that group's storyline had been shown.

The author has a good talent for crafting characters of all sorts -- some good, some evil, and many that are just muddling through. Often, two or more sympathetic characters will be pitted against each other, and it just breaks your heart because you don't want either side to get killed. And the reasons that they're in conflict are usually horrifyingly understandable.

I finished reading it this morning, on my phone, because I couldn't wait until I got home. Now my head is all stuffed full of it, which is a very strange feeling for me. Like I can't work on my own stories because my mind is still absorbed by this other person's.

I definitely recommend this if you like fantasy, even if you're not a gamer. The story doesn't require familiarity with gaming to follow, even if some of the jokes do.

And now I'm going to talk about some of the specifics that are haunting me, for those who've also read it. So here be spoilers! Probably there will also be spoilers in the comments.

( spoilers ahoy! )

I'm looking for webcomic recommendations! I think I've told my whole friends list my own favorites already, but since it seems unfair to ask this question without answering it: my two favorite comics are Schlock Mercenary, by Howard Tayler, and Girl Genius, by Phil and Kaja Foglio.

Girl Genius has certain advantages to my personal tastes over Schlock Mercenary. It's a gaslamp fantasy, with romance and gorgeous Victorian-esque clothing and dashing adventurers and sexy men and women and airships and mad science and steampunk and humor and lovely artwork by Phil Foglio, whose art I've always enjoyed and -- well, in short, it's got a whole bunch of things I really like in a story. I expect I would love it even if it did not have many of these things: I love Buck Godot and I loved Foglio's Stanley and His Monster and Angel and the Ape and, well, I've liked pretty much everything Phil Foglio's ever done. Including Xxxenophile. But Girl Genius is especially dear to me.

Schlock Mercenary has far fewer natural advantages in winning my enthusiasm. It's a science fiction comic with some hard-sf elements, about mercenaries and wars and betrayals and explosions, and none of these are things I particularly love in a story. (I do like sf, but I generally like fantasy better, especially eclectic not-Tolkien-esque fantasy). Howard Tayler has worked very hard on his art in the many years since he started Schlock, with the result that I'd now describe it as "nice". As opposed to "abysmal", which is where he started. >:) In all seriousness, Tayler has a solid cartoony style now that serves the story well and is attractive. But it doesn't have the rich details that Foglio piles into his work and that make Girl Genius so delightful and rewarding to look at.

Schlock does have a couple of advantages over Girl Genius. First, my Schlock fix is there every day, not just three times a week.

Second,

howardtayler and

sandratayler both keep blogs. So do the Foglios, for that matter, but I don't chat with them via LJ and I do talk to the Taylers occasionally (they even read my LJ! Squee!) so I tend to think of them a bit more like friends rather than just "people whose work I follow". On the other hand, the reason I met them on LJ is that Schlock was already my favorite comic, so I don't think this predisposed me unfairly to like it. :)

Anyway, they're both great comics, consistently funny and entertaining, with well-thought-out stories and great character development. I recommend both highly.

But what I really want to know is: what is your favorite webcomic? And no listing all 30 or 40 that you follow, either. I mean, you can list them all if you want, but if you pick just one or two then I'm more likely to take a look. :) I don't read that many comics right now -- I thinned my list considerably the last time I changed computers -- and I'd like to add some new ones to it now. Feel free to repeat a recommendation someone else made already -- the more people like a given comic, the more likely I am to investigate it, too. You needn't feel obliged to give all the reasons you love it, unless you want to; a link suffices for a plug. :)

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