Thursday, January 22, 2009

Favorite Completed Webcomics

Finally more blogging this week! It coincides with my wife having recovered from her cold. When taking care of both Smiley and my wife I lacked the mental energy and focus to compose some important posts requiring careful thought and wording.

So earlier this week I re-read two of my favorite completed webcomics.

It occurred to me to list the completed webcomic I've most enjoyed in case anyone wants recommendations. Here we go:

A Miracle of Science
This is an overall great story. The characters are interesting, and their personalities and how they grow fit together more and more as the story progresses. The plot could be used as a textbook case for how to put together a detective story*. The two creators also provide numerous fun links in their commentaries; my favorite two are these.
* a mysterious setup, a tour of different interesting locations to gather information interspersed with scenes of the villain at work, a variety of action and adventure scenes, revelation of which of the villain's acts is the mistake that reveals his identity, revelation of the protagonists' weaknesses, sleuthy progress and preparation once the villain's identity is known, separation of the protagonists by exploiting their weaknesses, and then finally the protagonists being reunited during a climactic encounter with the villain
DM of the Rings
This comic rises to meet a difficult challenge: chronological screen shots are given alternate dialogue to tell a different story. Considering how memorable Tolkien's characters are it is remarkable how quickly the reader gets used to an fond of the alternate personalities.

Get Medieval
A very fun story with nice characters and a ton of historical references. Its readers have very interesting discussions to compliment the comic itself. After the story is over the comic's creator goes through the comic a second time providing her own commentary.

Irregular Webcomic
Several stories told in series, using miniatures or legos.  David Morgan-Mar published an amazing 3,198 comics.  Subsequent entries are short essays about science or his other interests.

Empty Words
A realistic short story about two adults who have trouble talking to older relatives. Their conversations provide each of them in very different ways new motivation to try again and new meaning for the effort.

Concerned
I've never played Half-Life or its sequels. I still enjoyed this story immensely. Writing a tale about a bumbling idiot that remains engaging is a challenge. Using a computer game's setting to do so is a brilliant idea since the reader becomes totally free to laugh at the idiot since he is only a bunch of pixels. Through careful writing I became both fond of the protagonist and indifferent to his suffering, an almost paradoxical trick necessary for all 200+ pages to stay interesting.

True Villains
Villains you soon grow to love start out definitely evil.  But as the story develops they make less malicious choices while their opposition becomes more wicked.  At the end of the story they barely manage to save the world.  A funny exploration of how someone can be both good and evil at the same time.

Casey and Andy
Very silly and strangely difficult to describe. I find relaxing upbeat stories that have nothing to do with real life, and this in an epitome of such a tale.

Demonology 101
Described in this blog post.

Narbonic
Any comic in which the secret army of Davids plots word domination has merit! I actually have not finished reading this story because for a long time on certain portions were freely available.

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