On the internet, you can find self-published comics of any style—whether it be the strips of Sunday newspapers or the full pages of comic books. The internet offers a variety of genres, styles and tastes of comics. For every comic you find, there are 20 more starting. Some update every day, others go months without a single update. The creators are usually into social networking, so getting in contact with them is easy and sometimes rewarding.
Also? The majority of webcomics are free!
Here are some of the webcomics I follow. These are not the only webcomics I follow, nor are they the best webcomics on the internet, and I strongly encourage people to check out The Webcomic List to find some of your own favorites.
Sister Claire
Written and drawn by Elena Barbarich, it is one of my personal favorites. This is an example of comic book style rather than a strip, which is why I didn’t put up a sample page. That’s Barbarich in the picture, and she is one of the coolest people you’ll ever know. She became rather famous for her Lady Gaga and Beyonce Telephone poster.
Here’s the excerpt summary from the website:
Sister Claire is a novice nun, and all she ever wanted was to have a purpose. But when a beautiful blue businesswoman explodes out her toilet and tells her she’s pregnant with the new Messiah, Claire realizes she may be in for more than she bargained for: a kaleidoscopic adventure to protect her miraculous baby (and possibly the universe.)
Girls With Slingshots
A strip comic that’s slice-of-life and just plain awesome, created by Danielle Corsetto. The weekday isn’t complete for me without reading this strip. Here’s the Webcomic List synopsis:
The everyday adventures of Hazel, the cynical writer who hasn’t met a bottle she doesn’t like, Jamie, her volumptous and optimistic best friend, the men in her life, and the women in theirs.
Magical Game Time
This is the perfect example of using animation in your webcomic! Written and drawn by Zac Gorman. It’s a part of a blog, so there is art as well as comics.
Hark! A Vagrant!
A historical humor and satire webcomic. Humorous, witty, and educational! It also includes lovely retakes on literature and pop culture. Written and drawn by the brilliant Kate Beaton.
Surviving the World
This is a photo webcomic, which is according to webcomic purists to not be a real webcomic. Bah, I say! This is one of my favorites. Here’s their About blurb:
Surviving the World is a webcomic focusing on all shades of life, from science to literature, politics to sports, romance to religion, and everything else in between.
It’s written/taught by Dante Shepherd. We have one of his webcomics printed out and posted in the newsroom, this one to be precise:
Goblins
Another wonderfully written comic! It’s set in a fourth-wall-breaking fantasy realm that pulls heavily from Dungeons and Dragons. It’s well written and don’t let the early art fool you—it just gets better and better. It’s also in comic book style, I just put up a strip-sized section because a page of it is HUGE.
Penny Arcade
This is a behemoth amongst webcomics. It is one of the longest running webcomics, since it started in 1998, drawn by Mike Krahulik and written by Jerry Holkins.
Since then, it has become an entity that stretches out of the internet. This comic started a gaming convention, a children’s charity, a scholarship, and even spawned some video games. It’s main deal is video game culture. I didn’t include a sample comic because I couldn’t find a copyright policy on their site. Definitely check it out.
There are tons more of webcomics, but I think this is a good start. I might post more links later one, in my “Oh the Places You’ll Go! (On the Internet)” series.
Any other webcomic suggestions that I didn’t touch on please feel free to comment with a link!