Michael Swaim
Cartoonists like Garfield's Jim Davis are lucky they got rich enough to buy their own diamond mines before there was such a thing as the Internet. Now, a whole bunch of kids with Blogspot accounts and MS Paint are proving they can do better. Way better.
Since we figure our readers could use a little culture, we've put together a list of, without question, the funniest comics the Web has to offer. That's right: We claim to have identified the best of an utterly subjective art form. Let's see you take issue with that, smart guy!
8Dinosaur Comics, by Ryan North
The Gist:
A six-panel comic featuring clip-art dinosaurs trampling log cabins and tiny women gets its dialogue rewritten five times a week in an example of absurdism at its most hilarious.
Kinda Like:
How every Marmaduke is basically the same drawings of the exasperated lady owner. Only with this one, the written jokes actually change.
Words and Pictures:
Dinosaur Comics features a vibrant color palette, free and open canvases and a boldly choral compositional structure. All right, it' the same goddamned pictures every time. Disregarding that minor detail, the strips are not only funny, but also take on issues as diverse as moral relativism, the nature of true contentment and how to throw knives in order to cut speaker wires at a distance, thereby putting a stop to your neighbors' blaring techno music.
Plus, you'd be amazed how the occasional addition of a goatee can turn a T-Rex into the funniest thing you've seen all week.
Bonus Fun Fact:
Dinosaur Comics were used by an English teacher in Japan as part of his lesson plan. Japanese school kids filled in their own strips. The surreal results seen HERE do very little to disprove stereotypes that the Japanese are weird and obsessed with Godzilla.
7Penny Arcade, by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik
The Gist:
It's the reigning king of all webcomics and failing to include it on this list would get us beaten to death by fanboys wielding cardboard tubes and clad in Fruit Fucker 2000 T-shirts.
Kinda Like:
An ocean of other webcomics where 20-something roommates discuss video games and make obscure references to internet culture. Was Penny Arcade the first? It's arguable. Is it the highest quality and most loved of them all? Hell, yes.
Words and Pictures:
Krahulik's slick artwork is almost always desktop-worthy, and Holkins' overly verbose writing style contrasts quite well with guys playing Xbox and talking about hammering nails into their dicks. Aside from spawning a huge cast of characters and an equally large legion of fans, Penny Arcade has also provided a working business model for webcomics creators. Unfortunately, since the odds of someone making a living off of an Internet comic are a million to one, the false promise of financial security will almost certainly lead to a huge wave of shattered, despondent goth/indie webcomics. And, no one wants that.
Bonus Fun Fact:
Ever responsible and ambitious, Krahulik and Holkins have leveraged Penny Arcade into Child's Play, a large children's charity whose donors are almost all gamers, a video game starring their comic counterparts and the Penny Arcade Expo an annual gaming convention that doubles as a cure for erectile dysfunction among fanboys.
6White Ninja, by Scott Bevan and Kent Earle
The Gist:
The eponymous character, apparently both mildly retarded and impervious to pain, interacts with badgers, rocks and other things that function on an intellectual level similar to his own.
Kinda Like:
If the wide-eyed innocence of SpongeBob SquarePants caused him to constantly and obliviously kill small animals, horribly maim himself or defile sacred objects.
Words and Pictures:
White Ninja both reads and looks as if it were created by an 8-year-old boy during snack time at recess. Usually that would be an insult, but the strip's success is partly based on its ability to force you into its world, rather than the other way around. You may have to scan through a few strips, but after a short while, the purposely stilted lines and fingerless hands all become part of the magic.
Bonus Fun Fact:
White Ninja creators Scott Bevan and Kent Earle were at Comic-Con a couple of years ago, giving out books of White Ninja comics. An older gentleman walked up, said he was a big fan and asked if they would sign one of their books for him. It was Matt Groening.
5Overcompensating, by Jeffrey Rowland
The Gist:
One of the only diary comics worth reading, primarily because it' a bunch of made-up stuff about robotic elves and undead cats instead of unflattering caricatures of people who cut the author off in line at Vons.
Kinda Like:
If Doonesbury were written by a cynical, rambling hippy. OK, if it were written by a different cynical, rambling hippy.
Words and Pictures:
Rowland bills Overcompensating as a diary comic, so expect a fair amount of absurdly self-referential diatribes and random humor. If you can't take sarcastic endorsements of the Bush administration, you're in the wrong place. The simple squiggles and low-res photographic backgrounds don't make Overcompensating a Calvin and Hobbes by any stretch of the imagination, but at least he colors the damn thing. As for the dialogue, it tends to be ranting and written in dialect, which is probably fitting for characters with names like Weedmaster P and Baby.
Bonus Fun Fact:
Rowland also writes and draws Wigu, a fully continuous action/humor comic that is much more ambitious and coherent than Overcompensating, although not nearly as funny.
4Creased Comics, by Brad Neely
The Gist:
The guy that brought you George Washington fucking bears and a giant man-child known only as Babycakes presents single-panel comics designed to blow your mind.
Kinda Like:
If The Far Side had been entirely uncensored and involved the occasional acid flashback.
Words and Pictures:
If you've seen Neely's other work, like profiles of dead presidents highlighting their more hardcore aspects (ie, JFK is a telepathic knight, Washington' aforementioned bear fucking), then you know something about the art style and humor you're in for. Neely is unabashedly bizarre, with a penchant for making comics you laugh at for a few seconds before realizing you have no idea what they're supposed to mean.
Bonus Fun Fact:
One of the greatest of Neely's creations is a complete redub of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone called Wizard People, Dear Readers. Load up the QuickTime files, put the DVD of the movie on mute and prepare to hear Ron call Hermione "a hideous fucker."
3Dr. McNinja, by Chris Hastings and Kent Archer
The Gist:
The site's tagline sums it up pretty well: "Dr. McNinja is a doctor who is also a ninja."
Kinda Like:
If old Flash Gordon strips were redone to appeal to the midnight screening of Evil Dead college crowd.
Words and Pictures:
Dr. McNinja is formatted like an actual comic book, with pages released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and issues containing separate story arcs. Despite that, and the inclusion of some obligatory action sequences, you can't really have a ninja main character and not have him fight a raptor-it's by and large a comedy. The clash of the comic-realistic art style with the action fuels a lot of the humor.
Bonus Fun Fact:
Dr. McNinja started out as a character on the Something Awful forums, further solidifying it as the cradle of most of the world's Internet memes.
2The Perry Bible Fellowship, by Nicholas Gurewitch
The Gist:
In a children' book world populated primarily by near-identical doughy figures, something unspeakably awful happens, but in a really funny way.
Kinda Like:
If every Dr. Seuss book ended with the characters dying in a fiery blaze.
Words and Pictures:
PBF is an old-school comic strip, meaning that each one takes place at a different time, in a different world, almost always with different, albeit stylistically similar characters. No continuity here. Rather, each darkly twisted nugget of genius stands entirely on its own two, disturbing feet.
Gurewitch virtuoso artwork is almost as striking as the dark humor. PBF is an experiment with different styles, with one strip looking like Peanuts and the next looking like a 17th-century woodcut. In a different era, Gurewitch probably would have been painting grotesque scenes of the underworld and would have wound up in an asylum by age 30.
Bonus Fun Fact:
It's almost unfair to put Perry Bible Fellowhsip on a list of webcomics, considering it appears in a couple dozen newspapers and magazines. There's also a book of PBF comics out there, called The Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories.
1Achewood, by Chris Onstad
The Gist:
A dysfunctional group of stuffed animals, robots and a cracked-out squirrel throw ragers, participate in the Great Outdoor Fight and open Subway franchises, all on the dime of feline zillionaire playboy Ray Smuckles.
Kinda Like:
Garfield, if Garfield had robot friends, drank Ketel One and existed on the exact opposite end of the Funny Spectrum.
Words and Pictures:
Onstad' all about the prose, and the majority of the off-kilter, character-based humor is dished out in the word balloons rather than the simple, clipart-esque style. Obscure references, writerly self-indulgences and some supremely bizarre plotlines make it an acquired taste, but one worth acquiring.
Onstad even keeps up semi-regular blogs for each of the large cast of characters, effortlessly switching from one starkly different voice and point of view to the next. The characters are given a level of depth that would be incredible in any medium.
Bonus Fun Fact: Onstad usually hides a second joke or a strip explanation in his image text. Hover your mouse over the strip for a second to see it.
Michael writes and performs for the sketch troupe Those Aren't Muskets!
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