Webcomic of the moment

[Jon]

Huh, I quit reading Gunnerkrigg with the *checks* "From The Forest She Came" chapter. Basically, Chris Carter effect.

[Dracos]

http://drmcninja.com/ like it sounds like.  Sometimes fairly awesome, occassionally (like today) incoherent.  It's a story that prefers Pizazz over reason, Explosions over common sense.

[Brian]

Gunnerkrigg ... Chris Carter effect.

This is a fair claim.

How about: Copper?

No real overarching plot or arcs, but fun art and the occasional cute joke (or just neat thing).  Fluff, mostly.  Probably also not going to get any more pages at this point, but still.

Then again, as long as we're throwing out seriously arc-fatigued comics that had great starts:

Dominic Deegan.  Worth an archive binge until you get tired of it, probably; art starts out shaky and gets ... decent.

This one is NSFW.  Spoilering it so you can't say you clicked before reading (without me rolling my eyes at you, anyway):

Spoiler: ShowHide

Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic Nudity, violence, and way funnier than I expected in parts (and slow in others).  Worth reading up until probably 2008, YMMV.  Art quality varies, tends to be surprisingly decent, except for a lack of cleanup.

[Brian]

Another one that I'm loving to hate now (frustrating in terms of slow updates):

http://www.erfworld.com/

Premise: Overweight main character (This Loser Is You) Parson lives in the real world with a terrible life and wishes he could go into one of his fantasy Turn Based Strategy Games.  In a fantasy universe rife with references and memes, where people live in a Turn Based system dictated to them by the Titans of ancient times, the ruler of a Side needs a new Warlord.

These plot threads meet.

It started out great, and the art was pretty decent from the beginning, and got better as the story goes on.  Book one is all webcomics, and is complete (though, the overarching story is NOT complete).  Book two jarred me by shifting to 'every so often, pages are novels, with a line-drawing at the bottom, and not comics at all'.  Not bad, but very unexpected.

Adjusting to the that, the text segments aren't horrible; they can convey a lot more insight into a character's head than you might get with just the comics.

This does lead directly to my current issue, and why I'm not as happy with the current state as the past:

The pace is really starting to suffer now, and quite a few of the last updates have felt totally irrelevant WRT moving the plot forward.  Today's helps, but it seems like every revelation must be followed by a lot of pages of nothing happening.  No Chris Carter effect here, just serious Arc Fatigue on the current Turn (which has lasted, I think, a little more than nine months of real-time).  I'm also a bit irked that (currently) the focus feels 'webcomics only for Parson; you don't GET awesome text insight into him and whatever he's planning; those are for irrelevant side-characters!'.

Hopefully, once the deal with Jetstone and whatever is going on in the Magic Kingdom is finally straightened out, things will move forward again.

Despite my complaints, I do still read it.  You may enjoy at least the start of it, as well.

[Dracos]

Huh, I quit reading Gunnerkrigg with the *checks* "From The Forest She Came" chapter. Basically, Chris Carter effect.

I still read, but it's become muddled.  I don't know what it is now.  The stories seem unimportant in a way, even to the character's experiencing them.  I don't know where it's going and for the entirety of the current arc I haven't gotten what's there that we should care about?

[Brian]

Oh, here's one that's good.  Just slow: Dead Winter.

Some NSFW pages.

Premise: Suddenly, zombies.

[Jason_Miao]

It started out great, and the art was pretty decent from the beginning, and got better as the story goes on.  Book one is all webcomics, and is complete (though, the overarching story is NOT complete).  Book two jarred me by shifting to 'every so often, pages are novels, with a line-drawing at the bottom, and not comics at all'.  Not bad, but very unexpected.

The text bits started as a "Xin can't draw quite that much" thing.  My question is, since he's releasing comic books, what is he going to do then?  Is half of his comic book going to be long strings of text?  Not that I'm going to buy it either way, just wondering since he has this habit of calling himself an enterpreneuer and lecturing about how to run a successful online business and such.

Re: pacing, I get annoyed at that, but then again, this was also a perpetual complaint in book 1 when it was being drawn, especially if you had pages that were mostly establishing scenes.  But if you read it through once it was finished, the pacing works.  So, I'll reserve judgement on that until he's finished with the Jetstone arc.

[Jason_Miao]

http://www.exploitationnow.com/deadpool

Deadpool v. Sailor Moon.  Very short (4 pages).

[Dracos]

http://comiz-inc.deviantart.com/art/The-Legend-of-Zelda-Cover-189812330?q=gallery%3Acomiz-inc%2F16295723&qo=5

Ran across this somehow this morning.  Still not sure, I blinked and I was in some Legend of Zelda AU that was pretty epic, with Gannondorf as king of Hyrule, The War to Make Peace continuing, and link finding himself with the Mark of the Traitor.

Also Zelda is a sexy/angry drunk princess.

Kinda neat.  Art improves...sometimes laterally (almost a different style at points).

Apparently its been going since December of last year.  So roughly 3 pages a week.  Dunno if it'd be good to read day by day, but some of the scenes are pretty neat.

[Iron Dragoon]

http://comiz-inc.deviantart.com/art/The-Legend-of-Zelda-Cover-189812330?q=gallery%3Acomiz-inc%2F16295723&qo=5

Ran across this somehow this morning.  Still not sure, I blinked and I was in some Legend of Zelda AU that was pretty epic, with Gannondorf as king of Hyrule, The War to Make Peace continuing, and link finding himself with the Mark of the Traitor.

Also Zelda is a sexy/angry drunk princess.

Kinda neat.  Art improves...sometimes laterally (almost a different style at points).

Apparently its been going since December of last year.  So roughly 3 pages a week.  Dunno if it'd be good to read day by day, but some of the scenes are pretty neat.

Pretty good. I'm on page 96 right now. Don't care for the art change; so far I think the first art style was *much* better.

But, still, pretty good.

[Dracos]

Someone asked me to poke when Sluggy got better.  I think it has. 

Someone also poked to suggest start points after Oceans Unmoving.  Seven + years ago.  Wow, small challenge.  Gonna give a few whacks at it.

This is right at the end of the Dystopian City 4 U arc, placed at the close, it's at a depressing bit right before Riff hero's it up and the gang gets back together for the first time in ages.  Context for this is that the evil House of Cheese had arranged an assassination on Torg and his group.  Zoe and Riff were blasted into another dimension (City 4 U) and have spent years there, before encountering the evil mastermind of Old and Bitter AU Riff and saving the city.  Torg meanwhile has been operating a clandestine anti-villain group, hunting down a way to rescue them both and bother supervillains worldwide.  Almost all of the Gang comes back together just in time for the last big op to take down House of Cheese.

Probably the best place to start and quickly get context on a lot of things, since Another Year in Life of a Villian is right after it and then the setup for Act 3 takes place.
http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/110630

This is the beginning of the current chapter, retrieving the two main cast members that had been off to the side a while and going into what happened to them.  It's probably a not bad start to come back along.
http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/130311

Getting into it just before storytime and then action scenes of fun:
http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/130423

Without the storytime and context at all, about like 4 pages from demon attack:
http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/130514

[Dracos]

This is a good one.  Slacker I think introduced me to it over a few tries.

http://deadwinter.cc/

It's got great art, powerful character, and lots of zombie fighting.  Problem?  Its update rate is glacier.  Not dresden kodak glacier, but closer to 1 page per two weeks glacier.  So once you get through its rather sizable backlog, the show stalls to a halt.  Still, it's worth reading up to present because it's a good ride until then.

Blah, and there was a reference by Brian to this earlier too :P

Oh well, so much for 1 old, 1 new. :)  I thought I didn't spot it.

[Onyxlamb]

Not fantasy-centric, exactly (although things like mermaids to appear from time to time) but I've been following Bad Machinery for a little while now.

http://scarygoround.com/?date=20090921

It follows a group of British children interested in solving mysteries. It's light, somewhat humorous, and the art and story have been pretty consistently good. I wouldn't call it the greatest read ever, but it's compelling enough that I keep up with it. Updates four times a week, I think (weekdays except Fridays, maybe?).

[Music-chan]

http://www.starpowercomic.com/

This is a really new comic, only a few months old.  It's pretty good!  The art is nice and the story is good so far.  I'd suggest a read.

[Dracos]

Moved the old thread to be more accessible.