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this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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Fuck, remember webcomics?
Achewood, Diesel Sweeties, Cat and Girl, Penny Arcade, Cyanide & Happiness, Joe and Monkey, Questionable Content, Dresden Codak (always updated way too infrequently), Dinosaur Comics, Gone With the Blastwave, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, The Perry Bible Fellowship, When I Grow Up/WIGU/Overcompensating, Married to the Sea, hell, even CTRL+ALT+DEL left us with Loss. I could go on, there's definitely more.
...but I don't like to talk about what happened with SinFest.
A lot of these sites had advertising, but I don't remember any of it being so off-putting that I felt the need for an adblocker. Honestly, at this point, I don't even recall if adblockers were a thing yet in 2000-2005.
So much content in those early aughts. I'm still waiting on a Complete Achewood. Damn you, Chris Onstad!
I was always a little disappointed I never was able to get a "I'm the guy who sucks/plus I got depres-sion" shirts.
I actually bought things from their ads because I wanted to support them. Those days are long gone.
They mostly advertised other comics and merchandise from other comics, if I recall correctly.
Also, Adblock originally released in 2002, and Adblock Plus came out in 2006.
I do recall one of the reasons I respected webcomics ads was they weren't ones that were animated, blaring music, or asking me to try to play a mini-game by clicking on something that specifically can't be caught by your mouse.
I remember having popup blockers, but not a whole cloth ad blocker.
I still read the order of the stick, even though it updates glacially: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots.html
It's so good. Starts as a goofy DND joke strip, develops a ton of pathos.
What early 2000's webcomics taught me is there were a lot of really great writers out there with some subpar art skills.
When the writing is so good, you don't give a shit that it's all stick figures.
EDIT: I almost forgot. With some of them, the best part was watching them go from stick figures to genuinely great art. Penny Arcade is a great example. The originals were so badly drawn, and it went from bad art to an artist literally having a style all their own.
Some of them were actually pretty good artists; occasionally you'd see them do other stuff and it'd be genuinely good on an artistic level.
The whole stick man, lumpy face, primitivist thing was just an "in" aesthetic (while also being conveniently really quick to produce).
There are a few webcomics out there that have some excellent artwork. Lackadaisy is the first to come to mind, though updates have always been verrrry sporadic—especially now that she’s working on an animated version—and there was one called The Abominable Charles Christopher that was fucking phenomenal, but it just sorta… stopped. I’m still subscribed to the RSS because I’m holding out hope, but I know it’s over.
Oh Jeeze thanks for the reminder of Abominable Charles Christopher. I was always so disappointed when it just sort of stopped. I always assumed he got a professional gig through the work he was doing.
Right, but some of them also blossomed beautifully!
I remember Dresden Codak being good art from the get-go, and it only got better over the years. Same with Perry Bible Fellowship, that guys got some fucking artistic chops.
I'd say this went for things like Cyanide and Happiness, which if I recall correctly, had a series of artists, it wasn't all just one person.
Stuff like Sluggy Freelance? Yeah, the art and writing really never got that much better.
Then you have Dinosaur Comics, whose entire shtick was (and is) just re-using the exact same panels for every comic.
Once again... We don't talk about SinFest.
Anders loves Maria
Hell, I'm about to go and edit my original comment and make links to any that are still around. Looks like a lot of them are!
Here's the link for Anders loves Maria.
I'm happy to see that Something Positive is still going strong. Dude is a great person and it's fun to see his parenting come out through the comic as I catch up and now relate to some of that more than I did before.
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Back when shift+esc would stop animated GIFs, so even the shittiest non-Flash ads could at least be ignored.
Also: 8-Bit Theater, the only good sprite comic.
Also also: Gunnerkrigg Court.
Gunnerkrig Court is one of those that started with pretty good art already, but by the modern era Tom Siddell had truly become an artist.
He's redrawing the early stuff for the new books.
Coyote is the clearest example of his growth. There's rules you didn't know you knew until you see that damn dog actively break them in a static image. And occasionally I'll go through the chapter with Jones's history and just marvel.
What surprised me was that the apparently-not-happening animated adaptation was going to use a wildly different artstyle, when the comic itself is so clean and shape-heavy. I assume that project has completely fallen through. If the pandemic didn't kill it in 2020, we're now deep into an executive superstition against animation.
One of my absolute favorite webcomics is Peter and Company. I didn't realize this, but the website lists the first strip as being from 2005 and the latest being from last month.
Freefall is still going strong, 3 panels a week. Since like 1998 or something. Never loses the humor either, unlike some comics that ditch humor once they develop dramatic plot.