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Alternate History

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All right, kids, history lesson time.

In 1954, child psychologist Fredric Wertham published his book Seduction of the Innocent, which puts the blame for everything from juvenile crime to athlete's foot squarely on the doorstep of the local boogieman: comic books. This was not entirely a new thing at the time: there had been numerous statements from 'experts' on the degenerate nature of comics in varying medical journals, newspapers, street corners for years prior. But Seduction was the biggest, most organized attack yet on the industry. It was enormously popular. The public began howling for standards and decency in comics, and so the industry decided to muzzle itself before the federales beat them to it.
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The 10kCommotion by Yukon Makoto, reviewed by Stelas

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Held in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the year 200X, the TenKay Commotion is the hottest Dance Dance Revolution tournament around. With 24 teams of competitors and some of the most prestigious judges around, not to mention the TenKay Commotion Mix, a collection of all the DDR mixes so far, TenKay promises to be hot.

And indeed it is; blazing onto the scene is The 10K Commotion, a relatively new manga-styled webcomic from Yukon Makoto. Updating weekly, but in batches of about ten pages each week, it has already built up a huge following and an archive stretching to eighty pages (at the time of this writing) – two chapters out of a planned eleven.

So. Are you ready? Continue Reading →

Pokey the Penguin by Steve Havelka, reviewed by Justin

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I AM POKEY. Three words, typed completely in caps, are recognized in the webcomics community as the catchphrase of one of its longest-running cult heroes. It is possibly both the best and worst webcomic to squat on the Web.

Confused? You haven’t seen anything yet.

Pokey the Penguin‘s an institution in some ways. You may gag at the art and puzzle at the gags the first time you see it, yet the comic sits atop the links page of many popular webcomics. What is its secret? In short, who is Pokey? Continue Reading →

The First Comic On the Internet (The History of Online Comics: Part 1)

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In this series of articles T Campbell explores the history of the still young medium of webcomics. In part one, Campbell looks at Hans Bjordahl's Where The Buffalo Roam which first appeared on Usenet in 1992. Bjordahl was the first of a small group of online comic pioneers centered in Boulder, Colorado that also included Holley Irvine (Ozone Patrol), Tom Oling (40th Parallel, later USS Utopia) and Terry Krueger (SOS). Despite his legitimate claim to creating the first "online comic", Bjordahl is no longer actively creating comics. Continue Reading →

We Look at Them Enough… So Why Can’t We Draw Them?

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Breasts. They are everywhere. Floating, bobbing, jiggling, drooping, pointing, teasing, taunting, terrifying…

Yes.

Terrifying.Breasts.

They are everywhere. Floating, bobbing, jiggling, drooping, pointing, teasing, taunting, terrifying…

Yes.

Terrifying.

Breasts have been known to induce confusion in some, inspire discomfort in others, and cause the rest to flee in fear or disgust. Who gets panicked by these, you may ask? Women, mostly. Some men, to boot. But why would a set of human glands be something frightening? How could they, designed for feeding children, and a leading cause for horny (mostly-)male eyestrain, be seen as something scary?

Easy – when they are drawn badly.

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Mycomics.com Is Taking Away My Comics Email

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They’re not taking it away, really. They just expect me to pay for it now. Darn. There go the free comics.

Ucomics.com went to a pay system last year, offering either all your comics in one big email or on one special webpage. They still offered the option of getting one comic for free, knowing that someone who’s just getting Adam or Foxtrot or For Better or For Worse wouldn’t pay for a service that was supposed to be a convenience to the people getting twenty comics a day. Continue Reading →

Faux Pas by R&M Creative Endeavours, reviewed by Apis Teicher

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It has become more or less a given that when delving into the myriad meanings of ‘independence’ one is usually bombarded with images of the heroic, the sublime, or the groundbreaking. How does one become a groundbreaker though? More and more, it seems that we take it as a given that to do groundbreaking work one must appeal to angst-ridden, apocalyptic visions. However, there are some who take quite the opposite approach; in the recent influx of ‘altered realities’ scenarios, they are going against what has become mainstream, and taking a stand for Cute.
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Watching the World Go By

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Have you ever stopped at a Rest Stop and saw a man that was clearly not traveling anywhere? I seem to run into one all the time. He’s not a motorist or hitch-hiker or trucker or attendant. He’s just some guy who just found himself there and stuck around for the plumbing and soft pretzels.

Kinda like Web cartoonists.
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Stickler and Hat-Trick review Ornery Boy by Michael Lalonde

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Stickler and Hat-trick, in association with Comixpedia present…

Stickler and Hat-trick at the Keyboard

Today we’ll review: ORNERYBOY, created by Michael Lalonde

(Tonight’s show is sponsored 240 oz. cans of BOO-YA brand Caffeine juice. Straight from the Caffino plant right to your home).

STICKER: Hi, and welcome to yet another edition of “Stickler and Hat-Trick At the Keyboard!”
HAT-TRICK: Hold on a sec… Continue Reading →