Boy on a Stick and Slither by Steven Cloud

In an arena that’s crowded with elaborate Sci-Fi themes, baroque fantasy themes and byzantine plots, it’s refreshing to note that one of the best comics on the Web features two main characters who don’t even have arms.

The main characters of Steven Cloud’s Boy on a Stick and Slither are a sort of coalition of the limbless. Boy is either a multiple amputee or a sentient Pez dispenser, and Slither is a snake. In a boxing match, they’re on equal footing.

The fact that neither protagonist can wear a wrist watch is mostly irrelevant to the strip, though, as they’re essentially icons or stand-ins for any two people. They look like doodles from the corner of a Physics notebook, and conceptually, they’re the same. They’re symbols, really, and their visual representations are irrelevant, except as fodder for a self-aware gag or two.

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