Category Archives: metapost

Heads up all…

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Heads up… I’m taking a break from reviews in October (and maybe November… I’m playing around with doing NaNoWriMo, the 50K word time-waster, this year again). I’ve got a lot to do in real life right now, and webcomic reviews are going to have to take a back seat. I may come back shortly Halloween time to take a look at some spoooooky webcomics (including, perhaps, finally posting that Red Light Properties review I’ve been working on since, oh, the beginning of the year). But beyond that, I don’t know. I’ll be traveling a little, loving a little, dressing up to scare impressionable kids a little… all that stuff.

Thanks to everyone for reading the Webcomic Overlook. And fear not! The Webcomic Overlook will be back.

For fans of Know Thy History

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If you’re a fan of the Know Thy History feature I publish around here, the AV Club did a pretty fantastic primer on newspaper comics today. It’s mainly an overview, as comic history is too deep to cover in only a span of two pages, but it’s a highly informative piece about some of the most important strips to see print in newspapers. I was also happy to see The Yellow Kid, Buster Brown, Polly And Her Pals, Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, and Li’l Abner all get mentions, which means I ain’t too far off the rocker when it comes to picking entries for my own feature.

Here are what AV Club considers to be the essentials:

1. Peanuts. At once accessible enough to be widely popular and personal enough to be poignant, Charles Schulz’s long-running, still-funny strip is what just about any newspaper cartoonist would love to have as a legacy.

2. Calvin & Hobbes. Too short-lived by half, Bill Watterson’s beautifully drawn journey into a oft-bratty child’s imagination made comic-strip fans out of people who rarely pick up a newspaper.

3. Gasoline Alley. Tip a cap to Canadian publisher Drawn & Quarterly and to notable Frank King fans Joe Matt and Chris Ware for reintroducing the lovely, novelistic Gasoline Alley to a generation that had never seen the strip in its heyday. Exciting, funny, and moving, the King run of Gasoline Alley is top-tier entertainment, regardless of the medium.

4. Krazy Kat. Like the best art, Krazy Kat defies easy analysis or explanation; it just emerges from its own peculiar space and proceeds to be.

5. Doonesbury. The longevity of Garry Trudeau’s sprawling, politically astute strip may have worked against its reputation some, as even comic-strip fans have come to take it for granted. But the longevity is also Doonesbury’s strength. Its characters have grown and changed with the world they live in, and there’s scarcely any major event of the past 40 years that hasn’t been dealt with by Trudeau in his strip. It remains as fresh—and important—as today’s news.

Metapost: Heads up

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Just a heads up: I had been totally been expecting to go on an overseas business trip this week. It’s since been canceled. However, I’d been preparing to go all week long, which meant I didn’t have time to read any webcomics. (Got all the time in the world now though. Rrrrrrr….)

That’s not to say there will be a review up at some point. It will be in a slightly different format than you’re used to, though.

But really, I just wanted to try out this nifty new “Status”-type post.

The Webcomic Overlook is 4 years young!

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On this day, July 24, 2007, a bored blogger with way too much time on his hands started writing about webcomics. At around the same time (three days earlier than this blog, in fact), Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows was released.

Four years later, I’m still blogging about webcomics. Meanwhile, Deathly Hollows, the book, became the fastest selling book in history, and, a week ago, the movie broke records everywhere — including the worldwide record opening weekend numbers.

There’s a lesson here.

This site clearly needs more witches.

So while I’m hard at work infusing this blog with the unspeakable powers of the occult, I’d like to give big props to all readers of The Webcomic Overlook. According to WordPress, this site averages around 2,000 readers a day… and a good number of you, I’m guessing aren’t spam!

It doesn’t matter whether you’re here because you came to defend drawings of Powerpuff Girls as jailbait or whether you legitimately wanted recommendations of good webcomics. I’m just glad you dropped by. Otherwise, I would’ve … I don’t know … done long form video reviews of the Star Wars prequels using a serial killer gimmick or yelling about cartoons I watched as a kid while waving a pistol around. But that would never catch on.

What does the future of the Webcomic Overlook hold?

Will I finally figure out what in the heck Sluggy Freelance means?

Or maybe I’ll finally lose my will to live and write a review of Least I Could Do?

Will this blog somehow transform into lengthy dissertations of WWII aircraft nose art so subtly that you fail to notice the change?

Will I abandon all of this to start doing a video blog about retro video games and laughing at all the primitive 16-bit graphics?

Will I start blogging … from the Moon?

Will my new mastery of wicked voodoo magic turn all of you reading this very post into my unwitting army of horror? … (No?)

Only time will tell, my friends. Only time will tell.

Metapost: spam. Not so lovely.

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Just a heads up: this site has been hit with a lot of spam lately. While most have been caught by the spam filter (and it’s proven to be a super-efficient spam filter, considering what I’ve seen on other sites), a few have managed to seep through. Typically I sort through the spam to see if any legitimate comments have been incorrectly flagged and filtered out (and it does happen). However, when I wake up in the morning and I have something like 1,000+ spam messages built up in the queue, I figure if it isn’t worth it. If your comment somehow hasn’t showed up and was incorrectly deleted, I offer my sincerest apologies.

Metapost: I’m back!

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I’m back!  And with a new mask.

The awesome thing about taking a vacation where there’s a strong Latino community is that there are vendors hawking super-cheap luchador masks everywhere.  Though I’m a little disappointed that 80% of their stock seems to be Rey Mysterio now, with 15% being Nacho Libre.  Heck, when I came home, my brother-in-law was all, “Why didn’t you get a Nacho Libre mask?”  Oh, but my rage was straining to be contained that day.

So, of course, I came home with a brand new mask for my collection. One that will HOPEFULLY get people to stop going, “Hey, how come you by El Santo and you wear a Blue Demon mask?  SO… although I may not be the only El Santo posting on the internet, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one posting with an El Santo mask.

Now all I gotta do is modify the illustrations in my banners and headers. Sigh… I just redid those, too.

But back to the reviews!  While I did have a couple comics I was going to tackle before the break, they’re going to have to take a backseat to another Webcomic Overlook tradition: reviews of all the Eisner nominees, run them through the patented Sugarshock-o-meter (currently batting at 0.667), and predicting this year’s winner.  Fortunately, I already reviewed two of them: The Abominable Charles Christopher and Lackadaisy. Only three to go!  

Even if I don’t get the winner right, reading through all the comics has been incredibly rewarding. Last year, I uncovered a wonderful gem in Bayou, which I felt was the best comic out of the bunch. Sadly, most readers of the Webcomic Overlook can no longer read this comic for free now that Zuda has up and folded.  Still, without the Eisners, would most of us have even heard of Bayou? Or even Bodyworld?

Anyway, glad to see y’all again, and thanks for sticking around in time to get down to serious business. The serious business of webcomics.

Metapost: Spring Break Adventura Fantastica!

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Long times readers know that the Webcomic Overlook usually goes dark this month for Spring Break, and this year is no different. As I head out of town to parts unknown, the blog follows suit: few updates, if any, next month. This should give me enough time to catch up on a couple of webcomics I’d planned to review, but had fairly long archives.

So, for your reading pleasure while I’m out, here’s a few webcomic review sites that might interest you:

  • After a bit of a hiatus, Zhi is back reviewing webcomics.
  • John Allie is doing some webcomic reviews, too, at Circuit Reader.
  • Don’t forget the webcomic tag at io9, which includes frequent contributions by Storming The Tower‘s Lauren Davis.
  • Born from the ashes of xkcd sucks is webcomics.me, where the target has expanded to video game comics and there’s a legit interview with good webcomic creators every now and then. Wait… their tagline is “We’re serious about comics.” COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!
  • Finally, find out which webcomics are cool at The Cool Web Comic List.

And there’s also a bunch of links I have posted on the right side of the main page. Happy webcomic reading!

One more thing I’d like to share: a couple of months ago, Borden on the Something Awful Comic Strip Thread put together an amazing video consisting of a bunch of animated gifs he made. The result is a dance party consisting of many representatives of the US newspaper comic scene… though technically James Kochalka’s American Elf, Lily and Bud from Oh, Brother!, and Weapon Brown are techically webcomics with strong newspaper comic ties.

It basically all started with an edit of the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip, where Wolverine stands in the back while Spidey prances around. The video went on to include a lot of running gags introduced in the thread. (Wondering why the mom from Family Circus is dancing half-naked? It stems from a running gag about how a skimply dressed Thel Keane would be the only way to ever make Family Circus interesting.) Even if you don’t know the in-jokes, the video is still very funny and very catchy.

Do I wish someone would do something like this for webcomics? Do you even have to ask?

Catch up with y’all later in a month!