Well, here’s something you don’t see every day…
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Category Archives: webcomics
Josh Neufeld receives the Knight-Wallace Fellowship in journalism
Earlier this year, Josh Neufeld received an Eisner Award nomination for his webcomic, Bahrain (which I reviewed here). Now, the webcomic has opened up an even bigger opportunity for Mr. Neufeld: the Knight-Wallace Fellowship, a grant from the University of Michigan “for a full academic year of sabbatical studies at the University’s campus, with twice-weekly seminars and other educational opportunities.” Robot 6 elaborates:
“My study plan is to extensively research Bahrain’s Pearl Revolution, which I did a short piece about for Cartoon Movement,” Neufeld said in an e-mail. “I plan on taking courses in the history of the Persian Gulf, Islam (specifically the Sunni-Shia divide), and the language and culture of the region. The ultimate goal is to produce a long-form comics-format book on the topic.”
I always love it when webcomics are used as a starting point for something even greater. Neufeld’s accomplishment is a pretty important touchtone in using comics in the field of journalism: “Neufeld is the first comics journalist to be offered this fellowship, and the second comics journalist to receive any sort of American journalism fellowship.”
Follow Fridays: Small Change
Thought I’d like to try something a little different. I end up getting a stack of recommendations, and I have a hard time getting to them all. So I’m going to start tossing up links to comics that I haven’t yet read nor reviewed, hopefully giving them a little publicity in the short term. (It doesn’t mean I won’t get to ‘em eventually, though.) Every Friday this month, I’ll put up a link and a description of the comic via the “About” page.
Here’s the first one, which was shared to me — quite uniquely, I might add — via the Draw Something game.
Small Change by Drew Springer
“Small Change is a webcomic. Small Change has no set topic. Small Change updates every Tuesday and Thursday.”
The Webcomic Overlook #200: Least I Could Do
Well, it’s finally come to this.
If you’d asked me five years ago that I’d be approaching this milestone, I would’ve thought you crazy. My goals were simple when I started this site. I only wanted to review more webcomics than any other site ever has before. I think that mark has long passed. Then, after I’d reviewed my 100th review, I thought to myself, “Well, I have nothing more to prove. I think I’ll wrap up this site in, oh, six months.” Well, it’s been two and a half years since I crossed that milestone, and this site keeps on going.
I have reviewed everything from Jack to Rice Boy to Ctrl+Alt+Del to Lackadaisy. I have seen the stunning heights of Gunnerkrigg Court and the Stygian depths of Grim Tales From Down Below. I’ve seen the fall of Zuda Comics, the controversy over dick wolves, and Order of the Stick netting a bunch of money on Kickstarter. I’ve been interviewed by a Canadian magazine for an article on Kate Beaton, and I’ve presented an hour lesson for a class on webcomics.
And now … just now … I’ve reached the milestone that I thought I’d never achieve.
That’s right: today’s the day I review Least I Could Do, a rather notorious webcomic by Ryan Sohmer and Lar De Souza. It has published a comic strip every single day for almost 10 years now. That is a whole buttload of comics, people. And to a comic with such a deep archive… this is madness. THIS … IS …
…wait. Now’s not the time for a 300 parody. It’s 100 reviews too early, and… LICD has it covered. *sigh* Let’s just move along, shall we?
One Punch Reviews #64: Next Town Over
One of the genres that has surprisingly thrived under the webcomic format is the weird western. Now, I ain’t saying that readers cotton it, particularly — the same way they cotton those comics what make fun of video games, I mean. Weird westerns, though, sure do cut a swell during awards time. High Moon, which is about the Wild West with werewolves, won a Harvey Award. Guns of Shadow Valley, which is about cowboys with superpowers, was nominated for an Eisner. It makes sense when you think about it. Weird westerns hearken back to the Golden Age of movies when heroes like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Clint Eastwood lit up the screen. At the same time, they play to more modern audiences when you add some sci-fi, the supernatural, fantasy, and steampunk.
Who could have imagined that The Wild Wild West was the future of storytelling?
Which brings us to Erin Mehlos’ Next Town Over. It sure is a mighty unassuming name. You hear it and you done think to yourself, “With a fancy title like that, this is surely some sort of romance comic.” Which, come to think it it, may not be all too far from the mark. At its heart, this is a webcomic about two lovers. They also have superpowers. And a couple of souped up horses. Set down a spell and you’ll see what I mean.
The Webcomic Overlook #199: Paranatural
Some time ago, I was helping some folks clean up an old building downtown. I was there with my wife and a fellow helper. It was getting late… and our companion did the one thing you should not be doing when it starts getting dark: she started telling stories. Namely, that she had seen ghosts here.
She told us of two occurrences. She said she once saw a young girl playing near the pulpit. She seemed like a little girl who was just playing around, laughing and giggling and the like. The girl ran off to the back room. The lady went to check on the girl, but, as you might guess, the girl disappeared. The other ghost she saw was a soldier. The lady had done some research, and she found out the building next door was once an infirmary at the turn of the 20th century. She said that these ghosts weren’t dangerous. They were, in fat, rather friendly. She wouldn’t have thought them to be ghosts except that when she’d run after them, they’d disappeared.
Now, maybe I’m not the type of person who believes in ghosts. Maybe I had nothing to be afraid of, since it was made clear that the ghosts were harmless. Friendly or not, though, you best believe we shut off the lights, locked the doors, and got out of that building as fast as we could. The very otherness of a non-corporeal being is enough to get your hairs standing on end.
Zack Morrison knows this. There are many ghosts in his webcomic Paranatural. Some are dangerous. Some are not. But even the friendly ones possess the sort of innate creepiness that makes you want to lock the doors and get out as fast as possible.
Poll: Which webcomic makes great material for a new animated series?
Back in the days when Matt Wilson was creating the webtoon series, Bonus Stage, he threw in a joke where the characters were getting excited about webcomics getting their own shows. The characters excitedly gab about Queen Of Wands and Penny Arcade.
Well, that day is finally upon us, as Axe Cop got the green light on Fox’s Saturday Night animation block. So, heroes, I bring the question to you: what other webcomic would make for a good animated series?
