03/04: Things are Funny Here

This is the first Gray Matters that is really just a *gag* comic. Not to say that none of the other ones had little pithy comments at the end, but this is the first one with no real meat in the comic besides the humor.

 

I've been reading a bunch of webcomics while I'm supposed to be working.

Mitch Clem is an apparant heavy-weight in the webcomic world with his comic Nothing Nice to Say, although I can't say I'm fond of it. The art is subpar, and the comic is not funny to anyone it is not specifically targetted to. The same can be said of Penny Arcade, but of course, I like Penny-Arcade because I like video games, as do many people on the internets. Nothing Nice to Say is targetted towards some specific music sub-culture that I don't know enough about to name.

He has a journal comic, however, that I find pretty entertaining, although he doesn't have much of an archive built on it. Go ahead and check out Nothing Nice to Say too, as you might like it more than I.

Weird Adventures in Unemployment looks to be an interesting strip. It's obvious from the getgo that the characters are pre-developed and have quite a backstory that has yet to be explained. Its rare in a webcomic that you get to start in the middle of a story rather than at the beginning, which is good, considering the medium. You have to capture audiences quickly, and a single room in an industrial building that is occupied by a man-eating squid will do that.

Scene Language and Anders Loves Maria are actually moderatly similar strips as far as their dramatic theme goes. And the sex. Well, Scene Language doesn't even begin to compare to Anders Loves Maria when it comes to sex. But the constant barrage of broken hearts is pretty close.

Scene Language is definately the tamer of the two, but its probably still not safe for work. It's rounded out with no less than five very developed characters, with complicated webs of relationships abounding. The stories and emotions merge together, so its one of those comics where you can't really explain one thing without really giving away a big chunk of the comic.

Anders Loves Maria - where to begin. Well, to start, don't read this at work. I mean, if you threw a dart at the archive, you'd have like a 50/50 chance of opening a strip with characters having sex. There's alot of sex. Anders Loves Maria is a very experimental art comic, so the layout and medium are constantly changing strip to strip. The characters are actually very realistic, once you realize that they are exaggerations of archetypes. Anders is a skinny white boy from a rich family, Maria is a spunky girl who doesn't think about consequences.

The only thing you learn from Scene Language and Anders Loves Maria is what not to do in a relationship.