Amused in Review

Count Your Sheep - Wednesday, June 11, 2003

I just love Count Your Sheep to pieces. Everything about it, the clean simple artwork, the characters, the whimsy, even the limited pallette just makes me smile.

Is Penguin, of Todd and Penguin--the comic strip. Sorry, Opus, but that's life in the cutthroat world of comics. One day you're top of the heap, the next you're herring well past its sell-by date. Penguin is funny, Penguin is innocent, and Penguin gives me yet another webcomic that I love.

Continuing the hit parade of new favorite webcomics, there's Angel Moxie. Angel Moxie is a strip about a magical girl (three of them actually), trying to save the world from the forces of...wait for it....EVIL! There's nothing spectacularly new here, but it's lovingly done, the chibi-esque cartooning is IMO brilliant (I just adore some of the expressions Dan pulls off), and there are 451 strips up for you to read so what are you still doing here?

Read Websnark.com and you won't have to bother coming here any more. It's a great place to find out about amazing webcomics that you may not have heard about before, it's a great format (focussing on discussing particular day's strips, usually, rather than the comic as a whole), and Eric Burns writes A LOT. I just can't imagine putting the energy into it that he does (leaving aside any differences in, oh, say, talent and having interesting things to say). On the other hand, I discovered Narbonic before he did, so there.

Click on the image to see it full-sized at Count Your Sheep

Aw....

Websnark points to an interesting The Humor Roundtable Collected by T Campbell on Comixpedia

Several of my favorite webcomic artist participated, and while there's nothing earth-shattering in their discussion of humor (shortage of Illudium Q-36, no doubt) there are some good links to their strips, showcasing ones that they or their fans think are their funniest. Some of them stem from character humor, so if you're not a regular reader of the strip they might not strike you as hilarious, but I found it interesting--and most of the strips are worth the time it takes to become familiar with them anyway.

The Foreigner - Japan: So You Want To Learn Japanese.

Cruel, but funny.

Just to show what a geek I am, the laughing girl spot illo is Yukino Miyazawa from Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou by Tsuda Masami.

Narbonic Volume 2 is coming! I bought 7 copies of volume 1, because I knew that I'd be thrusting them on my friends, babbling "You must read this!" I'd like to thank late industrial capitalism, which made it all possible.

With a comic strip. And I don't think there are any states that will let us marry.

Read about Parker's eventful day over at mystifying oracle .

Or is Kestrel being an utter bitch to Angela here? "Oh, you lied to me because you secretly wished to be more than friends, even though you never did or said anything to pressure me in any way! Get out of my life!" If you read Something Positive, can you imagine Jhim doing this to PeeJee (if he ever actually figured out that she wants him?)

I don't post as much at Tartsville, the Sequential Tart bulletin board, as I used to. Partly it's that I'm posting more about comics here, partly it's that the last couple of times I tried to start a discussion at Tartsville (on Count Your Sheep, and on Angel Moxie) it didn't go anywhere. I mean not even a single reply. I can get that here, and if I post here at least somebody might stumble across it in Google, ya know?
Still, it's a good, civil board, with lots of fun indie creators, including my bestest pal Rachel Hartman of Amy Unbounded fame. Though nowadays, she's more of Milkbreath and Me fame. Hey, it won two blogging awards so far, so that's fame--in fact it may be more fame than her Xeric grant what with the relative sizes of the readerships...

Um.

Girl Genius
(you can now read the whole of issue one at that link)

Gold Digger (official fansite)

Knights of the Dinner Table
(the online strips)

PS238

Nodwick

Conan

Um. I think that's it, at least as far as the 32-page staple-bound pamphlet form goes. Astro City when it appears. A couple more things, once they get collected:

Wolff & Byrd

Invincible
(damned if I can find an official web-page for it)

She-Hulk

The Goon

Mostly, though, I'm reading webcomics and manga.

Language Log: "Ho ho ho", she laughed in a refined feminine way points to some interesting links, particularly an academic paper Problems in the translations of comics and cartoons

Michael Paulus :: Skeletal Systems:

The skeletal systems of various cartoon characters

Update: btw, if you surf to the site and take a look at the Charlie Brown image, there's something that bugs me about it. Why does Charlie Brown's skull have protruding cheekbones? It doesn't seem to be implied by anything on the surface...his head's a big ole sphere, round enough to be used as an impromptu globe, but you couldn't guess that from the Paulus's version of the skull. It just seems like he's pulling in more knowledge of human anatomy than is warranted, compared to, say, Bubbles above.

Well, Sonny, so square that I don't even recognize the trends that Questionable Content mocks

But that's ok, 'cause it's almost time for Matlock.

Maaaaaaatloooooock!