We have comedies for all tastes today! Slice of life comedy, to laughable melancholy, and even a “choose your own path” adventure. Enjoy our selection, and happy reading.
Octopus Pie
Meredith Gran
Updates: Twice a week
Genre: Gen Y tries to survive
Octopus Pie is one of the most successful ongoing webcomics. Launched in 2007, it has more than 600 pages already. It focuses on Eve, a sarcastic girl in her 20s who can’t figure out her life, and Hanna, a happy hippie who runs a successful cupcake business, their relationships and their adventures. Each arc is somewhat independent from the others, like when they go to a Ren Fair, when they have a laser gun dispute, or when Hanna fights for the right to go topless. It is a light humour, sometimes as ironic as Eve, sometimes as silly/happy as Hanna.
Few people could hold such a long webcomic, but Meredith Gran is exceptional. She seems to know her characters deeply, and even through the ridiculous situations the girls get into, their personalities are very real. This adds an interesting layer below the humour. The reader gets to care for the characters, and that’s the very heart of Octopus Pie.
— Carolina Mello
Questionable Content
Updates: Monday through Friday most of the time
Genre: Slice of life with sci-fi elements
Jeph Jacques began this comic about the adventures of Marten and his robot, Pintsize, in 2003. Offering a mix of romance, indie music references, snarky t-shirts, and friendship, the tales of Marten, Faye, Dora, Hannelore, Marigold, Momo, Tai, and the rest keep me wondering what will happen next. From antics in outer space (Hannelore was raised on a space station) to snide comments on the menu board at Coffee of Doom (the coffee shop where most of the characters work and/or hang out), this strip keeps offering new storylines and romantic combinations.
With occasional interruptions from Yelling Bird (featured in varying degrees of NSFW placeholder strips on Jacques’s off-days), Questionable Content is another strip that’s good for an extended read-through, with tangled interpersonal drama, including a cute new development between Dale and Marigold (former gaming nemeses recently turned romantic couple) and a face-palm move by Marten on Delilah.
We’ll see where that goes…
Questionable Content has changed a lot since the early days, with the latest revision to the format being in the panel layout.
Marten from the first panel in 2003 (left) and from a more recent panel (right).
As the cast has grown and the romantic couplings have changed, the characters have remained interesting. Worth a read if you’re not already a fan! (Or a re-read if you are.)
— Amanda Murphyao
Short Comics by Sam Alden
Sam Alden
Updates: Sporadically
Genre: Mixed–some slice of life, some fantasy
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I love Sam Alden, but probably not as much as my arm-candy, who got to explained to a fascinated Sam all about how the visual system interprets line drawings as images because nerrrrrrrrrrrrds. (We were all together in a semi-abandonded school in Alaska, which seemed as good a time as any for a lesson on how vision works.)
His tumblr, just, I mean, just look at it. He posts a variety of beautiful, thoughtful, self-contained stories; draft work; and some one-page pieces and posters. I love this guy so much that I’m not even going to shut up about him.
— Amanda Murphyao
Dubblebaby
Sam Alden
& Toby Alden
Updates: Sporadically
Genre: Hilarious chaos
I told you that I wasn’t going to shut up about this guy. In Dubblebaby, Sam and Toby offer riffs on popular culture and comics icons from Dagwood to Batman to Garfield. In a range of styles and layouts, from self-contained old-fashioned looking three-panel pieces to stylized eight-panel tales involving a scroll down, every page is a product of dark comedic genius. One of the finest features of their page is the “Rejects” section, where the light-haired Toby’s elaborate and unfeasible ideas go to live another life of being shot down by the dark-haired Sam.
— Amanda Murphyao
Garfield Minus Garfield
Dan Walsh
Genre: Garfield strips without Garfield in them
Speaking of Garfield, this page is “dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle.”
It is a fantastic revival spoof of Jim Davis’s work, if existential crisis inducing. Nuanced in an understated way, and great for sending around to co-workers, Garfield Minus Garfield will make you laugh, make you think, and make you doubt yourself. Hooray!
— Amanda Murphyao
Choose Your Comic Adventure: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’s Apprentice
Derek Hunter and Jason Young
Updates: Tuesdays and Thursdays
Genre: Medieval fantasy
A “choose your path” adventure in webcomic format: each week, the readers vote on the action they want the character to make. Just when I was wondering how long it would take for someone to figure out that the internet is the perfect place for this format!
Of course the story gets weird sometimes … but that’s the fun. I, of course, don’t want to spoil anything, so let’s just say that recently the readers made a pretty bad decision, and a big thing happened: a bummer, actually. That’s when I realized the authors really mean business. They said that before the voting is concluded they already know where each path will lead … and as in any “choose your path” adventure, some paths are deadly. That really makes things interesting, huh?
It is a fun webcomic that doesn’t take itself too seriously. But vote carefully!
— Carolina Mello
