Webcomics Corner
Patrick Harris
Issue date: 5/14/10 Section: Comics
Hey, y'all. Before we get started, I want to share some sad news: this will be my last installment of Webcomics Corner. Many thanks to all my loyal readers, and it's been a fun year-and-some-change, but I'm thinking it's time to move on to stranger things. Besides, I'm starting to run out of comics to recommend! Granted, I'll probably come out of the summer with a half-dozen new ones on my list, but during the semester it's hard to catch up on a strip with decent archives, and as evidenced by Surviving the World, mouthing off before catching up isn't ideal.
Before we get to my final recommendation, I'm going to succumb to peer pressure and tell you to read Penny Arcade. Odds are you already read PA, of course. It's been running for twelve years, and until xkcd came along it was the reigning champion. But their merchandising manager is a friend of mine, and he's been nagging me to pimp them for a while, and he did just send me a t-shirt which I have now cleverly disclosed, so what the hell. Seriously, though, if you are the 1% of the human population that doesn't know Penny Arcade, you should correct that: http://www.penny-arcade.com/
I guess I'll riff that theme and tell you about another strip you should already know about, and maybe try to do some good with my last column. So let's talk about Goats. Goats used to be a hilarious gag-a-day sort of strip about some guys sitting in a bar, plus a satanic chicken, the Don Juan of goats, a barely-sentient fish, some zombies and so forth. Somewhere along the way, Jon Rosenberg decided he was sick of the gag-a-day thing, which is fair enough, and he wound up using the Goats cast to tell an epic multidimensional tale of ... I'm not sure what yet, but it involves a dead God (he got eaten) and the nature of reality.
Truth is, it's pretty good, and after years of it I'm finally starting to get in to it ... just in time for him to announce that, thanks to this blasted recession, he's having trouble making a living off webcomics like he used to. So right now, there's no guarantee that this epic insanity will go on for more epic years.
So here's what I'm going to recommend. You should go right now to the Goats website. You should start all the way back at the beginning and you should read all the gag-a-day stuff. If it appeals to you-and I don't see how it couldn't-you should buy a piece of merchandise. Then you should read all the epic whatnot up till now. If that appeals to you, you should buy another piece of merchandise. Maybe that'll get him to that whole 'feeding his family' stage of income, and we can see the rest of this tale.
Or, you know, just go read. Whatever works for you: http://goats.com.
Before we get to my final recommendation, I'm going to succumb to peer pressure and tell you to read Penny Arcade. Odds are you already read PA, of course. It's been running for twelve years, and until xkcd came along it was the reigning champion. But their merchandising manager is a friend of mine, and he's been nagging me to pimp them for a while, and he did just send me a t-shirt which I have now cleverly disclosed, so what the hell. Seriously, though, if you are the 1% of the human population that doesn't know Penny Arcade, you should correct that: http://www.penny-arcade.com/
I guess I'll riff that theme and tell you about another strip you should already know about, and maybe try to do some good with my last column. So let's talk about Goats. Goats used to be a hilarious gag-a-day sort of strip about some guys sitting in a bar, plus a satanic chicken, the Don Juan of goats, a barely-sentient fish, some zombies and so forth. Somewhere along the way, Jon Rosenberg decided he was sick of the gag-a-day thing, which is fair enough, and he wound up using the Goats cast to tell an epic multidimensional tale of ... I'm not sure what yet, but it involves a dead God (he got eaten) and the nature of reality.
Truth is, it's pretty good, and after years of it I'm finally starting to get in to it ... just in time for him to announce that, thanks to this blasted recession, he's having trouble making a living off webcomics like he used to. So right now, there's no guarantee that this epic insanity will go on for more epic years.
So here's what I'm going to recommend. You should go right now to the Goats website. You should start all the way back at the beginning and you should read all the gag-a-day stuff. If it appeals to you-and I don't see how it couldn't-you should buy a piece of merchandise. Then you should read all the epic whatnot up till now. If that appeals to you, you should buy another piece of merchandise. Maybe that'll get him to that whole 'feeding his family' stage of income, and we can see the rest of this tale.
Or, you know, just go read. Whatever works for you: http://goats.com.
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