Confessions of a Web Comic Junkie

In this highly pointless article, Crossed Reality goes on for a few pages on various web comics, and why he loves them.


I think this story deserves to get the same opening that was enjoyed by our lovely piece on the Undead Revolution . It all began so innocently. I never meant to get addicted to those little things called web comics. When I first started computing on the internet, I was hardcore into IRC. I lurked undernet as SilverSwd, and became quite an mIRC scripter in the process. But that’s a story for another day. I was hard core nerd style at this point in my life, and trying to learn as much about computers as I could, as fast as I could. Which of course means I went overboard. I blame Zen and Kitty (who went by XyLoNiuM at this stage of our lives) for bringing me into IRC to talk to them…IRC either turns you into a complete idiot, or corrupts your life totally, and you become a slave to it. The first comic strip I ever read online was Dilbert. It wasn’t carried by my local paper at the time, and I thought it was funny. Then, one fateful day, I stumbled across User Friendly.

Okay, let me get something out of the way. I no longer read UF. But when I first started, I thought Dust Puppy and Erwin were hilarious. Maybe I grew out of it, I don’t know. During this period of my life I read every day’s update, and thought they were all hilarious. It was my first experience with a true web based comic strip, and it also set the standard for how I would be introduced to comics in the future. This is what happens to me: I will see a link on a page, or someone will post one to me. I will go. If I find the comic funny, I will proceed to read the entire archive. It always happens the same night. It doesn’t matter how late it is, I will read that entire damned archive before I leave my chair again. User Friendly would not keep its status as my only web obsession for long.

I was a member of the illustrious Waffle Crew, yet another thing that would take me forever to explain. One of the members had created a new IRC sister channel for us to hang out in, which just happened to be #y2k. This was in 1999. How we managed to get the preemptive strike on the fanatics, I don’t know, but needless to say we were not too kind to the people who came in there worried about what was going to happen. We weren’t disaster nuts ourselves. Well, Few was, but he lived like a hermit, literally, so can you really be surprised? Oh, wait, you don’t know who Few is. Never mind. So, anyway, one of the random people who stumbled in, worried about the end of the world, posted a link to my next web comic: After Y2K.

As you can tell by their link image, it certainly fit the geek mindset I was slaving under at the time. I also thought it was funny as hell. Looking back on it now, and reading the new stuff, I just find it lame. At least some of User Friendly I can read now, but I get shudders trying to read the AY2K archives.

Now, the comics above are only important because they were a harbinger of what would happen to me later. During my first web comic phase, they were the only two I read. Two comics doesn’t classify as an obsession by any stretch. The second phase, which I’m about to turn this tangent towards, would come after the Crash that would destroy my computer activities. In December 1999, I went on Christmas break just like any other year. But times were changing. My social life was taking more of my time. Girls. Must I say more? In that fateful month, I retired from mIRC scripting suddenly, leaving my fellow Gettok’ers without one of their founders. IRC died completely to me at the same time. My daily web use dropped to IM’ing ZenZagg, and feeling self conscious about using something less hardcore than IRC, and checking a few videogame sites. I spent several hours a day on the phone or just plain out of my house, so I didn’t have much time for anything else.

So what changed to bring me back into the web comic fold? I graduated from High School. Damnit, you’d be amazed how much more free time you have when you’re not being forced into a dank concrete building filled with teachers that know less than you do for 8 hours a day. [Note: Children, it’s important to stay in school if you don’t know more than your teachers. Now, everyone thinks they know more than their teacher, but you probably don’t. However, I’ve provided a quick quiz to help you. Do you know who Xerxes I is? Do you know the chemical composition of Butane? Can you recite the preamble to the Constitution? Who wrote The Canterbury Tales ? If you didn’t know the answer to any of the above, then shut up and stay in your desk. Your teachers get paid for a reason.] Once I was freed from that prison, my amount of free time skyrocketed. This allowed me to devote more time to both my social life, and my latent nerd tendencies! This first manifested itself in my renewed appreciation for computer technology in general, and would eventually lead to me reactivating my love of web comics. The first twinge of this happened when Zen posted something to me from…

Red Meat. It’s just twisted as all hell. I still don’t read this one regularly, but every few months I return and devour the archives again. The most important thing about it is that it reminded me that web comics were just funnier than comic strips were elsewhere…because they could get away with more. There aren’t many devil clowns in your average newspaper, now, are there? The most important part of this comic to me was that it reactivated the obsession…and obsession that would become fanaticism for a comic strip, and cause me to shell out actual currency of the United States of America for a web site, something I had vehemently refused to do up until this point.

Let’s get something straight. Penny Arcade is your comic GOD, got it? Okay, now that that is out of the way, did I mention I paid real money to these guys? I donated to Club PA. I bought the book. If it wasn’t for that whole pesky Jewish thing, this would be my real God. I read their updates religiously. I’m going to stop talking about it now, before I start, like, drooling or something. Needless to say, it was at this point that my ‘obsession’ turned into a fucking problem . I need help. Seriously. But it wouldn’t end with Penny Arcade, oh no…

Mega Tokyo. The subtitle for this comic should be “Damn You Scott! DAMN YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL!”. My good friend Scott dragged me into his computer room, asking me if I’d seen “The comic strip with Boo in it!” We were playing the Baldur’s Gate series pretty heavily at this point, so I was intrigued. I should never have started. How can you not love a comic where the characters manage to speak l33t out loud? Where computers are assembled in the nude? Where Mosh Mosh Revolution actually exists? You want to know the really funny part? I check this page more often than it could possibly be updated, and yet, its the comic I’m the least obsessed with. Still, I lo
ve it. I like the videogame commentary, since I am a videogame whore. I also like the fact that Piro is a sweet, gentle character, because I’m a sappy idiot. Sappy love stories are the one thing missing from any of the other comics on this list. Now, I’m going to move on before I mention that I cried during Final Fantasy X…..oh damnit.

Let us subtitle this one “I’m going to murder that bastard Scott, because he’s conspiring to destroy what little productivity I have in the world by finding these fucking web comics that make me laugh way too much. I’ll show him! I’ll find them on my own from now on!”
…
Anyway, so Scott IM’s me, and this time he’s ranting that a new comic has been discovered, one that has replaced Mega Tokyo as his favourite in the whole wide world. So he sends me a link…by the time Black Mage did his first Hadoken, I was hooked. I’ve played Final Fantasy since it swam the ocean to pop in my lovely NES. I don’t even know what to say about 8-bit Theater that would do it justice. I think Black Mage needs his own television series, for one. This was my first experience with sprite based comics, and by randomly clicking the links on the side of the page, I would be led to more. Too many to go into here. Do you have any clue how many of the damn things are out there? Consider 8-bit Theater a gateway drug of sorts, since it would introduce me to the next two comics I need to let off steam about.

This is the comic that actually started the sprite comic revolution on the net, at least, so I’ve read. And damn does it deserve any accolades it gets. The guy updates daily . No one else on this list manages to do that. At one point in time, I owned all the Mega Man games. Unfortunately during elementary school, when I was a poor little boy, everything but the NES games were liquidated to provide funds for my Square Soft fetish. I’d like to think that a little bit of Mega Man X lives in my Chrono Trigger cartridge, and the he understands the sacrifice. This deep rooting in the Mega Man saga is part of the reason I love Bob and George so much. But the titular comic strip isn’t the only reason I go to that site, oh no. There are several dozen other strips contained therein! And none of them suck! You can get lost in his various archives for days. I’ve still not managed to absorb all of the sub and fan comics. If you go, I highly suggest Jailhouse Blues be your first stop after the main comic. And don’t worry, my rant is almost over.

One day on 8-bit Theater’s mainpage, there appeared a link to a fan comic done by one Elliott Hoffman. Beside this was a link to his personal site, which contained the web comic Spelling the Vacuum. I love this comic, and I will defend it to the death. It’s so eclectic, how can you not like it? I mean, for christ’s sake, one of the characters may be the reincarnation of Jesus! Well, he says he is. This is the only one of my comic-obsessions that isn’t videogame related. That should say something for it. I love things that just make no sense, and revel in it, and this is perhaps the best example I can give you. It has more going for it than I can mention or you would read. The author does it all with a mouse . I can’t even draw a closed circle with a mouse without using geometric tools. It has Jews in cloaks [whoo!], and hot vacuum sex! Plus, I can assure you it will have impeccably good grammar. Oh, and if you don’t like the new straight lines, please shut the fuck up.

Well, this ramble started as a way to explain my web comic fetish. It’s turned into me posting a bunch of links. Well, that’s good enough I suppose. Follow the damn things! These aren’t all the ones I read, but I only check in on others every few months.

Stay tuned for my next pointless rant: Why I am going to name my first son Alexander Octavian, and my daughter Terra.

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