Webcomic Fanatic, Part Deux

Mmm. Double xp came and went, I'm now lvl 47 and chugging along, chugging along. It's the 45+ slowdown, I kinda mislike every single darned mission being filled with AVs - but at least now they've made it into EBs. Of course, as a dominator, it doesn't help me any when they still got goddamn purple triangles, or when I run out of endurance way too fast before I can even dent their hp bar - so I use Shivans like water.

Thank god for Shivans. I used two on Ms Liberty (popping unstoppable and having a ranged attack of 560 end-draining electricity and martial arts kicks of 1000+ is CHEATING, CHEATING, I tell ya)...and one on ARCH-A, a baphomet class demon in a damn cool crey lab on fire map, and that even got me a Demon Slayer badge.

That's about all the epic battle I can stand, so down goes CoX and I spin around looking for more crap to do.

Urbandead is less fun now that we got turned back at Giddings Mall and I lost the Big Bash when I returned home and keep finding that my IP has accessed it 160 times (they must count the entire starhub line as a range of IPs or something, either that or my router is fooling it...)

I got back into KoL, that's still fun, and I bowed to even more powergaming whim and installed KoLmafia. Now I can meat farm without getting carpal tunnel syndrome. Is all good. It's not so fun if you use it to actually play the game, too mechanical for me, but automating mindless farming tasks is really nifty. Just like using zmud to brewbot heals or something.

Oh, I completed FEAR when I was over in the States. It is one SWEET game. Really really good. And after playing CoX and FEAR on the laptop, man, it's become really obvious as well that my desktop needs an update. Feels so sluggish now. :P

My latest addiction is reading webcomics. Because I'm too lazy to include A HREF links, I'm just going to name the ones I think are good, and interested people can jolly well google them.

1) Inverloch
What's not to like. Really sweet art. Great fantasy story in the vein of the Belgariad and LOTR - different races, one "young" protagonist on a "quest"-type journey. Good pacing. Nice characters.

2) WTF Comics
My first webcomic and still one of my favorites. Everquest-inspired, it reminds me a ton of RoD adventures if we RP'ed a little more. Lotsa lotsa races and class combinations, funny game jokes, and an ongoing narrative. Pacing's not too bad too. Characters really rock hard. And Straha is just soooo cute, a lizardman warrior-type.

3) No Rest for the Wicked
This was so...odd. And surreal. Reminds me of Neil Gaiman meets Fairy Tales from the Crypt. :P Very powerful story and pacing, the stylistic art didn't really appeal to me at first (I'm a sucker for the mainstream photoshop-colored, fantasy realism style) but the POW of the story and the literary references sucked me in. I love Red. She's craaaaazy.

4) Goblins
This is the Nodwick-ian style of comic art. And almost just as good. D&D from the viewpoint of the monsters! Funny, yet poignant storytelling. I cried at one point when I read it. Amazingly powerful.

Speaking of Nodwick, it goes without saying that I check on the commercial indie artists every now and then. Aaron Williams with Nodwick and PS238. Phil and Katya Foglio with Girl Genius (they're putting it up as a free comic now, but still not yet finished). Scott Kurtz with PVPonline. Kenzerco and KoTD.

But anyhow, back to the undiscovereds and the not-quite-yet commercial webcomics.

The above were the really good ones, that I bookmarked and intend to keep following with bated breath. I found a couple more that were meh, pretty good in some way but missing something...

a) Flipside
The art is meh, okay to good. The story seems nice, but lacking a certain punch in the pacing because I got bored reading it after a while, and decided to save it for later. It was put-downable, in other words. For the above winning four, I could NOT close the browser until I was done. More manga-like than western treatment, I prefer the latter, but can read and appreciate some of the jap inspired ones.

The factor that pushes it to the top of the "meh" list? SEX. Haha, lots and lots of focus on it. Hella lot of purty nude women, and the drooliest lesbian couple that was just blardy obvious - poor male protagonist, ain't getting any, cos the two sexy ladies are more interested in each other. *smirks*

b) Post-Nuke
Interesting art style. Fallout apocalypse themed. Passable story. Didn't go anywhere though.

c) Saturnalia
Haven't read this one for some time, but I found it bookmarked in my webcomics folder. Very japanese-manga style, which probably suggests why I wasn't totally captivated by it, but readable if you like that kind of thing.

d) Alpha Shade
Now this one was a disappointment. A flop. But I wanted to include it in the list to show why you can be technically masterful, but yet contain no soul whatsoever. This was the MOST impressive art-wise. The comic was done flipbook style with Flash and all, the technical quality and realism of the art knocks Inverloch down. The banner ad for it had this great motto/theme - something about one's greatest enemy being oneself. And because I was so seduced, I actually sat through 196 pages of loadtime to look at pretty pictures, and then asked myself, WTF was going on?

It took accessing Wikipedia to put head and tail of what story it had together. Well, it's all prologue and chapter one, honestly. 196 pages of very prettily-drawn action and minor character interaction, but it didn't explain anything and certainly did NOT attempt to tell any kind of real story whatsoever. Very cheesed off. When you contrast it with other comics where scenes and stories are told in mere panels, this one stinks the big one.

e) Dreamland Chronicles
Very interesting art style. 3D-almost. I keep thinking Poser. But a very well done Poser, if Poser it be. The theme and concept is just a little too fairy tales and pastels and sweetness to me, so I only got so far before I wussed out from all the cotton candy of childhood dreams. I think there's a story in there, but it just wasn't a story I could stomach in one sitting. A very fairy-esque 'fantasy' with no darkness I could detect, kinda Peter-Pan-y.

f) Earthsong
Ok. Waaaaay too Japanese manga, ELEMENTS and funky stones concepts for me to really appreciate. To me, if you have to use paragraphs of exposition to explain something, you should be freaking writing about it, not making a web comic.

Seems really popular for some reason. I admit I didn't read too much of it. The author is in the middle of revamping pages, and while the revised pages are indeed technically nicer in art quality, I question the pacing and storyline. I read the revised version for a while and was pretty much - what's going on here? I tried reading the original for a bit, and got a much better sense of that question, even if the original was very wordy in places and kinda an eyesore.

g) The Noob
Ok, this isn't really in any particular order, because I think the noob should be up around Flipside's quality. I just forgot about it until now, looking at the web comics. It's kinda funny, based on MMO games, but it's just...kinda forgettable, y'know? The jokes have been made or used before. The art quality isn't anything outstanding to remember. The characters don't really stick in the head either. I suppose that's the danger on relying too much on cliche.

Anyhow, that's it for this time around. Hopefully I'll find some more good stuff at some point.