Here’s an update on some webcomics that I’ve mentioned previously, some quite a while ago, on lines and colors.
Kazu Kibuishi’s delightful Copper was the first webcomic I profiled on lines and colors, and one of my very first posts, I also wrote an update about his terrific post about his creative process for the strip. To say Kibuishi is busy at the moment is an understatement. He’s launching the new Flight 4 comics anthology, which he edits and contributes to, he’s working on his first long-form comics story, Amulet, which I and many others are very much looking forward to, he continues to update both his site and the Flight blog, and, oh yes…, he’s getting married; so he can be forgiven for putting Copper, in all its wistful, beautiful, elegant simplicity, on hiatus for a while.
At page 11 when I first mentioned it, Trade Loffler’s charming and beautifully realized comic story about a young boy and his sister has wrapped up its first adventure, The Upside-Down Me, at 62 pages. Much to the delight of readers like myself, Loffler promises the start of a new adventure, The Sky Kayak, in September.
When I first mentioned my elation that Steve Purcell was producing a new webcomic featuring Sam n’ Max, his “funny animal” characters that actually are deserving of both terms, it has just started at page one. It’s now up to page 10, and chock full of the wonderful absurdist mayhem that Sam n’ Max fans have come to know and love. The strips are interactive in that the word balloons and sound effects aren’t visible until you roll your mouse over the panel.
Steve Hogan’s delightfully bizarre and funny romp through 60’s pop culture and 90’s deadpan humor has added a few pages since I wrote about it. The story is about…, well it’s about weird stuff, wonderfully drawn weird stuff. It’s up to page 34. Starts here.
Delta Thrives, thepsychedelic sci-fi psychodrama adventure I wrote about in my first post on Electric Sheep was already finished at the time, as are a number of other features on the site. Apocamon, or as creator Patrick Farley describes it, “the manga version of the New Testament Book of Revelation”, is into its third installment of nihilistic mayhem. (Contains adult material.)
Jason Little’s Shutterbug Follies, which I wrote about in 2005, stops at a certain point as an online comic and picks up in the print version. His new story, Motel Art Amusement Service is continuing online, though, and has been updating weekly. (I can’t give you direct links to the stories because the site is in frames.)
This charming comics story by Ben Hatke, which I wrote about last October, has been infrequently updated (though not as badly as some, see my last item, below), but has recently added a new page.
Jenn Manley Lee’s character driven story, which I first mentioned in 2005, continues to develop and become more intriguing as Lee moves it along at an unhurried pace. This engaging and thoughtful sci-fi/buddy/romance/road story is the most consistently updated long-form web comic out there. Latest page is here. (Contains adult material.)
At the other end of the spectrum, at least in terms of consistent updates, is Argon Zark!, which is my own webcomic. It does, however have the distinction of being the first and longest-running long-form webcomic, having started in June of 1995. I am trying hard to update it more frequently, but I just have so much fun putting in all the details that it takes me forever to do a page. (Hint: click around.) I’ve just added a new page, but it’s better to read from the beginning of the current story, or from the start of the first adventure.
