Comic strips included below for the lazy.

Incidentally, my favorite webcomic artist has just begun selling her second book, and, um…

As usual I am offering custom drawings on personalized editions. But as a bonus, if you order a personalized edition for the first week – that is, until next Wednesday – I will personally give Hanna a SPARKLE BUTT in your book. If you know what this means, you will probably want it.

I know what it means. I want it.

Just, uh, just in case you didn’t know what to get me.

This one’s easy: if you didn’t fall off your chair laughing at that panel, then Dark Legacy is going to be completely lost on you.

As I’m fairly certain none of you play World of Warcraft, I feel perfectly comfortable ending the review here.

AppleGeeks used to be crazy similar to Mac Hall (the predecessor of Three Panel Soul): they both have two authors, similar art, same basic story set-up and gags, not to mention the superficially similar names. (Can you believe I can’t think of a good synonym for “similar”? Sorry.) But as the Mac Hall authors started using more experimental art and keyed down the silliness, AppleGeeks’ artist, Hawk, honed his particular brand of clean, cartooney art, and writer Ananth mixed more drama, action, and long story-arcs into their original gag-a-day format. What were once two indistinguishable comics are now different enough to help define, at least in my mind, contrasting genres in the webcomic world.

One problem that many webcomics –especially those with long stories– face is pacing. It can be difficult for readers to remember everything that’s happened over the course of a chapter when they only read one or two pages a week. AppleGeeks deals with it well enough that I only rarely feel the need to go back and re-read previous pages — though I don’t think Hawk and Ananth accomplish it by forcing the story to whiz by faster. The story is littered with key events that are easy to remember, like explosions.

The characters in AppleGeeks have come a long way. What was once a large band of college buddies, each about as unique as a goddamn sheep, has become a small cast of likeable characters. Hawk, the artist’s fictional alter-ego, is the Mac-obsessed comic relief (for the most part). Eve is his naive and super-cute OS X-running robot who occasionally kicks serious ass — think River Tam and Kaylee put together in a blue-haired cyborg body. Jayce is more or less the straight man of the comic, often making an appearance just to scold Hawk. His girlfriend, Alice, recently switched bodies with a hellish little girl who’s hell-bent on exacting her revenge on Hawk. Awesome, right?

There’s so much going on in this strip. You can tell that Ananth relishes the opportunity to completely blind-side the readers — there was at least a week or so after that last big explosion that I thought two or three of the main characters were dead. With a few twists and turns, and gradual character development, he’s able to keep the story fresh and interesting in spite of its length.

Hits:

When AppleGeeks is on, it’s on — and it usually is. Though each comic update is presented as a page of the larger story, it usually delivers on comedy, action, or both. (Or sometimes some roboty angst, but they pull it off well.) If I were doling out scores here, I’d give Hawk and Ananth points for characters, originality, art, and a couple more for originality.

Misses:

I can’t decide if AppleGeeks is an action comic with jokes mixed in or vice versa. Sometimes that can be jarring — it feels like they’re breaking from the story to devote a page to an unrelated gag. Hawk and Ananth also have a nasty habit of posting half-done comics if they haven’t had time to finish. Hawk’s coloring is so crisp and purdy that seeing a black-and-white version of AppleGeeks is a very poor substitute for the finished product. I for one would much rather read the page a day or two later.

Overall, I’d recommend AppleGeeks to anyone who’s up for investing a good chunk of time into reading through the archives (at least from Eve’s debut).

A *lite* review of

AppleGeeks Lite

AppleGeeks’ old gag-a-day format lives on in the relatively new AppleGeeks Lite, a newspaper-strip-like addendum that focuses on a cuter, cartoonier version of the main strip’s Hawk and all his wacky antics. The writer vs. artist ones are great. So’s this one. And this one. Aaaaaaaaaaand this one. Uno más.

Even if you have no interest in reading these comics, you should at least treat yourself to a gander at Hawk’s PhotoArt on Flickr. That shit’s awesome.

God I love this comic.

Ian does art for video games, and Matt is, I believe, a journalist. Put those guys together and you get a comic that’s very pretty and very smart. After doing Mac Hall for several years, they started the decidedly more grown-up Three Panel Soul a year ago. (Today! How crazy is that?)

There’s a lot of variation in TPS — the only real common thread between all the strips is that they’re three panels long. Sometimes it’s about the authors and their lives, often it’s about video games, and occasionally it’s about unidentified characters. Recently a lot of the strips have been about Ian’s cat Schrödinger. Ian seems to use the strip as a place to experiment with his art, so the reader gets to see several different styles develop over time.

Hits and Misses:

This is not a “hit-or-miss” comic as far as I’m concerned. It’s always “on” — I’d bet Ian and Matt spend more time on their two strips a week than most other webcomics folks spend on daily comics. Most importantly, it’s simple — it doesn’t bite off more than it can chew, if you know what I mean, so you’re never left disappointed.

Also, I like their newsposts. =P

There are 30 different ones that I check every day, and each one has something special about it. Some of them are really fucking spectacular. Most of them are hit-or-miss, but the hits make up for the misses.

Anyways. The point of all this babbling is that you and I, Reader, are about to embark on a very special journey together: over then next month or so, I’m going to tell you about each and every one of those special little comics I read, and you’re going to smile and nod and at least pretend to be interested. Lovely, yes?

So, starting from the top:

Real Life Comics

Real Life isn’t just the first webcomic I read every day, it’s the first webcomic I ever read. It’s been around since late ’99, and was once under the Keenspot umbrella, back when that seemed to mean something.

As the title suggests, the comic is mostly about the author’s “real life” escapades, but with flourishes and exaggerations that make it interesting enough to read 5 times a week — like Greg’s friend Tony who has an evil lair/space station sort of thing orbiting Earth.

The Hits

What’s really appealing about Real Life is that it’s about a nerd. A real nerd with nerd friends who talks about nerdy things and does even nerdier things (like making a chainmail mantle –piece by bloody piece– for a Ren fair). If you’re a Battlestar Galactica-watchin’, Dungeons & Dragons-playin’, teleportation chamber-buildin’ geekly one, you’ll feel right at home with Greg, Liz, and their veritable smorgasbord (orgasbord orgasbord) of friends.

The Misses

The jokes are predictable, the art is bland, the characters all kinda have the same personality, the stories rarely go anywhere, and the author doesn’t even update the damn thing all time — but if you need a geeky fix, it’s great. And sometimes it really does deliver the funny.

“Yes, we should cuddle, but here’s how we should do it.”

Penny Arcade’s Downloadable Content 9/19/2007 — In the Love Nest Of Har’akki
It may be half an hour long, and yes, it’s two webcomic authors talking about a video game. But if you can get past that, you will find yourself crying with laughter at the thought of sexy crustacean aliens, their breasts bristling with nipples.
http://download.penny-arcade.com/podcast/In%20The%20Love%20Nest%20Of%20Har’akki.mp3
Corresponding comic: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/09/19
Corresponding newspost: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/09/19

Save the Murlocs
WoW’s most oppressed race finally takes a stand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WraJ32ao4sw

Best of G.I. Joe PSAs
Remember the PSAs that they had at the end of every G.I. Joe episode? The heros delivered important messages like, “Here’s what to do if you get a nosebleed,” or, “Be nice to blind people,” in short cartoons. Some re-edited, uh, “adult” versions of these have been floating around the internet for a while, but you get the best effect by watching them all in sequence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogEtfIdgjpY

Drunken LOTR Cast Commentary
For this one, you need two things: a LOTR Extended Edition DVD set (doesn’t really matter which one), and a DVD player that allows you play video *and* audio at different speeds. Pop in the cast commentary, skip ahead to a part with Sean Astin and Elijah Wood talking (Shelob’s lair is my favorite bit), and then play the movie at 60% speed. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Internet People
Mark linked to this a couple weeks ago, but the best part — the part that lets you find out if you’ve won — is counting how many of the clips you recognize. I got 30.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pPCkhYMQgY

Lisa’s written up the different math tricks, which will make up the bulk of the section. Then we see our heroes again, dressed as wizards and excitedly yelling “MATH MAGIC!”

Then the punchline: “Excuse us, we’re off to confuse the muggles now.”

That’s the best I can do.

Tried to embed it, but it fizzled up my whole blog! Please click instead.

Thank you, Dresden Codak. The accompanying comic helped too.

Also! I have finished reading through the delicious archives of Scary Go Round (which you should read because it is the best thing ever and will give you weird, happy dreams). In the midst of my boy problems, I have fallen head-over-heels for the comic’s fictional Ryan Beckwith.

*CAP = Community Action Project. Gotta do it for AmeriCorps. Lisa, my coworker, and I are making a comic/activity book about math with the aim of encouraging middle school girls or something. I dunno, we’re losing sight of the grand scheme and just scrambling to get something done before our term is up.