The Order of the Stick

Everything you can find in a Dungeons&Dragons sourcebook … you’ll recognize it within this comic by Rich Burlew.

First – you don’t need to be a hardcore D&D player to enjoy this comic. You don’t even need to play pen & paper role-playing game to enjoy this comic … But you will enjoy it all the more if you do!

This is because the Order or the Stick has tons (read: gazillions) of clever innuendos concerning the pen&paper D&D genre. And while the comic is a clever and very enjoyable read even if you don’t understand the first thing about RPGs, a lot of humor is lost …

The Order of the Stick manages to dance a fine line as the characters mostly talk to each other aware of rules and regulations you can find in D&D. They don’t find a magical ring that makes you jump really, really high – nope, they find a ring of jumping +20. Even their standard battle tactics are worded via the maneuvers that are found in the D&D sourcebook, be it Haley’s “Sneak attack, bitch!” or Roy’s great cleavage … (Cleave is a powerful sword stroke that lets you attack an additional enemy if you just killed one. Great Cleave lets you repeat this indefinitely as long as another enemy is within reach and you kill your enemies with each stroke.) See, if you didn’t get the “great cleavage” bit, you’ll sometimes look at the comics page, tilt your head and wonder just exactly why this should be funny.
In any case, the characters in the book don’t speak like an adventuring party would, they speak like players who play an adventuring party would. And that makes this comic charmingly hilarious.

As I first started reading Order of the Stick, I had already played lots of pen & paper RPGs, but, ironically, never D&D. I recently started playing D&D with some friends, and then reread the Order of the Stick comics and suddenly understood several jokes I just didn’t get before.

But lo! before you say “I don’t do RPGs, this is wasted on me!” give the Order a shot. Even without the additional humor (that sometimes IS self-explanatory) it has one of the greatest and vastest storylines you’ll ever stumble upon when reading web comics!

Once you start to read the comic you can’t help but notice that the name of this comic is there for a reason: Because the comic is drawn with stick figures. The fun part is, I still think that this is GOOD art. Every character has very distinct features, and there have been several good art upgrades over the years. I remember having an actual discussion with a friend who told me that although Haley is a stick figure, she actually has sex appeal.

Also, the comic and its plot are incredibly well planned. The author never seems to forget any details he worked into the comic, even if it is an item that was found some 200 strips ago. But the major plot that goes through this comic is incredible well-written and of an epic nature that it almost puts those two hobbits and their ring to shame. (well, almost)

The villains in this comic are likewise entertaining as gruesome and cruel, and even they have their distinctive backgrounds.

You can either enjoy the Order of the Stick online or you can buy the books (I recommend that, as they include bonus material – wooo!). Also, there are two books so far that show what happened BEFORE the main plot began – one for the heroes and one for the villains.

All in all a very, very recommendable read, and if you’re a D&D fan all the more so!

• Updates: Bi-weekly
• Safe for work: Yes

• Art: 7.5/10
• Plot:10/10
• Originality: 9/10
• Overall: 9.5/10

• Fun: 8/10 normally, 9/10 if you play pen&paper RPGs and 10/10 if you play D&D!

(More to the ratings here)

Questionable Content

Cute baristas, AnthroPCs, Indie rock, lots of booze and Pizza Girl!

So here goes the review for a webcomic I read on a daily basis (usually and fittingly alongside my morning cup of coffee): Questionable content (henceforth mentioned as QC) by J. Jacques.

I made the mistake, before the review, to check up on old QC comics – and thus had to read them all over again … You can’t help but to get drawn into the whole QC world once you start reading it.

The one thing you can’t help but notice if you reread the comic from the get-go is how much the art has improved over the years. The first comic (posted 2003) has much cruder graphics – J. Jacques is my hope at the end of the tunnel because he shows that practice can indeed improve your performance. The art in QC now is top notch, and if you look closely you will see single strips where an art improvement has been added (look for the eyes, for instance).

Also, in the very first strip we notice that the QC world differs from ours because we meet Pintsize, who is the Anthro-PC of Marten (the main character in the comic). Basically Anthro-PCs are talking, walking and (un)usually cute computers with personalities. Especially Pintsize is (although endearing) sometimes a real pain in the ass and (very often) a source of hilarity. Later on he is joined by other AnthroPCs like Winslow (who is more an iPod kinda AnthroPC) or Momo-tan (kawaii manga AnthroPC).

The comics themselves are scripted very nicely, and often incredible funny. There is a steady cast of characters (mostly female) that might seem overwhelming when you jump in the middle of the series, but is actually built up over the strips so if you read them chronologically you’ll see that they’re all properly introduced into the series, although almost none of them are normal – and those who seem normal might just have a dominatrix mother, weed-smoking parents or grew up in space. These whacky backgrounds help form the comic to what it is: Thoughtful, funny, witty and Indie.

QC has an active storyline that progresses a lot, and one that puts most television soaps to shame. Many of these storylines feature a slow build up (especially the Faye-Marten relationship)until they are resolved, if they are resolved at all. People get or lose jobs, solve relations or even take guesses at who Pizza Girl might actually be (my bet is on Penny’s twin sister).

Most of the QC action takes place either at the “Coffee of doom” shop (owned by one of the main characters, and several others work there) or in Marten and Faye’s apartment.

The comic itself is safe for work (I’d say no nudity, but let’s face it one must actually say “no nipples” to stay correct), but features some rather rude or sexual implicit language rather often, so it’s probably PG12+. The only problem with the “Safe for work” factor is if you are good at suppressing laughter so your co-workers won’t eye you suspiciously.

• Updates: Daily (mo-fr)
• Safe for work: Yes

• Art: 9/10
• Plot: 9.5/10
• Originality: 9/10
• Overall: 9.5/10

• Fun: 9/10


Whoops, that’s a whole lotta 9’s. Meh – can’t think of anything that’d score below that in QC.

(More to the ratings here)

Sabrina Online

Transformers, Amiga, Furries and an adult film studio

I thought it fitting that the first comic reviewed by me should actually be the one webcomic that started it all for me: Sabrina Online by Eric Schwartz.

Quite some years ago I stumbled upon this comic and I liked it from the start.

The main protagonist of this comic is (of course) Sabrina, who is a graphics designer – and also a skunk furry. For those who don’t know what furries are, here’s one definition of the term:

“Furry fandom is a category (or sub-genre) of fantasy dedicated to anthropomorphics: fictional animal characters given human personalities and characteristics.” (www.urbandictionary.com, one of many entries)

I won’t go into length at discussing furries here, mostly because then I’d have to write a couple hundred pages of essay, and also because this is about Sabrina now.

Sabrina has it all: Good art (though some may think the b/w line art, self-written texts a little “retro”), a loveable cast of characters, good plots, punch lines and covers a lot of things other webcomics don’t. There may be a lot of gamer comics out there (we’ll get to those later), but I can think of no other comic that revolves around Amiga (a computer system nowadays not known anymore … I actually owned one back in the late 80’s, where it was one of the best computers for games) or Transformer toys (as Sabrina collects them, and the little toys also feature in some comics, even interacting with the people).

Of course many people will soon remember Sabrina through the very frequent appearances of Zig Zag (created by Max Black-Rabbit), a skunk/white tiger hybrid who has her own adult film production (called Z. Z. Studios), where Sabrina starts working early on in the comic, constantly struggling to stay normal in a rather raunchy and sometimes insane environment.

Sabrina’s struggle to stay normal and, sometimes, to rebuff the advances of Zig Zag continues on to this day, although you never get the feeling you’re in a plot stalemate as their relations change over the years.

Also, Sabrina’s life advances throughout the comic, and there has been a steady (but not unreasonable) stream of new cast to the comic throughout. I highly recommend you enjoy Sabrine the way it’s meant: From strip 1.

And, if you want to support Eric, you should simply buy the Sabrina books (details to that on his site).

Sabrina Online stays SFW (safe for work) though, although the adult atmosphere makes me suggest it to be PG 12.

And now it’s time to rate this first comic:

• Updates: Monthly (2-5 strips)
• Safe for work: Yes

• Art: 7/10
• Plot: 9/10
• Originality: 9/10
• Overall: 8.5/10

• Fun: 8/10

(More to the ratings here)

Rating system

Just before posting the first actual review, here's a litte something about the rating:

There are many, many relevant things in a web comic. Of course, if I try to rate everything, everybody would just skim to the bottom of the list. So I narrowed it down to the following:

Updates: daily (mo-fr), daily, bi-weekly, weekly, etc. (just an info on how often the comic is updated)

Safe for work: yes/no (yes means usually nudity or very coarse language. I might include extra warning if the content is for mature readers only.)

Art: 1-10 (pretty self-explanatory)

Plot: 1-10 (this can be a tough cookie sometimes, but many writers try to make solid plots and thus I included it in the rating)

Originality: 1-10 (this reflects if the comic stands out, if the characters are well-made, if the comic revolves around topics that no other comic does, etc.)

Overall: 1-10 (this is the important one - and yes, one could get a 10 here whilst only having a low score in one of the others. this score says how much I like this comic - and remember, your opinion might differ!)

Fun: 1-10 (Last score and outside of this rating, fun doesn't mean if the comic is fun to read but rather if it's actually a "funny" or "silly" comic. Some webcomics try to tell a story, build tension, etc. A horror/thriller webcomic might have a good overall score but a very low "fun" rating. As this doesn't reflect the quality of the comic I put it under "overall".)

That's it - more would probably only confuse people ...

Have fun

Rhadan, RJ

In the beginning ...

... WoMan created pictures. And people would look at those pictures and it was good.

And then someone (ingeniously) created speechbubbles and lo! comics were created. And others read those comics and laughed and it was good.

And then WoMan created the internet and more people put comics on the internet. And other people saw them and laughed heartily at what they had discovered - if they could find it.

-

However, it isn't as simple as typing "webcomic" into google, and go through them.

And thus I'll try to review some webcomics, especially the ones I like (at least those come up first, which, incidentially, will lead to the problem that the good comics are in the oldest posts), and I hope you'll find some comics to your liking.

Most comics I found on the internet I found via links from other comics. And those new sites also featured links ...

The problem often is that when you see a comic for the first time you get an impression about that comic - sometimes you don't have a clue what this is about, because the comic is trying to spin a good storyline and you're right in the middle. I mean, who wants to watch a movie where you've missed the first hour?

So you click back to that very first posts and ugh! behold! ugly drawings. And you close the comic.

And sometimes you're missing out on something really good.

I hope I can help some people to sort through the webcomics to find some rare jewels they might have missed. Stay tuned. :)

Rhadan, RJ