Every few years, it’s important to evaluate your habits and change what is broken, no longer working or just smells funny. It’s the policy I’ve used regarding underwear since I moved out of my parent’s home and I think it can be applied to pretty much everything. Since it’s about that time again, I could either clean out my fridge, or read comics.
I always chose B.
I’ve had the exact same web comics links since I graduated college two years ago. It’s time to clean this old folder of bookmarks out and see what’s still worth hanging on to and want needs to be ignored until it stops fussing. Most of these are still comics I read and love, so it’ll be more of a chance to reflect on why I love them before carefully putting them
Since if I don’t start posting more on the blog Jason’s going to start drawing me in a dress, I’ve decided to blog out my reasoning for keeping or dropping each strip. Some will be long, one will be short. In the case of some of these it will be one line “I’m dropping this sucker since it hasn’t updated since before I knew Barack was a real name.†There’s no order to these other then the order I have them in my links. If there is a reason for the ordering I’ve long since forgotten it.
You guys will probably know most of these comics. Hopefully a few will be new to you though. Even if not, I’d love to generate some dialog in the comments about what you think of each strip.
So come along won’t you, join me for Steve “The Geek†Shinney’s Web comic enema.
That’s what I’m calling it. Try not to think too hard about it. It loses it’s charm when you do that.
First up
The Comic: Questionable Content
The Creator: Jeph Jacques
URL: www.questionablecontent.net
The Jist: A bunch of people way cooler and way more attractive than me sit around talking about their problems and making clever word play.
The Verdict: Keeper.
The Reasons: I should hate this strip. I really should. If you took out all the cussing and references to sex acts this strip could be a prime time CW teen drama. That being said it would be the greatest prime time CW teen drama ever.
Questionable Content teaches me a lot of things. It teaches me that sure there attractive, young people out there who sit around all day drinking coffee, talking about music and occasionally boning each other. But it also teaches me that they are people too. People with problems. Sometimes problems way worse than mine. And that makes it all OK.
In truth, its the characters that make QC so good. They’re well rounded, interesting, flawed and yet likable. All in all, I can imagine them as real people I know, well if indie-music slackers and socially inept computer nerds hung out very often.
The dialog is really sharp too. Some of the sharpest on the Web actually. This characters engage in the kind of conversations that I can only dream of. If I had a trophy to give Jeph, it would be engraved with “Best Banterâ€
So my link to Questionable Content isn’t going anywhere. With Mr. Jaques Swiss-like regularity and robot-like punctuality it’ll probably remain my first read of the day, right where it belongs.
The characters aren’t way cooler than you. They just have the bodies of fifteen-year-olds with a precocious fashion sensibility. A similar gimmick made Calvin Klein a wealthy man.
Compare it to the borderline child porn you commonly find in manga. A recent QC page had almost no dialogue of consequence, but plenty of gentle thrusting, adjustment of clothing and angle shots of breasts.
You sound invested in the characters, so I can’t recommend you change to “delete,” but the informed consumer knows what he is buying. 🙂
Looking forward to the rest of this promising series.
Now would be a good time to upgrade to an RSS reader like Vienna (for the Mac) or Snarfer (for the PC) and get updates of all your webcomics that way. You still usually visit the webpages, but you don’t ever do so until there’s something new — it’s far superior. I barely even keep bookmarks anymore.
Bengo I was under the impression Calvin Klein was cooler than me. I’m pretty sure I know which update you’re talking about, but I figure for reading a strip named questionable content, a little side boob once in a while is pretty tame. You’re right though, it’s deffinately not for all ages, that’s for sure.
Glad to have you on board for the feature.
DBL: I do use RSS feeds, but only for certain strips. I’ll be sure to touch on these strips as well as well as why their RSSed instead of bookmarked. Not really sure why I prefer bookmarks. I’ll have to ponder on this and either change my ways or do a write up on why I’m cool for kickin’ it cold school.
OK The Geek I hear ya … BTW I didn’t see this response until after I made my comment on your second article in this series, in which I again recommended RSS as an alternative to dumping slowly-updated webcomics.