Overly Positive

Like most English major-leaning folks, I have a clear preference for being bookish. Good literature and good stories are enticing and appealing to me, and reading a decently good book is always something that I enjoy very much. But time is short these days in my little busy and hectic life, so good books are hard to come by for reading. But that’s where webcomics come in.

I’ve never been much of a comic book person – most of the stuff that I’ve collected over the years has been very mainstream and easy to read. As an IT professional, I’m also drawn more to the computer, mostly because of the fact that I’m chained to it day and night for work, but also because if I want to give myself a little boost during the day. Alternatively, I want to turn my brain off for a second so that I can get back to my task with some form of focus. This is what the short-term reading, quick gags of webcomics do for me.

Webcomics have invaded the internet space with a bit of a snail’s pace these past few years, but there’s always a few that have achieved status that’s well-known, with Gabe and Tycho’s Penny Arcade being the most prominent. Like with my musical taste, I have eclectic taste in the world of webcomics, so here are a few that I use during breaks in the day to provide me with short-term entertainment.

Megatokyo is one of the first webcomics I followed and I still take a peek at it today. It started out as more of a gaming and story comic, but the departure of one of its co-creators has made it wholly into a story-based online manga. The comic follows the (mis)adventures of American gamers Piro and Largo, who become stranded in Japan and get embedded into its culture in an effort to find their way home.

Applegeeks is a comic that, like the name, is a nice one for all you Mac readers out there. Hawk draws a style that is very comic but also very computer-ish in its creation. The comic follows a few story arcs but is mostly the hijinks of Hawk, an Apple-obsessed fan, and his crew of friends, one of which is Eve, a robot female Hawk created.

8-bit Theater is, from the name, a bit low in the graphics department but high on the hilarity. If you like Final Fantasy – the original one, not the ones these days with the oddly feminine-looking male leads, you’ll like 8-bit Theater. Following the story of the original Final Fantasy with hilarious embellishment and a ton of sidetracks, the adventures of the vacant but strong Fighter, the numbers-obsessed Red Mage, the conniving and morally grey Thief, and the psychotic and stabbity-focused Black Mage will give you a chuckle.

VG Cats has been a guilty pleasure of mine for a few years, mostly because the NC-17 humor and “totally wrong” twisted sense of entertainment has always made the dark part of my soul – and therefore myself – laugh out loud. The gaming comic does have two main character cats in it, but they really are a sidebar to the commentary on video games the comic seems to take. When you draw out the fact that Ms. Pac-man might have actually been Pac-man needing to become a cross-dressing prostitute to pay the bills, you know you’re a little off – and I can’t get enough of it.

These are just a few of the webcomics I use to extract a bit of entertainment throughout the day, and I know there are many more. The point is – webcomics are a great blend of old school and new-school geek, combining comicry with technology, and you should definitely look to checking some of them out during your daily grind.