Category Archives: Chord

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Fanboys

Posted on April 9, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Normally humor strips like Fanboys tends to pass under my radar undetected. It’s not exactly that I dislike humor. It’s just that I enjoy stories and plots more than random frivolity. And to be honest, today’s update in which Lemmy received several text messages while shaving from his facial hair begging him not to shave them would have just been shrugged off without notice. No, what makes this comic worth was the bonus panel included under the comic… in which Lemmy’s friend (and resident jerk) Paul is stifling laughter as he sends a text message. It’s something Paul would do and would find funny. Further, by separating the panel from the rest of the comic, there’s an effective beat that intensifies the humor.

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xkcd

Posted on March 26, 2013 by | 1 Comment

Several years back, cartoonist Scott McCloud waxed elegant on the concept of “Infinite Canvas,” urging webcartoonists to cast off the shackles of the print world and utilize the endless boundaries available within websites. To be honest, some cartoonists did flirt with Infinite Canvas, such as Damonk’s classic series Framed!!!, but one of the kings of IC would have to be Randall Munroe of the stick figure comic xkcd. Munroe has long indulged in comics that shift outside the venues of print, but his latest work has taken the cake. Labeled merely ”Time” it uses an animated .png that gradually showed two people building a sandcastle. But unlike most animated .gifs, ”Time” moved at a glacial pace; indeed, initially I was unsure if it was an animated comic or a trolling by Munroe. The strip’s story took two days to fully emerge, though fans did craft a more rapidly moving version. As of my writing this, however, a giant wave has not appeared to wash the sandcastle away, though I’d not be surprised at this last-moment twist.

Addendum: Still no tidal wave. However, as of Friday, 5:25 p.m. EST, the two figures have wheeled out a tiny catapult and are now bombarding their (now massive) sand fortress.

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xkcd

Posted on November 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Originally I was going to claim that today’s xkcd was outside the norms for the comic, but to be honest I think about the only norm the comic sticks to is the stick-figure art (and even then, some of the early strips sneak outside that boundary). What it is is an immensely personal and touching comic concerning the author’s experiences with cancer, not as a cancer patient, but as part of the immediate family and friends that suffer as intensely as the stricken loved one. Each panel, starting with the dreadful news and then showing glimpses of two years of life of fighting cancer… and avoiding the paths of remission over two years… speak volumes. And while a biopsy-versary may not be as romantic as an anniversary, in many ways it’s far more triumphant and special a moment. Thank you, Randall Munroe, for sharing these moments with us.

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Schlock Mercenary

Posted on November 1, 2012 by | Leave a comment

While Halloween is over, I thought I’d indulge in one last comic with a horrific bent to it for the week with Howard Tayler’s science fiction series Schlock Mercenary. For the last couple of months, Tayler has been telling two stories at the same time, with Schlock, Captain Tagon and crew the focus of the comic during the week, and Tagon’s father taking central stage on the Sunday strips… with General Tagon’s story about the loss of his family reminiscent of the Schlocktoberfests of old. Interestingly, there are also parallels between the two stories, with weaponized nanites used to kill off Tagon’s family at the start of the Terraforming Wars (which we’ve not heard much of before that I can recall) and the nanite-enhanced soldiers that have replaced thousands of Gavs which Schlock and crew were hired to protect. What’s more, the General’s tale helps explain a lot about Captain Tagon himself, and what drives him. As the General’s tale has wrapped up, no doubt we’ll soon be seeing the two stories merge in the near future; still, this was an interesting Halloween tale, and it’s an experiment in storytelling I hope Tayler indulges in again next October.

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Wondermark: Halloween Special

Posted on October 31, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Normally I tend to wait on reviewing a comic until I’ve read the entire archives. It’s only fair to the comic (and cartoonist) to do this as without a full viewing of the comic, it’s impossible to get an accurate view of the comic. I’m making an exception this time due in part to the seasonal nature of the short storyline that David Malki !’s Wondermark (and drawn by K.C. Green) has done, and the fact said short comic is pretty much unrelated to the rest of the comic as a whole (though given the gag-a-day nature of Wondermark, that may be stretching things a tad). The story is of a young girl named Emmy who learns from her brother that pumpkins are in fact horse eggs… and that the practice of carving pumpkins is meant in fact to ward off the Mother of Horses, the Night Mare, who seeks vengeance on humanity’s devouring of the eggs of her children. It’s a silly odd tale, but really when you get down to it most monster stories have a spark of the ludicrous in them. You can read the first part here.

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Ménage a 3

Posted on October 25, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Another Not Safe For Work webcomic I’ve been reading for a bit is Gisèle Lagacé and David Lumsdon’s Ménage a 3. While it doesn’t contain quite as much gratuitous sex as Curvy and avoids showing male genitalia (as far as I recall), it starts out with Gary (the geeky primary protagonist) walking in on his two male roommates having sex in the living room (after they broke his drawing table). And much like Jack Tripper in “Three’s Company,” Gary ends up with two attractive young ladies as roommates; the very very buxom Didi, and Zii, who is not (but who is more than happy to get smothered between Didi’s breasts). Unfortunately, the comic starts getting confusing after a bit (probably after the introduction of Yuki) and much of the early charm falls to the wayside in a madcap race for gratuitous sex (of all types) and over-the-top idiocy. There are still sections which work (and personally I find Kiley to be the most interesting of the secondary cast), but Ma3 is not one of Lagacé’s best works. If you enjoy reading decently-drawn softcore porn and don’t care if you’re not reading a good story, Ma3 will be a fun read. But if you’re looking for something with meat on its bones, you might want to look elsewhere.

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Erstwhile

Posted on October 24, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Erstwhile is another serial webcomic that takes old fairy tales such as those published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and adapts them to a graphic format. It stands out from its peers in that it focuses on many of the less-known fairy tales; while I’m not exactly an expert on the older fairy tales, it seems that cartoonist Gina Biggs, who adapts the scripts, and artists Louisa Roy and Elle Skinner who assist Biggs with the artwork have remained true to the core of these stories, rather than build upon the tales to craft new stories. As such, these can be darker tales than what is told these days; “All Fur,” for instance, has a daughter flee from her home after her father the King decides he’s going to marry her, while “The Old Man and His Grandson” is downright cruel in places with how the grandfather is treated by his son and daughter-in-law. In addition, Biggs has published the first seven tales (along with “The Sweet Porridge” which hasn’t appeared on the website) in a 160-page hardcover edition.

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