My Top 5 Favorite Web Comics

I read a lot of comics. While newspaper comics will always have a special appeal for me, webcomics have a great opportunity to stand out and be uniquie. They don't have a lot of restrictions that comics that print in papers do. Sometimes that leads to content issues, because the authors can say things they can't say in papers. That's not my favorite part. But they CAN do lots of cool stuff with artwork because of the lack of space restraints. So in this blog posting, I will tell you my 5 favorite web comics, why I love them, and why they are different from newspaper comics, and therefore probably wouldn't work in the papers.

5 - White Ninja Comics
White Ninja Comics don't make sense. There is no continuity and sometimes it is very very absurd. These comics definitely wouldn't work in papers because sometimes they are gross, and all the time they are weird. If you have a weird sense of humor, you will like it but if not you'll probably hate it.

4. Dr McNinja Comics
The second comic about a ninja that I like. This is a lot different from White Ninja. It has storylines, characters, and a lot better art. It's about a guy who came from a family of Irish ninjas and decides to become a doctor. He's like Batman, ER, and Jackie Chan all wrapped into one. And he has a gorilla secretary named Judy. This is more like a comic book than a comic strip, and I really enjoy it.

3 - We The Robots
This is a relatively new comic for me, but I really really like it. It's smart and kind of cynical. These little robots can sometimes have dirty mouths, but I think it has a lot of value. It comments on how people often don't appreciate the simple things, and when they try to they're often foiled. It has quickly risen to one of the web comics that I look forward to reading every time it comes out with a new one.

2 - Wondermark
Wondermark is pretty unique. Every week, the author takes these public domain images of Victorian drawings, scans them, and makes them into a comic that is consistently hilarious. It takes some getting used to, because sometimes the characters talk in a very Victorian style. Still, it tends to be current also. It creates some dissonance because you have some people talking about iPhones using Victorian language. It's almost always funny, and sometimes it's genius.

1 - Dinosaur Comics
And that brings us to my all time favorite web comic. Dinosaur comics is about a dinosaur named T-rex and his friends Dromiceiomimus and Utahraptor. T-rex is an enthusiastic guy who likes to talk about ideas, and Utahraptor is somewhat more grounded in reality and often shoots down T-rex's ideas. The art in Dinosaur comics is actually clip art, and is the same every day. The same six panels are repeated day after day and the text is all that changes. What's amazing is that, at least to me, it's consistently funny and engaging. It's simultaneously the most predictable and the most unpredictable web comic, because you never know what ways Ryan North (the author) will stretch the boundaries of his six panels. Anyway, here's a recent Dinosaur Comic. Sometimes, I really relate to T-rex.