Minus

Oh yes, campers. I'm beside myself with glee and lack of sleep. I'm at least 24 hours behind on Friday's comic and have 6 projects due on Saturday. Must be time to spend a half-hour on the Monday Webcomic Review! *weeeeee*

*coughs*

Right. Okay then. Where was I? Oh yes... I thought I'd expand on last week's theme and review another one of my nominee's for Outstanding Newcomer. The second slot goes to a comic described thusly by the artist: "Each minus strip is painted on a 15x20" piece of Illustration board. With this comic I am pretending I am making a comic strip for a newspaper in the early 20th century. A special newspaper that lets me use as much color as I want. I'm not much for comic strips so I don't know how long I'll be doing this one, so enjoy it while it lasts, I guess? It'll be updating every thursday until I suddenly stop! Making comics on giant paper is pretty neat though. Yeah."

Minus does an amazing job at fulfilling the artist's intentions. Sometimes funny, sometimes thought provoking, sometimes... well... odd, it's always beautifully done. I love the watercolor, and the web design is simple enough to showcase the softer colors of the artwork without being difficult to navigate. The artist's main site, Kiwis By Beat! offers even more to feast the eyes upon, including the black and white comic Socks and a smattering of illustrations I would gladly pay good money for. Okay, a couple of them disturb me in ways I don't like to think about... but oddly, those are the ones I like best. *grins*

All in all, I'm fascinated with the style, amused and interested in the content, and all around impressed. Here's hoping that Minus stays with us for a long time to come.

t

Home on the Strange

The Web Comic Choice Awards kicked off in style today, and by an amazing and certainly not planned coincidence *coughs* so shall my weekly webcomic review. To fully celebrate this happy coincidence the first comic up for review is the very first comic I'm nominating in the very first category – for Outstanding Newcomer, I present to you Home on the Strange.

Home on the Strange is one of my favorite slice-of-life comics, and just barely squeaked into the newcomer category having started up in January of 2006. The synopsis the creators present on The Web Comic List reads: "Home on the Strange chronicles the adventures of Karla and Tom, two nerdy homeowners shepherding a bunch of single friends through life", which pretty accurately sums it up. Reading it is a lot like sitting around the house with my friends, and the fact that I can relate so easily probably accounts for my love of the comic. I'll never look at a blood covered bouncer in quite the same way, and I'm fairly sure they stole Izzy's review of Japanese inspired horror flicks from a secretly recorded conversation I had with Steven in the shower one morning. Damn it, they're nice people – something I managed to ascertain from a brief email conversation regarding advertising rates – but I wish they'd stop planting bugs in my shower, it's just creepy.

They get extra special kudos from me for doing something that many of the comics I used to love couldn't manage – they've updated on time, three times a week, every week since I began reading the comic several months ago. This makes for a happy Tanya, and a happy Tanya is a thing to behold. As an added bonus, the Home on the Strange writer also produces some exceptionally honest and hilarious things over at The Ferrett.com – writings of a deranged mammal which shouldn't be missed by anyone old enough to eschew parental permission.

So… what exactly are you waiting for? Go check out the comic!

t