I’ll admit it: I used to read Homestuck. And when I quit reading it, it left something of a hole in my reading list – a hole shaped like something colorful and funny. What was I to do? It’s a rare piece of comedy that doesn’t rely on harmful and oppressive humor, as I had painfully been reminded by Hussie’s work.
comedy
Rock and Riot
Last week I criticized Broodhollow for ignoring the realities of American racism in the 1930s. This week I’m going to praise Rock and Riot for ignoring the realities of American racism in the 1950s. What gives??
Broodhollow
I’ve never been a fan of Kris Straub’s work, to be totally honest. I always found his jokes not so funny, his characters, not so interesting, his plots, not so original. As a cartoonist, he seemed kind of mediocre. Perhaps my opinion was colored by the fact that my first exposure to him was the dreadful, clown-protagonisted Checkerboard Nightmare, back when it was still updating. But those were dark times, and all webcomics were bad back then, so it hardly seems fair to hold that against him. Even if he does strike me as an insufferable nerd-bro.
ShootAround
Full disclosure on this one: I love the zombie genre. I know it’s played out. I know it’s become saturated with mediocre stories. I know its popularity boom a few years ago has made everyone pretty sick of zombies by now. One might say that the zombie genre has been destroyed by a lurching horde of bad zombie stories. It’s almost like some kind of… apocalypse.
Band vs. Band
You know that thing that all your friends like, but you just can’t get into? Game of Thrones, or Homestuck, or Marvel comics, or whatever. You’ve tried it out a couple times, and it seems like something you should enjoy, but for one reason or another you just can’t get past that initial hurdle to sustained interest. For me, Band vs. Band is one of those things. Lots of people had recommended it to me, but none of the recommendations had ever stuck. But when reader Emily sent me a message saying “How the heck are you not reading Band vs. Band??”, I decided that “uhhh, I dunno” wasn’t a good enough answer, and I needed to give it another shot.