6 longform webcomics that keep me reading (plus some bonus ones you already know about)

Here’s the problem with long-form webcomics (narrative comics, story comics, whatever you want to call them) — if the creator is any good at all there will be enough going on in the story by the time you find it that picking them up will be frustrating. You’ll want to go back and read a bunch of the old comics in order to figure out what’s going on. But who has time?

And you are only going to hear about the comic after it’s been around long enough to prove it’s worth following, right?

So, in general, of the 100′ish webcomics I follow, there can’t be more than a dozen that are actually an ongoing story. Mostly, I favor the one-off comics that offer a new thought or joke with each installment.

But there are some exceptions. And here they are:

• Manta-Man by Chad Sell. I met Chad at SPACE 2010, which is probably no small part why I have stayed interested, but this guy can really draw. In a lot of ways, his strip reminds me of The Tick TV Show (not the cartoon). Imagine overly dramatic soap-opera life among a bunch of really sexy people who all happen to also have various super-powers. That’s Manta-Man. Oh yeah… and it’s impossible to see the point of the main character’s power, but he’s really the cypher through which the reader observes all the nutballs in his life. A cypher who is addicted to his criminally nymphomaniacal girlfriend.

• Forming, by Jesse Moynihan. Forget understanding just the story itself. To read Forming, you are better off having read all the esoteric mythologies in the Library of Congress. OK, maybe that’s not true, because I haven’t read them and I still think this comic brings the shit. Yeah, it definitely brings the shit. Start at the beginning and roll on through. You’ll see.

• American Barbarian by Tom Scioli. Scioli is sometimes hailed and sometimes criticized as the spiritual child of Jack Kirby. There’s no question, his art often looks a lot like that of The King of Comics, and I don’t think he’d have a problem with anyone saying that. Much like Kirby and Lee in the 70s, Scioli also has a handle on the present vernacular. What’s fun about American Barbarian (and, come to think of it, Forming, too) is how that vernacular gets inserted into a fantasy context — one that has primarily been known for its overly formal dialogue. There’s no “verily” in American Barbarian, though. There is, however, a Technicolor Behemoth!

• Darwin Carmichael is Going to Hell by Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan. This comic is wicked cute. I got hooked when the main character got stabbed in the ass by a unicorn and a sweet lesbian nursed him back to health. Umm, okay, maybe I better let the writers describe this comic for you?

• Darwin has a problem. Due to an unfortunate incident involving some intense snogging, an unbalanced high chair, and a framed image of the Buddha, he acquired a massive karmic deficit. Long story short, he’s going to go to Hell.

• Les aléas de la mort by Atsuko. This comic is in French but the French is pretty simple if you’ve had any at all. I primarily love it for its stark whites and greys, its simple lines and (despite that) its fantastic creatures. Basically, it is about a group of friends trying to get by in the lands of the dead while huge monsters try to eat them.

• Tales from the White Pony by Nathan Staples and Ben Dewey. I’m bummed that this comic hasn’t been updating for months and I don’t know why. It’s the story of a dwarf, his trolls and the reluctant partnership he’s formed with a very busty elf. It’s basically your typical fantasy story, but I like the idea of a short fellow charming and smart enough that very big, very tough people will follow him into all sorts of dangerous situations.

So there are a few for you to have a look at. Don’t get addicted! Or do. That would be great. And support the creators in some way if you can. If you look in the corner of my little collection of screenshots above, you’ll see Topato Potato in the lower right. He’s the brainchild of Jeffrey Rowland, founder of the Topatoco Company and Wigu Comics. I also really like Wigu Comics, but they are so damn famous I feel silly even linking to them.

And, in all honesty, my favorite story comic of them all is, well, everyone on the Internet’s favorite story comic. I love Bad Machinery by John Allison. It is often one of the first things I think of after breakfast. And while I’m not nearly so involved with this next one as I am the former, Meredith Gran’s Octopus Pie probably has the most endearing and real characters of any strip I’ve seen. Like I said, though, if you are reading this then you knew about those two a long time ago.

I go back and forth a little about narrative comics. A part of me just wishes they would sit on their work and publish it all at once, when they are done. I often find that narrative comics delivered online seem to skip parts of the story in ways that comics-in-books don’t seem to, but — then again — they are free. Who doesn’t like that? And I find I spend less and less time sitting down and reading pamphlets or volumes of comics anymore. Plus, I want as much content to be delivered digitally as possible, so I am slowly finding my way to more narrative comics.

Because I love stories. Everyone loves stories. And these are few of them that I love.