The Engirls

Hey everyone,

This week I decided to take a break because I’m temporarily going up to 40 hours. Basically, I’m trying to take this as an opportunity to get some rest and focus on work for a week before I get back on track. I am still lining the page, but the page should come out this monday, August 19. Afterwards, I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled Thursday release.

This shouldn’t affect the status of Sketch Sunday, as I’m planning on maintaining my sketching as practice. In the meantime, may I suggest some other webcomics for reading? Here’s some of the webcomics that got me inspired and helped me get started.

1. Questionable Content.
   The long running comic by Jeph Jacques is one of my go-tos when it comes to demonstrating art evolution and the importance of sticking to your guns as an artist.
   The story itself stars Marten, a disgruntled post-grad living in Boston in the early 2000s who ends up meeting a girl – Faye – at the bar. One mishap with a toaster later and Faye ends up needing a place to stay, and who does she turn to? Oh, and also Marten’s computer is a havoc causing tiny little robot named Pintsized.
   It’s a pretty basic slice of life comic that’s easy to get sucked into if you’re bored for several hours.
   
2. Scandinavia and the World.
   Remember Axis Powers: Hetalia? Hopefully you don’t, but if you do, then you probably love world events being portrayed by humanized Countries and cross-cultural misunderstandings. Thus, you should probably check out Scandinavia and the World!
   Denmark is a frequently drunk but free willed party animal. Sweden is your nerdy techno geek. Norway loves nature and is pretty laid back over all. Together, they make for some funny scandinavian dudes, reacting to everything from Eurovision, to territorial disputes, to world wars, even just to random interactions between tourists. It also has the US, who is shown as a loud, obnoxious guy who randomly gets a tan because the author found the US’s demographics. It’s a fun comedy webcomic that you don’t need to read in order.
   
3. Bobbins/Scary Go Round.
   If you know me in real life, there’s a chance I might have tried to gush to you about John Allison and how great his comic Giant Days is. Selling a slice of life comedy is pretty hard (I should know), so why not read one of his other series?
   Bobbins is a pretty standard Slice of Life comic, mostly featuring the characters Shelley Winters and Tim Jones interacting with friends. Allison himself doesn’t recommend the comic to others, and seeing as it’s been out since the 90’s, it can be pretty hard to read. I managed to finish it in 3 months and is to date the only finished webcomic I’ve read to the end.
   Scary Go Round, on the other hand, takes some of Allison’s funniest characters, namely Shelley Winters, Amy Chilton, Ryan Beckwith, and super spy Fallon Young, and throws them into a much less forgiving but even more britishly hilarious plot. It mostly centers around Shelley and Amy working through various supernatural problems across the town of Tackleford in western Yorkshire. This can be anything from uncovering a secret satanic cult to Ryan falling in love with a french woman living in a trailer only for her to get assassinated and sent to hell, to Shelley herself uncovering a secret plan by the Portuguese Man O’ War to take over the world. Needless to say, it’s pretty dense with wacky plotlines.
   This is also where many characters seen in future John Allison comics make their debut, like Esther De Groot from Giant Days and Lottie Grote from Bad Machinery.

I’m always open to new suggestions for webcomics and regular comics to read. Why don’t you suggest some to me?