Jimmy and the Hammer

While I may regularly recommend various webcomics and such to my friends and family whom I know fairly well and can approximate their interests, making a blanket recommendation is something I hesitate to do. It would seem presumptious for me to say “Hey, you. I know almost nothing about you. Go read this.”

Well this time, I feel justified. Anders Loves Maria just finished its 3+ year run, and it has been incredible. It’s the story of two people in love, their good intentions, and the less than stellar results of their actions. It features incredibly believable characters, perhaps more believable than I have seen in ANY medium.

You will experience their triumph when they succeed. You will experience their heartache when they fail. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. And less than 300 strips later, you will feel like you are saying goodbye to friends.

Regular webcomic reader or not, set aside an afternoon to click through the archives. And make sure you set aside enough time to read all 290ish strips, because once you start, you may have trouble stopping.

I am looking forward with great enthusiasm to whatever Renee Engstrom has planned next. If it is even 10% as good as Anders Loves Maria, it’ll be better than 90% of the stuff out there.

-E

Jeph Jacques at Questionable Content challenged webcartoonists to do their strips “As if it were syndicated”. By the time I was alerted to this, the original (presumably bad) strip that precipitated the meme was unavailable due to huge traffic to see it, but from these examples here I got a pretty good idea what I wanted to do.

Enjoy!

EDIT: I finally saw the original and it turns out it has nothing to do with the falling over gag that seems to have taken over many of the submissions (mine included). It’s just BAD. Oh well.



-E

I just found out that I’ll be exhibiting at Emerald City ComiCon next year! The show runs March 13th & 14th, 2010, and a list of guests and info can be found at: http://www.emeraldcitycomicon.com/ (I’m listed under ‘Artist Alley’)

At last year’s con, I went as a fan just to check it out, and while waiting in a room for the Battlestar Galactica panel to start, witnessed the How to Make Webcomics panel by the Halfpixel guys. The panel really inspired me, as well as their podcast, book, and website. Now, less than a year later, I’ll be back at the con, this time as an exhibitor! Funny how the world goes full circle like that.

I’ll have more information as the date gets closer, so stay tuned!

-E