Links to Sites Containing and
About Comics on the Web
(Skip to Sites About Comics)
Sites Containing Comics
Brian Clopper – Elementary School Teacher and Cartoonist
http://www.brianclopper.com
"Dead Guys In Space" is an oddly sensitive comic about two zombie space marine
buddies sent out on suicide recon missions to the unstable parts of the universe. One
thing that’s readily apparent is Clopper’s great sense of design, and his quirky
sense of humor. He features sketches he’s drawn for his students and an ongoing
strip, "Space Babies," about a group of instellar daycare kids who save humanity
from the universe. Forthcoming is a series called "Heebie-Jeebies," and his
stuff seems to be migrating from online to print. The site design is very simple, but gets
the job done. The artwork doesn’t really take advantage of being online, mainly
restricted to scans of pages.
Kyle Baker
http://www.kylebaker.com
Baker has a cool, updated-retro style that hearkens to the 30s and 40s. He has some cool
comic strips, cartoons, animations, and lots of other artsy-type stuff on his site. His
fine art gallery is a pretty cool Flash sequence, but overall it’s fairly derivative.
But high quality derivation. The whole site is really snazzily put together and the
presentation of the comics is top-notch.
The Official Bob the Angry Flower Homepage
http://www.angryflower.com
An online classic, one of the first Web comics I ever encountered, "Bob the Angry
Flower" has sustained its popularity. Although never exclusively web-based, it’s
fun to read. But the comics are mainly laid out as single images that look like scans of
the original artwork.
Dame Darcy Shrine
http://www.drizzle.com/~dyslexia/darcy-bkup/
A fansite dedicated to the odd comics of Dame Darcy. Coincidentally, Darcy is from Idaho
Falls, and her comics have been an underground mainstay for over 10 years now. This is a
fansite, but very complete, and it features links to readable versions of her most
well-known comic, Meat Cakes.
Toozeday Komix
http://www.word.com/komix/
This site is really fun to browse. New comics go up every Tuesday, and these are good,
old, underground comics drawn by some of the most well-known and cutting edge comics
artists working. The archives are huge, and easy to browse. While we don’t see any
web-specific comics here, there are a lot of good ones.
Dope Dragon
http://www.dopedragon.co.uk/
This site hosts a Flash-based comic called "Wayz of the Dragon." It’s a
sci-fi, surrealist comic put to house beats (lots of drum and bass). It kind of reminds me
of the first Heavy Metal movie.
Monkey Fun
http://www.monkeyfun.com
This site has several different interactive comic-type-things to do. Mostly using Flash
and Java, these are pretty fun. Highlights include Big Head’s Amazing Comic Strip
Adventure Game and the Joe Cartoon Blender.
Big Panda
http://www.bigpanda.net/
This is a huge linksite that can point you toward almost any online comic you’re
looking for. It’s a blast to browse through, and there are hundreds of comics out
there, free for the reading.
Beekeeper Cartoon Amusements
http://www.beecomix.com/index.htm
This is Jason Little’s site, he is a comic artist/writer as well as a commercial
illustrator. Jason has a number of original comics and comic excerpts on his site. Bee
is by far his coolest comic; it features a photo-mat monkey/detective, Bee. While Bee
is not an online comic per se, it is mainly distributed on the internet. Little is
using his webpage to sell Bee to alternative print newsweeklies. He’s got an
interesting section where he shows Bee in full color, black and white, 2-color, and
3-color process.
The Room O’Manga
http://members.aol.com/umataro42/manga.html
Put together by a bilingual fan, this site is simply (and crudely) manga in
translation. It mainly features Crayon Shinchan, the rude, potty humored, five-year-old
hero of Japanese comics. Crayon is famous in Japan, but officially untranslated here in
the US, and that is why this site is so neat. The site is poorly organized and the
translations are rough, but it is well worth it to read about Crayon and his parody-type
adventures in Japan.
Robot Stories
http://www.robotstories.com/
While Robot Stories looks a lot like other online comics (four frames of equal size
and rough, yet computer assisted, illustrations) there are a lot of things that set it
apart. First of all it is created using partly transparent images over a paper bag
texture, and it also occasionally uses scans or photographs of actual objects. It is the
tale of a very unrobotic robot working customer service, think robot Dilbert.
Zentoons
http://home.earthlink.net/~twelvepm/zentoons/morgue.html
Created by Paul Murray, a self proclaimed "big-time advertising geek," Zentoons
are simple four panel strips about everything and anything. They are drawn out on lined
notebook paper, scanned, and put up on the web. Murray says he is just killing time and
sees no money in his doodling. Murray is smart and witty; his drawing style is sketchy if
not charming. Zentoons is a good example of doing it for the love of comics.
Art Comics by Bebe Williams
http://www.artcomic.com/
Art Comics claims to have the longest running comic on the internet. But man is it
bizarre; Comics Daily (a daily strip) seems to be a text driven story about alien
abductions that utilizes found photographs. Another equally as weird comic from Art
Comics is Bobby Ruckers. I can’t tell what it’s about (other than
Bobby Ruckers and a fly) but it uses illustrations, found images, and photography to make
a strange black and white mix.
Exercises in Style
http://www.indymagazine.com/comics/style.shtml
Matt Madden writes and draws this "comic." It is inspired by a work of the same
name by the French writer Raymond Queneau. "The goal of this project is to apply the
same principle to comics by creating as many variations as possible on a simple one-page
non-story: different points of view, different genres, different formal games, and so
on." Hosted on Indy Magazine ( www.indymagazine.com ), which is also worth checking
out; it’s a "guide to alternative comics."
Dark Hotel
http://www.salon.com/comics/dark/4/
The Dark Hotel is an ongoing online comic series hosted by Salon.com. Set in San
Francisco's most legendary resident's hotels, it centers on Drago Drugilovic, the Yugoslav
hotel manager. Drago was something of a war hero in the Balkans and that features
prominently in the story. The Dark Hotel is episodic and the comics themselves are doled
out panel by panel. There are also lots of extras like timelines, fictional logs, and
links to real life Balkans sites.
Sites About Comics
European Comics on the Web
http://lcg-www.uia.ac.be/~erikt/comics/welcome.html
A really cool guide to lots of different European comic websites in all different
languages. It’s just a huge link site, but from what I could tell most of the links
are active and annotated with some helpful information. The site also lists publishers and
comics sellers. The site covers both online and print comics.
Gilles Poitras’ Service to Fans Site
http://www.sirius.com/~cowpunk/#anchor107136
Poitras has written several books about anime and manga (Japanese animation and comics).
There is a lot to explore on this site, but highlights include the recommended reading and
viewing lists, as well as the Librarian’s guide to anime and manga. If you want to
get into the Japanese tradition, this is a good starting point.
JAI2: The World of Frederik Schodt
http://www.jai2.com/
Schodt is one of the foremost scholars of Japanese manga. He served as translator to Osamu
Tezuka, a true master of manga, and his books, Manga! Manga! and Dreamland Japan,
are required reading for any fan of the genre. This page is especially useful for its
hand-picked links and features by Schodt.
The History of Superhero Comics
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8580/
This is a pretty good site with a definite academic slant. The focus is on superhero
comics in America, and the site is nicely illustrated and includes some cool extra
material. Especially interesting is the full text of the 1954 Congressional report on
comics and juvenile delinquency. This site also has a good list of links.
Fredric Wertham Article
http://art-bin.com/art/awertham.html
This guy was an anti-comics crusader who eventually switched sides. He published a book
called Seduction of the Innocent in 1954 that led to the original Comics Approval
Code. It’s an interesting piece.
Comic Art & Graffix Gallery Virtual Museum
http://www.comic-art.com/
There’s lots of information here, especially about the history of comics. This site
expands to include a lot of old fanzines (lots of monster and sci-fi stuff). There are a
few stories to read here, and lots of images of pages and covers.
Negative Space Text Archive
http://www.hoboes.com/pub/Comics/
This site is text-only, and not too pretty, but really informative. It’s got
everything from circulation stats for comics since the 1930s to lists of theses and
dissertations written concerning comics. It also features lots of interesting articles and
archived forum discussions, as well as pages about individual artists.
Love and Rockets
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/9923/luvrock.html
A great page about Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez ("Los Bros"), creators, writers,
and artists for Love and Rockets. L&R is a continuing series that
centers around two hispanic communities. The brothers trade off duties, one creating a
book, and then the other, and occasionally mixing up books to include stories from both
setting. This comic has a huge fan following and is pretty interesting.
Comics Research
http://www.comicsresearch.org/
A scholarly clearinghouse of info, this site has a ton on it. It lists annotated
bibliographies, links to articles and sites, and lots of useful academic information about
comics.
Tezuka Osamu World
http://ja-f.tezuka.co.jp/
Although this is a Japanese site, they have a great English version of their Flash
animation about Tezuka, his life, and work. Plus, the Japanese just make such dang cute
websites.
Resources for the Study of Comics
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cmarx/resources.html
Another scholarly clearinghouse of bibliographic listings and links, this page offers up a
whole lot of stuff. You can find out about everything from how to cite material from
comics to conferences and calls for papers.
Comics Research Libraries
http://www.lib.msu.edu/comics/director/comres.htm
This site is a straight forward listing of many (US and international) libraries with
substantial comic collections. Listed alphabetically the entries are short giving contact
information and a few words about the scope of the general collection at that institution.
Comic Art in Scholarly Writing: A Citation Guide
http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~epk93002/CAC/cite.html
This site is basically what it says, a citation guide. It gives information about how and
what to cite as well as examples.
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
http://www.cbldf.org/
This site is the web arm of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. It was "officially
incorporated as a non-profit charitable organization in January of 1990 from the money
left over from donations raised to defend Friendly Frank's arrest for selling
‘obscene comics’ in Lansing, IL in 1986." It’s been fighting the good
fight for over 12 comic book retailers and professionals. The website includes news,
articles, and resources for your comic law needs.
(This page is compiled from information gathered by
myself and Sarah Wichlacz.) |
