Wednesday 30 November 2011

Recommendations: Webcomic

Recommendations

Hey guys.  It’s been a while since I did one of these, and I think it’s high time I wrote another, especially as this one is a (marginally) contributing factor to my spotty blog progress of late.

You see, I’ve been catching up with what used to be my favourite webcomic.  I used to be well into webcomics a couple of years ago.  In fact I think I had about a dozen bookmarked that I would keep up on.  However, with the advent of a more challenging (or at more fulfilling) job really cut down on the time I could spend reading these things and the regular reads slipped and then eventually I just moved on and didn’t read any more.  If anything, I switched over to reading blogs for some reason, even though the effort is probably about the same to keep up.

Recently, I have rediscovered one particular comic that I used to follow religiously and have been catching up on the many, many issues that have been added to it over the past couple of years.  It is just as good as I remember, so I have no problem wit recommending Sam and Fuzzy (www.samandfuzzy.com) for you to read.

First, a few reasons why I rate it so highly.  The black and white art style is distinctive and very well balanced, never including too much detail to be hard to decipher at a glance.  The creator (Sam Logan) never seems averse to trying out different styles or artistic tricks to accentuate the frames and this helps keep the whole thing fresh and interesting.  Another cool aspect to the art is that it isn’t computer-based (primarily), which helps to further distinguish itself from the wealth of other webcomics out there, presenting a more hand-drawn aesthetic that, for some reason or another, just seems more amiable.  Probably the wrong adjective to use under the circumstances, but I stand by it.

At first glance, it does appear to be just another ‘straightman with psychotic sidekick’ style of setup (in this case, Sam, a guy who looks a bit like Sonic the Hedgehog and Fuzzy his amoral anthropomorphic teddy bear friend with gravity defying eyebrows) and, to be honest, that’s kind of how it started.  It was initially joke-a-day (well three jokes a week).  However, it has since grown out of that niche and has developed its own coherent plot which has been going for a good few years now.  One of the things I definitely admire about the comic is the way the author has been able to take stupid ideas (demonically possessed fridges, hamster biker gangs, the Ninja Mafia) and incorporate them in a whole where they somehow fit, let alone use them effectively in a story.  It’s really admirable.

And last, but certainly not least, it’s genuinely funny.  However, I’m aware that humour is highly subjective, so the best way to present my case is to point you in the direction of the comic itself.  Go read it.  Good boy/girl/thing.

Annoyingly brief at the moment, but work is selfishly allowing less and less time for my verbose blathering.

Never mind, eh?  More stuff coming at a suitably nebulous later date…

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