The Best Written Webcomics: Dark Humor, Cynicism, Scotty, and SOMETHING POSITIVE

[alschroeder3]

I did a series on what I considered the best-illustrated webcomics. I want to do a complimentary series on the best-written webcomics. There are a lot of really good writers and well-writen webcomics, past and present, like T. Campbell's FANS, Baldwin's BRUNO, David Willis' DUMBING OF AGE and its Walkyverse predecessors.

But there's one that has always stood out to me. One with impecabble comic timing, wonderful dialogue and punch lines, and just enough occasional seriousness and heart to leaven a steady diet of cynicism, dark humor, and the folly of the human condition.

I tend to be a kind of sappy, idealistic guy. I tend to keep a cheerful outlook. Superman's my favorite superhero.

Yet I dearly love Randy Mullohand's SOMETHING POSITIVE.

Let's look at why. This will be pretty long.

This is from the latest S*P strip, as of May 5th. It helps that although I'm a science fiction fan, I'm not particularly a STAR WARS fan. If you've never read S*P, it'll give you an idea of what it's like.

Let's go back to early strips. Here's as good an introduction as any to Davan, the main character, as well as his two best friends/wingwomen.

Davan, the main character, has a best friend named Scotty who tried to commit suicide over a girl. Davan doesn't take it well...

And CONTINUES to not take it well..

The "coat hanger" is a reference to the first strip.

Davan CONTINUES to not take it well...

We will see Scotty...or at least his grave, again.

Like here...

And here...

And here...

Arch-cynic Davan getting married? How did THAT happen?

Like this...

And this...

And finally, this...

Vanassa is perfect for Davan.

Scarily so.

Another example:

There are dozens of great secondary characters, like Aubrey (one of the aforementioned wingwomen/friends) but my favorite is Mike. Originally introduced as an arch-geek with absolutely no social graces or redeeming traits, he eventually became a half-decent father--and an utterly clueless real-life "superhero" called the Pythagorean. He even meets other real-life "superheroes"...

And finds, oddly enough, the Pythagorean has been an inspiration to many of them.

I'll close out to a very typical comic. One that makes you want to laugh and yet feel vaguely uncomfortable at the same time....an S*P specialty.

I could do twenty entries about S*P, with different arcs, different themes, focusing on different characters.

Randy has never collected these strips into books. He could have made many books, with many of the brilliant arcs in separate books.

Our loss.

Comments

[burkeonthesly]

The whole run is on his site for free. We haven't lost much.

[alschroeder3]

True. But when you have a large run of strips, it can be intimidating to a first-time reader. I followed it virtually from the start, but even for me it took a while to pick the relatively few I presented here. Imagine going to the library or Amazon or a local bookstore and seeing a collection of the strips of the Pythagorean and Mike. Or Kharisma's troubles. Or Aubrey's unusual business. It can be a gateway for first-time readers to sample Something Positive, it could be a continuing extra source of income for Randy, and it can preserve Something Positive for people to read decades from now, as people read Calvin and Hobbes. Randy has an urge to redo the early ones. I hope he doesn't. I love reading the really early PEANUTS strip and see how much Schultz changed over time.

[burkeonthesly]

You make fair points.

[alicemacher]

S*P's one of my favourites too!

Very good choice of strips, by the way.

[alschroeder3]

Thanks. It took me a while to narrow it down, and even so, I could have picked a lot more.

[captainbellman]

What's weird is that despite being mostly dark and cynical, at its core S*P is actually one of the sappiest and most feel-good comics I've ever read.

[alschroeder3]

Exactly. Cynicism without a (well-concealed) heart gets boring after a while.

[grazzt]

The Warren Ellis of webcomics, if you will.

[owlbrigade1]

I admit I love S*P, my only complaint about it is that the text in some of the earlier comics is very small and hard to read. Or maybe my eyes are getting older and need to squint more. Dammit, it is the latter isn't it. I'm becoming older.

[alschroeder3]

No, trust me, its pretty clear the difference in size. (And also, as all authors do, Randy has learned over time how less is more with dialogue.) In the early years you had to keep in mind bandwidth and how long the page will load. (I remember thinking the same thing on some webcomics I've done, especially in the early 2000s.) So you tried to cram as much as you could in as small an image as feasible, especially if you did color. Nowadays, it's not as big a concern. You can make the strip bigger, give it room to breathe.