Webcomic Week: Sluggy Freelance

[cyberghostface]

Sluggy Freelance is a webcomic that started in 1997 and is still going. I haven't read it in over a decade as the mythology grew increasingly convoluted and almost impossible to follow (ask someone to explain what's up with Oasis) but at the time it was a pretty fun and addictive comic.

I decided to share the start of what was one of my favorite storylines, a fairly self-contained horror parody that they did all the way back in 2000. You don't really need to know anything about the prior comics to enjoy it.

Warning for gore (albeit cartoonish gore).









The rest can be read here.

Comments

[coldfury]

Still reading Sluggy. 20+ years of comics is a pretty hefty backlog, but he actually did a pretty good job of explaining Oasis recently.

He hasn't done a self contained story like this in awhile (I think he wanted to finish his main story before he died so he's slowly cut back on the parodies and involved side stories.).

I'm still annoyed at how ultimately pointless Ocean's Unmoving was. Months if not over a year of comics involving a side story focused on new characters to explain a *bit* of Bun-Buns ridiculously convoluted backstory.

(I honestly think Bun-Bun has Oasis topped for confusing backstories, considering some developments there in the past couple of years).

[alicemacher]

I stopped reading Sluggy for the same reason. But it's good to revisit "Kitten" after all this time. That was one of the more fun self-contained arcs. "I don't think the Evil is a good influence on you," indeed. :D

[nyadnar17]

Holy shit I remember this! Hell this probably is the webcomic that got me into webcomics back in the day.

Boggles my mind its still ongoing.

[crinos]

Sluggy Freelance was my first Webcomic. I think it was a lot of peoples first.

I don't read it anymore (As the OP said it became WAY too hard to follow). But I remember it fondly.

[skjam]

Still reading regularly. Hoping the creator keeps to the plan that this is the final major storyline.

[tcampbell1000]

I've contributed a few minor pieces of Sluggy lore and I'm still following along, though I wouldn't know what to say to someone who wanted to start it at this point, except that "if you want a fairly good guide to what early 'story' webcomics were like, this will tell you a lot." Before The Oatmeal, xkcd, and Penny Arcade, Sluggy seemed to be the model.

Like a lot of indie comics of that time and ten years earlier, it could lurch between different genres and subject matters with little warning. The only things really binding it together were its core cast, a general sci-fi/fantasy sensibility, and Abrams' easygoing sense of humor. Oh, and maybe his considerable work ethic: though he's slowed down a bit in recent years, the sheer number of panels he produced on an annual basis is almost unrivaled in comics, never mind webcomics.

I think maybe that's what I miss most about it: this idea that as long as you worked hard at it, you could take absolutely anything that interested you and put it all in one series, and your readers would reward you with endless devotion. That only really worked for Sluggy because of first-mover advantage and a lot of readers who also wanted to buy into that idea.

You saw it a lot in the indie comics of the 1990s, which were partly just happy to be able to tell stories about not superheroes. What's that, Terry Moore? Your cartoony relationship dramedy is also an organized crime epic? Sure, why not. Dave Sim, your barbarian Conan parody is already a meditation on politics and law but sure, if you want to do a late-life biography of Oscar Wilde, I'm sure you can fit it in somewhere. Just don't go crazy on us, ha ha!

These days I still like to mix genres here and there, but I recognize that a series needs a lot more thematic unity than "Isn't it nifty?" Which is a shame, because reading a work like Sluggy can be a real adventure for a long time. But eventually, in any adventure with a tour guide, you want to have some sense that your guide knows where they're going.