Webcomics

Sooo ... I canceled most of my webcomics subscriptions, since I'm moving and haven't got the time to keep up with them. What immediately happened (of course) is that I started spending more time surfing free comics and even ended up subscribing to ANOTHER pay site (Graphic Smash). Aaargh!

Some of the good ones I've found lately ...

Zebra Girl - Woman's idiot roommate finds an ancient spellbook in the attic and accidentally turns her into a demon, then can't turn her back. Starts off as a screwball gag strip, then picks up steam as it becomes more serious and the one-dimensional characters slowly evolve into fully-developed human beings. The art is nice, a blend of Loony Tunes, Disney and X-Men.

Shaw Island - Laugh-out-loud funny strip about ... a suicidally depressed cartoonist living in a trailer on a remote island off the coast of Washington State. The island is infested with talking hamsters, socialist crabs, video game designers, nuns, and an amnesiac who thinks he's Jesus.

On the pay sites, I subscribed to Graphic Smash mainly to read the archives of Ursula Vernon's Digger. Normally I avoid anthropomorphic comics like the plague. This is just a personal prejudice and I *know* that ... so I won't get into my reasons here ... and it's not to say that there aren't good anthro comics or some anthros that I read. But generally they have to be really, really good to hook me. Digger is that good. It really has a lot more in common with the old talking-animal stories than the current crop of animal-head anthros ... like The Wind in the Willows and The Jungle Book -- Kipling's version, not Disney's; in fact, I'd be really surprised if Kipling isn't an influence on this series. Also, Ursula's animals keep their animal-ness intact -- they aren't just humans with animal heads. The art is gorgeous, there's a delightful sense of the bizarre, and I love the main character, a blue-collar, prosaic, no-nonsense wombat named Digger.

Girlamatic has some new comics that I really, really like. "Sevenplains" has been added to their lineup ... I've raved at length about that one before, so I can refrain this time around. I also really like the looks of "Jupiter" (by the same writer/artist as Sand & Stone, another of my favorites), "All Undone" (modern-day myths -- yeah!), and Raina Telgemeier's "Smile".

F***ing Spam

It's not often that I really feel like swearing, but "good grief" hardly seems to cover my spam situation anymore. Since the last time I checked my email today (about 6 hours) I got over 200 spam messages. That's ... absurd. The trouble is, I can't just categorically delete everything except the ones that get filtered to other folders (which is what happens with most of my "expected" mail from known email addresses) because I do get unsolicited mail of a business type: fan letters, orders and stuff. But I'm thisclose to putting a note wherever I give out my email address, such as on my website, asking people who write to me about Raven's Children and Kismet to use a certain header line (such as "Raven's Children" or "Kismet") and then just deleting anything that doesn't have the header. I know that I would probably miss a few important emails that way. But goddamn ... I'm tired of wasting my time sorting through hundreds of messages a day that are manipulative, pointless, intelligence-insulting and/or obscene. My time is more important to me than that.