Describe your favorite comic strip or cartoon.
When I read “comic strip” I think of the funnies section of my stepdad’s newspaper. I would read them while I ate my cereal before school, to get myself in a good mood before heading off to have my soul sucked dry (I’m being mostly hyperbolic here, I never had a soul to be sucked in the first place). I loved the classic Peanuts and the Rose is Rose and the Zits, to name a few. Get Fuzzy was probably my favorite in my junior and senior years because it was new to our paper and tended more to the dark humor than the other strips. I didn’t know you could even do that. (Another five years would pass before I learned about Attack on Titan and how graphic cartoons could even be.)
Also in the latter half of my high school career, I started following a bunch of webcomics. I would cycle them into my morning or evening routine depending on their update schedule. Some were daily, some were Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and some were only updated once a week. Xkcd was one of the first I followed and remains one of my favorites to this day. Ctrl Alt Del is another I’ve followed since at least high school.
The most frequently updated comic I follow though, is Questionable Content. I had heard some friends talk about it at college so I gave it a go. At that time, it had been running every Monday through Friday for 6 years, so I had a bit of a backlog to go through before I got caught up. I think it took me about a week. And ever since, I have been following it every day.
What started out as a silly strip about an indie musician pining after a new girl in town has turned into a beautifully executed commentary on diversity and inclusion and also there are so many robots. Seeing the changes in the art and the storytelling over the past 15 years is fascinating. The fact that the world is open ended enough that there is no clear endgame and that he could, conceivably, quit at any point without leaving any major unresolved plots showcases just how well he has developed the world and the characters.
I relate strongest to Faye and Hannelore, so their individual arcs have always been my favorites. Granted, Faye’s got dark there for a bit a few years ago, but it was a necessary development for her character and was not written for the sake of being shocking. Jeph does his research. He doesn’t play around with heavy subjects on a whim. Also I love how it’s turned from this hipster-music-centric punchline-machine into a full-fledged soft sci-fi queer romance story set practically in my back yard.
We could all use a robot girlfriend these days. (Some of us already do. Here’s lookin at you, Alexa.)
That’s all I’ve got for tonight. Today was a weird, rough-ish day and I am ready for bed. One more prompt for you tomorrow. Have a great night!
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Closet Full of Notebooks 