Penny Arcade is a webcomic focused on video games and video game culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. The comic debuted in 1998 on the website loonygames.com. Since then, Holkins and Krahulik have established their own site, which is typically updated with a new comic strip each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The comics are accompanied by regular updates on the site's blog.
Webcomics are comics published on the internet, such as on a website or a mobile app. While many webcomics are published exclusively online, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books.
Sprite comics are webcomics that consist primarily of computer sprites from video games. Art assets are ripped from various classic games such as Mega Man and Sonic the Hedgehog, are edited and combined by amateur cartoonists, and are posted on the internet. Popularized by Bob and George in the early 2000s, the style is considered relatively easy for beginning cartoonists to get involved in, but sprite comics are generally looked down upon for being of low quality. The format has not seen mainstream attention since 8-bit Theater concluded in 2010.
A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons or comics. Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the literary and graphic components of the work as part of their practice.
8-Bit Theater is a sprite comic, meaning the art is mainly taken from pre-existing video game assets, created by Brian Clevinger that ran from 2001 to 2010 and consisting of 1,225 pages. The webcomic was, at times, one of the most popular webcomics, and the most popular sprite comic.
Bob and George was a sprite-based webcomic which parodied the fictional universe of Mega Man. It was written by David Anez, who at the time was a physics instructor living in the American Midwest. The comic first appeared on April 1, 2000, and ran until July 28, 2007. It was updated daily, with there being only 29 days without a comic in its seven years of production and with 2568 comics being made altogether.
Scott R. Kurtz is an American webcomic artist. Known for creating the daily online comic-strip PvP, Kurtz is among the first professional webcomic creators.
John Kovalic is an American cartoonist, illustrator, and writer.
Scott Pilgrim is a series of graphic novels by Canadian author and comic book artist Bryan Lee O'Malley. The original edition of the series consists of six digest size black-and-white volumes, released between August 2004 and July 2010, by Portland-based independent comic book publisher Oni Press. It was later republished by Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins. Full-colour hardback volumes, coloured by Nathan Fairbairn, were released from August 2012 to May 2015.
The Perry Bible Fellowship is a webcomic and newspaper comic strip by Nicholas Gurewitch. It first appeared in the Syracuse University newspaper The Daily Orange in 2001.
Ctrl+Alt+Del (CAD) is a gaming-related webcomic and animated series written by Tim Buckley. The name of the comic refers to the Windows command Control-Alt-Delete. Premiering on October 23, 2002, the comic's focus has gradually shifted away from single strip gags towards longer story arcs and greater continuity through the use of video game references. Ctrl+Alt+Del currently is updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Homestuck is an Internet fiction series created by American author and artist Andrew Hussie. The fourth and best-known of Hussie's four MS Paint Adventures, it originally ran from April 13, 2009 to April 13, 2016. Though normally described as a webcomic, and partly constituted by a series of single panel pages, Homestuck also relied heavily on Flash animations and instant message logs to convey its story, along with occasional use of browser games.
Tasha Sounart is an American animator, artist, video game designer, and writer. She was the designer of Double Fine's adventure RPG Costume Quest. She is currently an Associate Creative Director of Theme Parks at Pixar.
The history of webcomics follows the advances of technology, art, and business of comics on the Internet. The first comics were shared through the Internet in the mid-1980s. Some early webcomics were derivatives from print comics, but when the World Wide Web became widely popular in the mid-1990s, more people started creating comics exclusively for this medium. By the year 2000, various webcomic creators were financially successful and webcomics became more artistically recognized.
In contrast with mainstream American comics, webcomics are primarily written and drawn by women and gender variant people. Because of the self-published nature of webcomics, the internet has become a successful platform for social commentary, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) expression.
The Awkward Yeti is an ongoing gag-a-day webcomic by Nick Seluk. Starting in 2012, the comic follows the daily life of the blue yeti Lars. Seluk posts The Awkward Yeti comics on his personal website, as well as on Tapas. Seluk has started a few spin-off comics on the website of The Awkward Yeti. These are Heart and Brain, a webcomic following the daily lives of an anthropomorphic heart and brain, and Medical Tales Retold, which repurposes real medical stories into comedic or touching comics.
Notable events of 2012 in webcomics.
Notable events of 2014 in webcomics.
"Loss", sometimes referred to as "loss.jpg", is a strip published on June 2, 2008, by Tim Buckley for his gaming-related webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del. It is part of a storyline in which the main character Ethan and his fiancée Lilah are expecting their first child. Presented as a four-panel comic with no dialogue, the strip shows Ethan entering a hospital where he sees Lilah weeping in a hospital bed after suffering a miscarriage. Buckley cited events in his life as inspiration for the comic.
Jen Lee is an American cartoonist, illustrator, and author. Her works include Thunderpaw: In the Ashes of Fire Mountain, Vacancy,Garbage Night, and At the Edge of the Stream at Dusk.
