Two webcomics you *must* read

This is going to sound quite, quite sad - and it probably was - but I spent the whole of Friday (i.e. yesterday) reading through a webcomic by David Willis. He's done a couple of webcomics, namely 'It's Walky!' (a.k.a. 'Joyce and Walky!') and 'Shortpacked!', and both are excellent. I love this style of carton drawing - it's uncomplicated but has all the detail you'll need.

So yesterday, I read 'It's Walky!'/'Joyce and Walky' from beginning to end - that's 2,476 comics since 8th September 1997 (the figures I know because I used Offline Explorer to download it all). Boy, it took forever but I finished it all in under 24hrs... just... (okay, so I'm a slow reader!). It starts off as a couple of old friends having just moved into university digs and meeting new and old friends - this set of comics was the 'Roomies!' sub-set. I say sub-set, because Willis amalgamates two or three different stories into one long story spanning the 7-years of the comic (and is in fact still on-going, albeit on a subscription based service). This 'interlinking' is not noticable at first but after a while it ties together, and does so fabulously. Anyway, these friends soon get split into groups and separate stories are made for each. The main storyline is that of Martians coming to attack Earth and wipe out the human race, and only a group of super-humans can stop the upcoming onslaught. There are certainly a few surprises in the story and with the characters, and the comic-strips are nicely done to give some suspense (although luckily I never had to wait until the next strip was published).

However, there were a few stories around about 3-quarters in where the art-style changed noticably and they tried to add in new characters (another bunch of friends from a parallel universe, etc.). It didn't work for me and kind of ruined the flow of the comic. I was worried that it was going to continue throughout, but soon the art-style returned and so too the jokes. Talking of jokes, there are some excellent ones, especially near the beginning of the comic because there didn't seem to be this underlying story of the 'imminent destruction of Earth'. That's not to say the jokes were lacking later on - far from it - they were still good, but spread out between a larger number of strips. In fact, the story did get quite serious at times and I only noticed with hindsight - I was so engrossed with the comic that I didn't care that there was a distinct lack of jokes, it was a storyline that didn't let up and made the comic a 'page-turner' (or whatever the electronic equivalent is).

And it was gory, sad, funny, happy, interesting, suspense-filled, quizzical, stoical, stylishly poked fun at the Americans and British, ballsy, ... it was a complete mix of emotions. I absolutely loved this webcomic and highly recommend that you take an hour or so a day, trundling through each and every comic strip from the very beginning. It's abolutely worth it, just becareful that you don't get carried away and try to read them all at once. It sucks away your time, but at least it's time well spent.

'It's Walky!'/'Joyce and Walky' is in two forms: (1) a subscription-based comic that extends the main storyline main storyline with strips of what is happening with the characters; (2) a free comic every Saturday that continues the lives of Joyce and Walky (and maybe others) with standard length strips.



And then there's Willis' more-recent 'Shortpacked!' webcomic. This one revolves around staff in a toy shop and their everyday lives. There doesn't seem to be any major underlying story here. Also, a couple of characters are taken from 'It's Walky!' and put into this story. Initially, I had read all on the Shortpacked! comics and didn't really understand why, when the two characters met each, one of the them was tongue-tied for words at having seen met them before. Having read through Willis' first comic, it makes perfect sense. The jokes in this are pretty good too, and what with it just day-to-day storylines, there's a punchline in each strip. Shortpacked! is published more regularly (once every 2 or 3 days, maybe). Well worth checking out too.