• she/her

healthcare bureaucrat in philly, v adhd, orthodox jew, ect ect, im love my wife



JuniperTheory
@JuniperTheory

warning: these are going to be actively mean for the sake of comedy. I actually enjoy quite a few of these, although I won't say which ones. If you're going to read me going "your comic SUCKS" and get mad move on to another post this is not Serious Criticism.

this is only the the ones that people actively sent me; so if your favorite isn't on here that's because nobody would admit to it. do it, coward. admit your secret shame so i may add it to the board


hthrflwrs
@hthrflwrs

i love this post. it's like being kicked in the chest twenty times in a row


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Remember the extended sequence where they were basically doing a continuous blood transfusion with each-other? A true work of acrobatics that the Foglios were able to resolve that in a firmly heterosexual manner

did they do the entirety of xxxenophile without knowing about homosexuals? is that possible? could they have in fact done an entire porn comic without actually knowing what sex is??

Surprised at some of the niche inclusions here, thankful at the exclusions of some others that definitely probably should have been included.

The number of ricochets I got from being one of those people that others try to convince Unsounded is worth reading, despite completely bouncing off it repeatedly, is beyond me.

Also, no Kill Six Billion Demons??

listen the only rules are "have to be very old" and "has to still be running" and i'll add anything if it fits those requirements.

and ksbd is boring. it's great. it's kickass and all works well. what do i say "woah you have great taste"?

Kill Six Billion Demons

You've ridden this tiger for a decade now and it's been a surprisingly good ride, but frankly you're starting to worry how it's going to stop. You trust the tiger to stick the landing, but you've passed several tiger corpses on the shoulder of the road, and it's starting to get stressful.

i read Dumbing of Age and QC daily and also must admit that i think that late-season BBT is better than people would give it credit for, and that Penny-Sheldon-Leonard-Amy have great chemistry and comedic timing as a group as long as no other characters are present

At some point he went from radfem to full on MAGA, which meant disavowing a lot of his previous feminist politics. Patriarchy is good now. Sinfest is now just boomer racist comics complaining about The Woke Genders and the old cast barely appears in it at all. He gets a lot of retweets on X (Formerly Known As Twitter) but I don't think he actually is making more money off this version.

Not so much "louder" iirc as "there from the very beginning of the author's supposed 'feminist shift', so anyone who thinks there was a second shift is suspicious to me"

EDIT: Obviously he's gotten worse over time, but a lot of people describe it as if there was a second abrupt reversal, as if he was actually progressive somewhere in the middle.

I went to see if the page was still up and apparently Irregular Webcomic started uploading new strips again. Just set out with a wild goal, achieved it, then came back years later and said "Nah let's keep going."

I think Legacy of Dominic Deegan (which had its main arc wrap up not too long ago) was like, decent? But not phenomenal. It was a nice character drama, but it didn't have as much of the world-depth to it as the original. Also it felt weirdly like, "look at how casual I am about nudity and sex."

a few comics i read on a regular basis a long while ago
sam & fuzzy: finished its main story, it started doing smaller side stories and i kinda tuned out
cucumber quest: was a die-hard for it, sad it went on hiatus but am excited for whatever they make next
drive: don't really keep up with this one as it updates but i did buy 3 hardcovers thru a kickstarter for $180 (the books are pretty nice and i vibe with the story)
atomic robo: loved this one in middle school when it was uploading back issues and i kept up with it for a long while until like spector of tomorrow (but i did read up to the vengeful dead semi-recently so :p)
the wormworld saga: this one has long times in between updates, i think i read to the end of chapter 9 but havent gone back since, its very pretty
doctor mcninja: i remember this one being really fun, i might go back to reread and see if it holds up since its finished
amulet: this one isn't a webcomic but honestly? it's a webcomic published by scholastic, the last book comes out next year and what i remember of the plot is kind of convoluted? feels like the end of an era that a 9 book scholastic graphic novel series is coming to an end

cucumber quest: was a die-hard for it, sad it went on hiatus but am excited for whatever they make next

they're making a visual novel! the short form of the name is "soulsov", i forget the exact longform name—soul of sovereignty, i think? and its supposed to be out this year!

My "I read Homestuck as a kid and I turned out fine" shirt is causing people to ask a lot of questions already answered by the shirt. And as I type this I realize I could make the shirt real and commit the sin of making this meme real.

Bouncing off of Misfile well before coming to terms with gender stuff then hearing mentions of it recently made me wonder if it was a genderbend comic worth going back to but it sounds like the winning move was to actually forget about it.

Since my submission was overlooked I'll just assume that I've been hallucinating Captain SNES this whole time and try to go about my life unchanged.

Why did you have to remind me that Dominic Deegan existed. I should sue you for mental assault.

I am the guy who read Girl Genius cause Steampunk, countersue me.

Also, Widdershins is great. Day 1 reader, loved their previous comic too.

You letting me know Dominic Deegan has a sequel is really fucking me up right now. Misfile too.

Calling QC Big-Bang-Theory-But-Gayer hurts, but is fair; I have forgotten what the last 500 pages were about, but that's because I've hyperfixated on why the AI are horny (they don't reproduce sexually! Why would they have sex drives?) and the implications thereof.

I read Oglaf, but I don't have my sex toys on a shelf - I will make the standard Oglaf Kissy Face with my dick out though.

Thanks for letting me know about Skin Deep, I'll check it out.

As someone who has never really been a webcomics person (except xkcd i used to save every comic to my laptop when i was 19 years old so my screensaver could flip through them),

I always forget that ctrl+alt+del and penny arcade are different comics lmao

The Devil's Panties totally went the other way. That started as a band name, but they never made a band, so now it's a kickass webcomic name. (Tagline used to be "it's not satanic porn!", but then they did a porn comic called "Id", so there's a disclaimer on the disclaimer.)

i recognized way more of these than i expected to it was very funny to have a yelp of surprise three times in a row with evan dahm's stuff, freefall, and goblins

...does subnormality count as still going? :P
(no wait i can do that one: sphinxes are hot. that's all one needs to know)
oh g-d what about outsider. nevermind. ok hope you enjoyed this silly comment

You know what I also just remembered I still read that's fucking ancient?

DMFA, aka Dan & Mab's Furry Adventures.

I really should just delete it from my bookmarks, but I made some of my first internet friends through its fanbase, so...

Not gonna lie, this finally got me to un-bookmark Gunnerkrigg and Three Panel Soul. Third Voice is fucking great tho, and I gotta re-read widdershins. Consider Ophiuchus btw it Rules.

Wait what Misfile is still going? I swear I read that it ended like, half a decade ago!
God now I'm curious but boy do I not need/have the time to look at a comic I read like 15 years ago. Gonna have to force myself to forget about this development.

It might as well still be going. It wrapped up the plot in 2019 and then the literal next day started down a sequel that's still going, I think with some character overlap?
...I don't actually know how connected they are. I blasted through the original in a month last year but decided against carrying on beyond that point.

I'm still reading Questionable Content through sheer inertia and it's kind of fascinating to me because like, Jeph Jacques clearly means well and prioritizes diversity in queer characters and etc. etc. etc. but the comic plots have become so toothless over time that it wraps around to feeling like empty pandering? I'm not gonna say "I'd rather it didn't have queer characters" or anything like that but comparing how the comic's earlier relationships were allowed to be spiky and fail and so on, a lot of the current ones feel really weak in comparison. As a queer guy I kind of rolled my eyes out of my head at how the whole Clinton/Elliot thing went down (and at how clear it was the author didn't want to draw guys kissing compared to girls kissing lmfao. that's not a moral judgment or anything it just made me laugh)

Unfortunately this is difficult to discuss with nuance online because, as you might expect, there is a huge legion of people who hate the comic for having a trans person in it and an even huger legion of people who dismiss any criticism of it as being from the people who hate the comic for having a trans person in it

You know, as a fellow Also Still A QC Reader I like... kinda like that the relationships are just there and kinda boring because it's pretty clear JJ is just heavily into the sci-fi at this point and it's like... yep, there's all kinds of relationships that are just kinda there as set dressing instead of it just being boring het relationships that are just there as set dressing as in so much sci fi

Fair enough! I have to admit a lot of the sci fi stuff doesn't really interest me sadly so that also leads to me wishing there was a little more meat on the bone with the relationship side of the comic.

Let's see...
DNR, read until some years ago until tge author yelled at me in twitter, read until it felt like they were intentionally lengthening the plot,
Read up until the last side story (got into it meeting them at a con),
Read for like, a year,
DNR,
read still, read still,
cracked my egg/DNR,
DNR,
Still read,
which one?,

DNR,
read for a few years but gave up on some hiatus, read for a but, can't take consistently,
DNR × 3,
read until act 6 act idgaf,
DNR × 4,
read for years, but gave up when the main character was pretending to date the angel that couldn't lie?,
read HINaBN & remember nothing about it,
DNR,
DNR,
read the original and some of the sequel & I think there is another sequel now. Good for him for learning how to keep a plot under a decade.
Bought all the ebooks, but thus Fae only to book 4,
DNR.

...
Guess autovbios are too hard to make fun of. :p

I was reading through and honestly braced myself for mean-spirited meanness but this was genuinely just fun and in a lot of cases a "huh that's still going? Cool!"

Then, while my guard was down, I was reminded Misfile still exists. You owe an apology to my 14 year old "almost all my media consumption is TG media that isn't self aware enough to mention transgender people as a concept or searching ao3 for works tagged "transgender female character" in fandoms I knew nothing about" self. Somehow it would take me a further 2 years to put the pieces together and I spent too much of that time reading Misfile and EGS.

(Also as a side note absolutely no disrespect to all the media I was reading back then it just did not trigger even the tiniest bit of introspection in me somehow even though I knew queer people)

People keep asking me if I've read Freefall because I also do an autistically overthought scifi setting. And brother I tried but the combination of 3 panel gag format and webcomic time drove me up a fucking wall

the second-most disconcerting webcomic fact I've learned in the last five years is that Randy Milholland officially draws Popeye now

(the most disconcerting fact, of course, was that they released a major Hollywood feature film starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Lopez based on a Bobby Crosby strip)

I agree, they're great! He's the right person for the job! I'm just saying, if you'd asked me in 2003 to choose the one single webcomic I was reading whose artist would have a syndicated strip in the Sunday papers twenty years down the road... I don't think he'd be at the absolute bottom of the list, but I absolutely would never have guessed it would be him

What a way for me to learn that Kevin and Kell was still running. That's as shocking to me as if you had said Class Menagerie or West Corner of the Park were still inexplicably going. Holy MOLEY.

Girl Genius is one where I have always had the weirdest "is this a porno comic that never quite gets to the porno" vibe, even after decades.

Sluggy Freelance will outlive us all.

avoiding the SMBC allegations by being a drop out let's fucking goooo

there are a couple of old, dead webcomics I wish could've lasted a bit longer (Olympus Overdrive and Crazy Sunshine my beloveds), but at least it means they will always stay as the things I liked back then

glad Awkward Zombie is still around tho :D

also high five but damn i've got YEARS of Oglaf to catch up on, ty for reminding me

I had to double take when I first saw it on cohost, because I read like the first hundred pages of almost every webcomic that's been going for 20 years or so? And it just showed up. And it's good!?! It works oddly similar to how my brain does, at least. And I still don't get 20% of it lmao

Thank you for reminding me to catch up on Widdershins! Last I remember, they were on a boat looking for a new anchor and Verity was getting shipped with the girl from the first Pride arc and they were about to reveal a Big Twist and I thought "one strip a week is way too slow to follow this plotline, I'll come back when it's done and read the whole thing."

edit: huh, apparently that arc finished like a year ago. i think i must have stopped reading only a couple pages before the end

Realizing that Paranatural is old hurt me, so now I'm lashing out: the absolutely foul webcomic about the hell rabbit is still going and the art is somehow worse.

In more pleasant news, we get new Nedroid comics occasionally! In utterly baffling news, Gone with the Blastwave actually updated twice this year.

Order of the Stick, still reading, enough of a sucker to have bought all the collections. Once wrote a lengthy essay and retrospective on Miko's character arc and the response she got at the time.

Hey, I could have gotten a lot worse.

I gave up on Dumbing of Age when the author started getting obsessed with the lead character learning about masturbation and the washing machine area. That was the point where I was absolutely done. I had gotten real close after that one asshole character died and he basically made fun of those of us who didn't like what had happened to him. And then he turned him into a mental delusion for another character (who was already traumatized and boy oh boy that's another topic I hate.) I don't care if the fanbase starts yelling at me. That comic lost whatever plot thread it was trying to follow a long time ago.

QC, eh. It was awfully 90s at first but got a bit okayer. I read it cuz it sometimes makes me laugh.

Gunnerkrigg, I gave up on.

Girl Genius, I like the Foglios, and wish the story would go faster, and it's heavily implied the two guys are gonna get together with Agatha anyway so.

EGS... I dunno how to feel about it. I like it? I don't mind it. I guess it reminds me of my teenage years a bit. Only gayer.

Dresden Codak has real pretty art.

OGLAF fuck yeah IDGAF.

Skin Deep fuck yeah IDGAF.

Apparently I'm also the only guy who likes Dominic Deegan, so hearing about a sequel made me smile.

I hate that I was reminded of that horrible edgelord rabbit comic thanks to a comment. It scarred me over 20 years ago and I had FINALLY forgotten about that atrocity until just now.

What does it mean if I'm still reading 14 of these? And that's only because I stopped Ctrl-Alt-Del and Penny Arcade. Plus Romantically Apocalyptic, which I think would really fit this list and is still going. The Devils Panties probably works too.

Octopus Pie would fit too, but it finally wrapped up and then had two great send-off series after the main run, and Meredith Gran switched to video games (Perfect Tides). Hark, A Vagrant! might be a stretch, but I'm very happy that Kate Beaton got her amazing book published (Ducks) and also remembered how to be jokey again after her sister died of cancer. She just posted a new page on Patreon today. User Friendly is dead now, but when it ended, the community of people in the forums was so strong, he kept old comics in reruns just so they would have a place to hang out and chat.

I'll add some more defunct ones that I can actually recommend reading back through. Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, Erfworld, Go Get a Roomie, Wasted Talent, Abstruse Goose, PHD Comics, and... why not, let's say Triangle and Robert.

2kinds isn't here, I am saved. Let the poor man just finish the dang thing

I fairly suffer from like 3 other entries, but Penny Arcade is an interesting one, partly because for a lot of people I think your comment about not unbookmarking it is right. A lot of people say there's "no jokes" or "missing a punchline" but it's basically turned into observational humor from people who have gotten older and I actually like it now (for very different reasons than in the 2000s)

Relatedly the list is missing Megatokyo and the only thing I could think of is "you've already suffered enough"

Genuinely shocked TwoKinds isn't on this list but nonetheless I will wear my cringe on my sleeve, and I do check Prequel every couple weeks or so in case Kazerad finally updated again

edit: nevermind on TwoKinds, just saw you included Freefall and that covers it tbh

My hard copies of Vattu are literally on my shelf next to bone and I just read this post like "Ah."

Penny arcade has a strange amount of connection to my life for a person who hasn't read the strip in a decade (used to mod on the forums, but just the art part), but I was also a big fan of three panel soul and thus my teenage years have been called out.

I legit did a double take on Real Life Comics, haven't thought of that comic in ages and I cant believe "Oh shit I gotta check out Real Life Comics again, that's rad" just came out of my mouth in 2023.

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