old school playas to new school fools
Ok, and I was looking at my comics roll, and I realized something. Why the hell does everybody link to the same bunch of A-listers? It’s not like they’re gonna need my bwa ha ha traffic (I think the last three big links I got inaugurated me as a “lister”. I don’t get a letter yet) and since it’s always the same f’n six or seven comics on there it tells you nothing about an individual cartoonist’s tastes! And I don’t use it as my own personal bookmark either, so: no particular disfavor implied here, I’m still a reader, but Tycho, you just don’t need my link. The ones that are staying are Carol Lay, who fits well under the new rubric since I have been reading her for years and believe it or not in terms of art style she’s a big influence; Get Your War On, for services rendered in the post-9/11 era, of which I’ll have a little more to say about in a while; the PBF, who is an A-lister, true, but also one of the best cartoonists working these days; and The Pain, because Tim Kreider, deserving as he is, isn’t really an A-lister I don’t think. Go read his stuff. Start early, and with that top ten list he has in his archives.
So the new guys. They’re not new, they’re mostly pretty old, in that I’ve been reading them since at least the early ‘90’s, most of ‘em, and they have Shaped The Artist I Am Today. First, Evan Dorkin, creator of Milk & Cheese, Hectic Planet, Dork!, and… sorry, I’m tearing up here… contributor to Instant Piano. That link is to his Livejournal, which is active. His official site is not. Number two is Tom the Dancing Bug (Salon has navigable archives, gocomics.com does not) – while a vigorous argument can be made for Maakies, it’s my opinion that this is the best strip out there that’s currently syndicated. A relatively recent find is Lulu Eightball . You know the four-panel comics I do every now and then, one scenario as approached by each of my four characters? Emily Flake does this all the time. So she is good at it. Number four, as a stand-in for the generally enjoyable (because, possibly, hard to entirely fuck up) genre of political rant comics, I’ll link to Jen Sorensen at Slowpoke. She is at least as good as any of them and gets far less play. And one more: Bohda Te, by Jamie Smart. Honestly, I just discovered this one, but I greatly enjoyed his Bear comics, and if you like Nobody Scores! you should definitely try and pick up Bear comics if you can find them. They make my stuff seem logical. Also Jhonen Vasquez, of course, but that guy doesn’t keep up an internet presence it seems.
I’m going to link to Dresden Codak, too, not out of payback or whatever so much as Dresden Codak and Nobody Scores! share an eerie number of qualities – I have a story about one of ‘em that maybe I’ll get to this week – and anyone who enjoys my comic and did not come from Dresden Codak in the first place and hasn’t heard of it should probably head over there; it is good stuff and awful pretty too.
Finally, an honorary cartoon. It’s a blog, and it’s good and dead, but go through the archives and laugh and laugh at Fafblog!
There are other cartoons I have missed, I’m sure, though some of the guys I thought of just don’t really have a lot of cartoons available on the internet, which is the whole point. If anyone wants to leave links to cartoons they’ve enjoyed in order to jog my memory or just introduce me to shit, feel free. But if it is linked to on the blogroll of like everyone who links to comics, don’t bother, I’ve probably looked at it.