Day 9: Head a little deeper into the blogosphere.

This is part of the UU Blogging Workshops’s Zero to Hero Series

Today’s assignment: Follow five more blogs and/or topics.

I follow around 40 different blogs, some of which update daily, others only post about once a month. I organize them in Feedly based on category; so I’ll share with you the top five blogs I have in my “Web Comics” folder. Before the interwebs was created by Al Gore, it used to be almost impossible to find indie-comics unless your local comicbook shop was willing to carry some. Once the world wide web took off, artists realized it would be a great platform to self-publish their art and storyline, and so webcomics were born.

So here are five web comics I would recommend you read/follow:

Gunnerkrigg Court is like Harry Potter meets H.P. Lovecraft with a little Blade Runner mixed in for good measure. It follows a young girl named Antimony as she navigates through a strange school and world where magic and technology are divided into mysterious camps of intrigue and danger.

Unsounded has a wonderfully crafted and detailed world of sorcerers and empires which follows the exploits of an undead wright and his frenemy Sette Frummagem, who is on a mission for her kingpin uncle. They get into all kinds of trouble with bandits, monsters, local constables, but their biggest challenges lay inside their own histories. Absolute genious!

Dar! has actually finished its webcomic run and its artist Erika Moen has moved on to cooler projects. However, the story is real, and raw, and explicit. Definitely not safe for work, Dar! follows Erika in the form of a webcomic journal as she struggles with issues of gender, sexual identity, and how to grow up as a 20-something in the real world. It is very well drawn and very well written.

PVP Online is one of the oldest and most celebrated webcomics on the internet. Scott Kurtz has been working on this labor of love since 1998 and over 15 years you can watch his storytelling and art evolve into a masterpiece. PVP (Player vs. Player) tells the story of a small gaming magazine and the strange people employed there. Sometimes serious, mostly hilarious, you kind of have to be a geek/gamer/computer person to get it, but it’s well worth the time to read it from beginning to now.

Judecca is a dark, melancholy story of what seems to be a land of the dead, where people have forgotten who they were, but where they physically take on aspects of their downfallen personalities. It is slow to update and has only been around since 2009, but is worth the wait because the artist is brilliant! It is creepy, strange and seems like Donnie Darko got caught in a blender with Alice in Wonderland.

Happy reading! If you know of any webcomics you think I’d be interested in, let me know!