Online comics

Who said today's youth don't read?

For great chuckles (mostly gag driven comics)

Something Positive

Watching grownups being snide and childish to eachother has never been more entertaining. (OK, maybe it has - I wouldn't know. I wasn't alive then.)

8-bit Theater

The only ripoff sprite comic anyone ever needs to care about. This is what the Final Fantasy franchise looks like when you've grown older and look back with embarrassment on the days when you got into flame fests over how a character's name is supposed to be spelled. (For those people, there's also Video Game Recaps.)

Strange Candy

If all those kooky anime worlds were real and you suddenly got stuck in them, one after another, what would you do? Rely on the resourcefulness of the kooks that keep being whisked off with you, of course! (But watch out for the Evil Overlord's loyal minions, recruited from Megatokyo. They know their mayhem inside and out.)

Ghastly's Ghastly comic (no longer updates) (adult comic)

Ghastly's specialty is making people say "Sweet Mother of God, MY EYES!!!" while at the same time delivering a punchline. Adult humor at its best, for the perverted mind. The search terms through which people find that comic are almost crazier than the comic itself. (Almost.)

Transe-Generation

Being transsexual absolutely isn't easy - but if it's one thing Matt Nishii has figured out, it's that joking about one's ordeals can make life much less burdensome, and he delivers. (Some of the strips can however be a bit hard to figure out without a basic knowledge of trans issues.)

Joy of Tech

Looking for geeky humor in the daily one-panel format? Sometimes witty, often head-on - and 100% pure geekery.

Piled Higher and Deeper

It's been more than seven years, and yet following a bunch of Stanford students failing to graduate just doesn't stop being funny.

Real Life

No, really, Greg Dean does have a friend named Tony with a shaven head and a private high-tech space station equipped with a time machine! ...OK, he has a friend named Tony. Who may have a shaven head. Noone's really sure about the last two things, frankly. In fact, what's to say Greg even exists and that the comic isn't being served to us through a worm hole by a robot from the future?

Anyway, it's a great comic.

Bruno the Bandit

It's Terry Pratchett meets Conan the Barberer... Berber... Barbie... OK, I know, that was lame. Suffice to say, the actual comic is much better than this description.

Cutewendy & Girly

Cutewendy is just awesome in its almost randomness - its successor Girly has sort of gone into a rut now, but it's still kinda funny in its almost almost randomness. Whacky lesbians rule!

Boy Meets Boy & Friendly Hostility

Two silly comics centering around a gay couple each - the first with a lot of gay drama, which has concluded, and the successor being more about the weird Maharassa family and its various stalkers. Both comics share a very distinct flavor of whimsy that shouldn't be missed.

Casey & Andy (stalled)

The whacky adventures of two best enemies living in a house, together with their somewhat psychotic girlfriends (one of them being Satan), and the people around them in Fremont who have to put up with their craziness.

Loserz (stalled)

Just a comic about three geeky friends, one of them a hot bisexual chick, and the occasional interlude by two furry and loveable woodland creatures with big ideas and little brains. Character development, fun and sarcasm aplenty.

Hackles (stalled)

The happier, furrier and geekier version of Dilbert, with a more sympathetic boss type and less (as in zilch) quasi-creationist rantings from its creators.

Mac Hall (finished) & Three Panel Soul

Three gamer guys and a chick in college and their silly antics. Macs show up occasionally. Has never even once failed to be funny. Mac Hall is finished - Three Panel Soul is the grown-up continuation.

Sexy Losers a.k.a. The Thin H Line (no longer updates... or does it?) (adult comic)

Human horniness ingeniously and mercilessly drawn to all its comical extremes for our entertainment, but not without that scary little "this could very well happen in reality" touch. Not for kids. I really mean it.

Latex Blue (no longer updates) (adult comic)

I never really associated furries with sexual overindulgence and moral depravity until I found this, and it totally made sense from the start. It's like a furry Alice in Wonderland, only without all the political crap (yes, I'm talking about the book). Unique and wonderful in a mildly disturbing sort of way.

Nosferatu (finished)

A 3D animated and voice acted online comic about the meeting of, among others, Dracula's granddaughter and Van Helsing's grandson in the same high school. One thing I love about it is that all the goodguys are dorks and all the badguys are misunderstood.

Acid Reflux (no longer updates)

An imaginative and light hearted fantasy tale of God taking control over her hand-me-down, neglected universe and meeting its colorful inhabitants. One of my absolute favorites.

VG Cats

I shouldn't even have to include this - either you already know about it, or you won't get it. It still rocks though. (For those few gamers who haven't seen it before, just ignore the hobo and you'll have plenty of fun.)

DM of the Rings (finished)

Yes, someone actually took the idea of making a D&D-style campaign out of one of the most longwinded narratives next to Ulysses, nabbed screencaptions from the movies and ran with it. The result is hilarious.

Queen of Wands (finished)

Just a cute little comic about a spunky woman with the unusual name of Kestrel, and her equally spunky room mates, among others. Its gags are nothing but pure genius. Has the distinction of gradually mixing with another comic by an entirely different cartoonist (Something Positive), and doing so successfully.

Serious business™ (mostly plot driven comics)

El Goonish Shive

Magic! Shapeshifters! Angsting teenagers! Mad science! Gratuitous genderswitching! This comic has it all in spades, and on top of that one of the cutest main characters ever devised outside of Japan. (No, not in the Megatokyo way. Definitely not.)

Venus Envy

What happens when you insist on being in the middle of gender transitioning before you've finished high school and how normal, loving, level headed family members struggle each day trying to cope with the situation. Well, at least life is never dull.

Errant Story

Everybody wants to rule the world... but the truth is, teenagers and arcane superpowers should be kept separate under all circumstances. Especially if they're desperate teenagers. The elves would certainly agree. (Not that anyone really likes those stuck up knowitalls.)

Zebra Girl

Oh yeah, arcane superpowers. In the hands of clueless idiots. Popular theme, that. One mistake can be one too many, such as the one that transformed an average suburbian woman into a scary looking demon and opened up a whole can of underworldly worms. Luckily, breathing fire on slackass perverts is quite handy for stress relief. For a while.

Drowtales

Like so many other things, it started out as a silly hobby and turned into a whole fantasy enterprise. The story - the main one as well as numerous side stories - of rivalling clans in a matriarchal society entrenched deep underneath the earth's surface is both generally amazingly beautifully drawn and very compelling. (Just ignore the gratuitous apostrophe's added to people's names for exotism.)

A Miracle of Science (finished)

Bar none the best future setting mad science comic out there. Has an intricately planned and researched story from start to finish, and a really good one at that. Mars would definitely approve.

Unicorn Jelly & Pastel Defender Heliotrope

An astonishingly imaginative tale of universes with alien laws of physics and all but human inhabitants, struggling for survival - and the difference an individual can make. (Start with Unicorn Jelly.)

Misfile

The tale of how a slacking, pot smoking angel caused a teenage boy to lose his penis and setting back a girl just admitted to Harvard by two years, suddenly giving them a whole new outlook on life, and all the mishaps that follow from lodging an unemployed angel in your home. If there's an American manga that people should read, it's this one.

The Last Days of FOXHOUND

Metal Gear Solid never really tells us who these FOXHOUND characters are, and where they came from. Well, now we have a fanon explanation at least, and a damn funny one at that. (However, major spoiler warning for MGS3!)

Girl Genius

Steampunk mad science fiction with a solid 19th century Europe look and feel, crafted with an amazing attention to detail in every single way. And the protagonist is a geeky chick! What's not to love?

Kidd Radd (finished)

If 8-bit sprites were self aware, what problems would they face? Kid Radd, a one of a kind 100% original sprite comic, has an idea. Extremely clever, cute and crafty. In fact, at times it's positively hilarious.

Cheshire Crossing

A triple crossover between The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, showing us what became of the three best known magical girls of the early 20th century. You won't be left wanting for action, adventure and clever plot twists! Downside: Updates one chapter at a time, which takes a while.

Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki

Like losing your penis isn't bad enough - on top of that, Yuuki gets stuck with magical girl powers and a mission to save the world that he's just not ready for. More Norse god zaniness than you can slap a stick at.

Zap!

Your basic sci-fi story starring an easy-going slacker with no memories of the past, by chance becoming the leader of a rag-tag gang of space rebels in search of their missing captain. Nothing new, but still an engaging story and really awesomely gorgeous art.

Order of the Stick

An epic, stick figure drawn tale that pokes fun at D&D, but at the same time is heavily captivating.