Broken Frontier

I just can't take it any more, I'm sorry. I see news story after news story reporting on the Heroes webcomic, what a great promotional tool it is and how revolutionary NBC is for plopping it onto their website. And that's true: it's an inspired marketing move (though I'm still trying to parse why it calls the stories "novels"-- at best they read more like a "graphic short story anthology").

But they're just not that good.

They manage to be inoffensive, harmless fanfic, but there's the perfunctory feeling that you get from a thoroughly average superhero comic. "Let's hit the story beats, let's put just a little humor and wit in the execution, and let's be sure we never, ever step outside the lines." The comics show the characters and setups and themes of the TV series, but absolutely nothing of its breathless energy or feeling of forward motion. Heroes the series succeeds because it is bold, imaginative television with a rock-solid character-driven plot and fantastic acting and direction. Heroes the comic succeeds because it's made by and for Heroes fans on NBC.com, and that's sufficient.

Joey Manley asks: is xkcd beginning to pull ahead of "all-time top-rated webcomic" Penny Arcade? It's possible. None of the three above-linked charts are perfectly reliable, but taken together they do at least raise questions.

xkcd is an awesome strip, well worth your time to check out. Every "one panel strip" I've read since The Far Side has had the feeling, sometimes faint and sometimes pronounced, of "trying to be another Far Side." xkcd breaks that mold, and it's the first really funny strip I've seen that is not afraid of math.

But actually, nothing in webcomics has blown me away lately like Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series. This uproarious, joyous remix does not require familiarity with the original source material, although it helps. Like Mystery Science Theater 3000, Yu-Gi-Oh TAS finds the delicate balance between mocking every absurd thing about its source material and loving every drop of it, but its pacing is a drastic improvement over both its source material and MST3K. Episodes are only 5-10 minutes, and remixer and voice actor "LittleKuriboh" is a master of comic timing. He's picked a source that's rivaled only by Pokemon for sheer over-the-top ridiculousness (sorry, Naruto, but even the world's loudest ninja can't compete with a mind-crushing, monster-summoning, pharaoh-possessed card player). Scores of "Abridged" episodes of other anime appeared on video-sharing sites after Yu-Gi-Oh TAS began, but accept no substitutes. This series is officially my favorite webcomic that isn't a webcomic. You'll see what I mean.