Broken Frontier

5. Married by Webcomics. (Filmstrip with great soundtrack here.) Beloved blogger Eric Burns used the goodwill he'd built up in the webcartoonist community to get an "all-star cast" together for his marriage proposal. The cartooning is nothing extraordinary, but the participation creates the warm feeling of community that weddings do, that same feeling that Burns, for a time, brought to the world of webcomics. Like "A Very Special Penny Arcade" (#26), which Burns slyly references, this presentation trades on heartfelt emotion. But Burns is more eloquent and confident than Krahulik, and even though we know the final frame is coming, he still makes us want it.

4. Shortcut to Ultimate Power. I have never laughed harder or longer at a single installment of a webcomic than I have at this one. It's just so perfect. As in "We're Experiencing Some Down Time" (#29), Kurtz turns his own difficulties into one more source of humor, and manages to make the "substitute" material as funny as "the real thing." Look at Scratch's furtive eyes in the first panel (just be cool, man, just be cool...). Hear his raucous laugh in the last. He ACTUALLY BELIEVES that drawing a cartoon of himself as master of the world will help make him master of the world. But then, how many other cartoonists secretly believe the same?

3. Evil Obeys No Rules. And nothing in webcomics has scared me more than this installment. Maritza Campos kicks away readers' assumptions left and right, foremost among them the limits on the devil's power. Other versions of Satan are tricksters who bargain for souls, or only influence the evil that men do. Campos' Satan will beat you to death with animal forms, rape your mind or eat your soul, and he doesn't need a permission slip. Margaret, the strongest-willed of Campos' protagonists, is barely strong enough to realize what is happening. Is there any hope for her? Is there any hope for mankind?

2. The Passing of Faye Macintire. We thought we were prepared. Previous installments of Something Positive had established Fred Macintire's Alzheimer's diagnosis. Fred was on the verge of telling his wife, but decided to spend one more day with her first, one more sweet day. Their last together. Had he told her, would she have helped him face it, or even held on to life for him? Or would he simply have made her last day one of sorrow? We'll never know, and that's what makes this moment Randy Milholland's most poignant work to date.

1. The Netizen's Manifesto. Of all the comics I've read on the Web, there is only one that's actually changed my life. Before reading the strip, I had a similar attitude to Guy 1's, at least when it came to nonfiction. Five minutes afterward, I was Guy 2. Yes, it is important! Say it loud. Say it proud. And don't stop saying things.