At the very start of the year I wrote about my favourite webcomics of ‘08 on my old LiveJournal and to end it I’d like to tell you my Top 5 for 2009. I ended up writing quite a lot so I’m splitting it into five posts. I’ll post a comic a day counting down from 5. Feel free to leave a comment below with your thoughts.

1. Scary Go Round/Bad Machinery by John Allison

Nothing in my Google Reader delights me more than the crisp, colourful artwork of John Allison. For four days a week it’s the first thing I read when I open up my browser. Often before I’ve even showered. Was that too much info?

Allison’s ambitious and highly successful webcomic Scary Go Round concluded in September after 7 and a half years of weird and witty tales. The final story was simply titled ‘Goodbye’ and sent the cast into their futures with a heartfelt “So long”. Never one to revel in sentimentality, Allison set all this against a story of Michael Jackson and his bald son Poh moving to Tackleford (the comic’s setting of a small Yorkshire town). Poh turns out to be a master of blackmail and the bane of two of his classmate’s lives, Shauna and Lottie. Also, all the postmen go missing. Like all the best endings, every character was included with their own sub plots and concluded in the kind of satisfying way that you can imagine their stories continuing off panel.

After SGR, Allison introduced his next comic venture on his blog in a highly enjoyable and ridiculous 3 part comic entitled The Electrifying Conclusion in which he consulted his peers the world over (including me!) about what to do next. The result was Bad Machinery, set 3 years after SGR in the same town, it loosely follows the adventures of 2 groups of mystery solving kids.

To start afresh after attracting hundreds of thousands of readers is a risky thing to do, especially if your comic is your sole income. While Allison did report a drop in readers, he is not yet selling lighters (3 for a £1) in the local pubs just yet. It’s clear from reading Bad Machinery that Allison needed a change of pace. After 7 and a bit years of frivolous fun and sexy times in SGR, BM focuses on more intimate phenomenons; the worries of starting a new school, making and losing friends, playing the role of an adult, the conflict between marriage and beards. The end of the first chapter introduces some spooky happenings familiar to any SGR reader, but it’s in the background of the story so far. The cast of 11 year old characters hog the limelight and are a pleasure to watch, still at the age where they’re discovering truths but still making things up.

Allison’s work is consistently funny, wonderful and unique. I really can’t recommend it enough.

At the very start of the year I wrote about my favourite webcomics of ‘08 on my old LiveJournal and to end it I’d like to tell you my Top 5 for 2009. I ended up writing quite a lot so I’m splitting it into five posts. I’ll post a comic a day counting down from 5. Feel free to leave a comment below with your thoughts.

2. Ellerbisms by Marc Ellerby

I can’t imagine there being a braver comic out there right now than Ellerbisms.

This year Ellerby has honed his funny muscles and deftly endeared us to himself, his loving girlfriend Anna and his wide eyed world view. As well as being funny and very well observed, part of it’s charm has been achieved by being unflinchingly honest in regards to some of the deep and dark parts of his relationship. A comic back in June stunned a lot of his readers with a sudden confrontion with Anna’s self harming. His approach with this strip was gentle and truthful, focusing on how we take in the unexpected and horrific. The impact came through the strong bond the readers already had with the character of Anna. It’s a testament to his work that so many people cared. It was also very strong of Anna to have let Marc reveal such a personal moment and shows that the comic is an important part of both of their lives. The strip in question is here, but I would never suggest this as an ideal place to start reading.

Ellerbisms grew in other ways this year. Reoccuring events in Marc’s life become themes of the comic as a whole, such as the responsibilities of teaching, balancing work and what you do for love, exhibiting around the world, and, through visits to Sweden with Anna (who’s Swedish), experiencing a new culture. All this plus the continuing exploration of love and living together makes for a far denser comic than a couple of gag strips might have you believe.

Ellerby has also been extraordinarily prolific. October saw the LRB 200 celebrations where Ellerby invited artist friends and readers to contribute comics, drawing, photos and stories to the site to commemorate reaching comic number 2oo (100 of which were posted this year alone). It was a wonderful week of tribute comics and illustrations by some of the world’s most prominent webcomic artists and enthusiastic fan art. It concluded with Anna writing on the site for the first time, explaining what it was like from her point of view and highlighting her favourite panels.

The art too seems to improve monthly, including more detailed drawings of the surrounding world and then balancing such detail with clear storytelling and cartooning. Also, I’m in Ellerbisms quite often as Northern comedy relief, which of course would make it worth reading just for that.

Ellerbisms is more than a comic I love reading, it’s a comic I actually care about.

At the very start of the year I wrote about my favourite webcomics of ‘08 on my old LiveJournal and to end it I’d like to tell you my Top 5 for 2009. I ended up writing quite a lot so I’m splitting it into five posts. I’ll post a comic a day counting down from 5. Feel free to leave a comment below with your thoughts.

3. Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

Kate Beaton is the best at comics. She began posting her comics about Historical figures and talking to her younger self on her LiveJournal and quickly became internet famous and amassed a readership of ten hundred billion. In March this year she got a proper website and named her webcomic, Hark! A Vagrant.

Since then she’s shown her talent is quite restless. There’s no strict format, or genre or update schedule for comics, they just pour out of her when she’s inspired by History, or life around her or has a funny idea. From mocking Canadian Prime Ministers, to quick strips about hipsters or scribbly autobio tales, her humour is irresitable. She has an effortless knack for drawing the exact expression or pose for maximum comic effect. Her timing is also spot on, like in this excerpt from the 7 page Mermaid Story:

What interests her most are History and Literature, or more precisely, the human frailties behind the grandest of stories. I don’t know much about either of these topics to be honest, but by reading Beaton’s comics, I feel like I at least know some of the important bits. That is to say that throughout time most people are just damned silly.

Beaton also has a couple of reoccurring characters of her own invention, Fat Pony, Saucy Mermaids, and the apathetic Mystery Solving Teens among others. They’re all hilarious, goes without saying, but they offer a glimpse of what Beaton could do with her own fiction, and I find them extra fun for that reason.

Her comics are a constant joy and I can’t wait for more. Especially if they’ve got KISS elves in them!

At the very start of the year I wrote about my favourite webcomics of ‘08 on my old LiveJournal and to end it I’d like to tell you my Top 5 for 2009. I ended up writing quite a lot so I’m splitting it into five posts. I’ll post a comic a day counting down from 5. Feel free to leave a comment below with your thoughts.

4. Inkdick by Pranas T. Naujokaitis

Inkdick is not some kind of cartoonist porn, but rather a simple daily journal comic that has slowly become one of my favourites.

Naujokaitis’ strip is pretty similar at first glance to many autobio strips out there. It’s black and white, concerns a young, geeky, American guy and his partner, in this case his girlfriend Amy. They don’t have a cat, surprisingly, but they do have a Hamster called Moxie.

The secret to Naujokaitis’ success isn’t that noticeable at first glance, so I’ll let you in on it: it’s his admirable persistence. He draws a comic everyday and like James Kochalka, who is no doubt an influence, his regularity forces him to draw upon ever smaller moments of his day to create his comic, to think of life a little differently and this creates something familiar and yet interesting for the reader. But while Kochalka is set in his world and family, Naujokaitis is affected by modern America much more and seeing things like Obama getting sworn in from his perspective is enlightening. It’s also strengthened his art pretty quickly, his cartooning is very good.

Through such regular comics we learn a lot more about Naujokaitis’ life, and his persistence is evident all over. In February, after struggling to find work, he started a job in a Peanut Shop (as a Brit I have no idea why such a thing would even exist), a job he quickly grew to hate. There’s plenty of comics about the soul destroying repetitiveness and grief of selling nuts to tourists. It’s clearly cathartic but it’s never just moaning, there’s either a glimmer of hope or he exaggerates it for comic effect. He finally found another job in a comic store this August. I was happy for him.

His year has been full of the many little ups and a few big downs that make up life. His Mother battled cancer, his Brother went to Iraq, his friend and comics tutor Sweetwater died and he paid to see Watchmen. But throughout it all he maintains a determination to work hard and pull through it. He tackles getting better at comics, personal frustrations and relationship hurdles and he clearly learns a little from each clash and remains to fight another day. His positivity is honest and day by day, strip by strip, he becomes an endearing character indeed. Amy is in a lot of the strips too but their relationship is not often the focus of them, instead their love for each other is implied over time in the small details and every now and again he’ll show you something genuinely touching.

Autobio comics strive or fail not by how exciting that cartoonist’s life is but by who they are as a person and what their point of view has to show us. For Naujokaitis, like Pekar before him, it’s that everyday struggles are often are our biggest challenges and our good days, our biggest successes.

At the very start of the year I wrote about my favourite webcomics of ’08 on my old LiveJournal and to end it I’d like to tell you my Top 5 for 2009. I ended up writing quite a lot so I’m splitting it into five posts. I’ll post a comic a day counting down from 5. Feel free to leave a comment below with your thoughts.

5. Anders Loves Maria by Rene Engström

This Swedish webcomic about a couple having a baby will finish before the year is out. For over 3 years Engström has been crafting this story, improving as an artist and writer, gaining a large and loyal following and making a name for herself as one of the best webcomic artists around.

The single narrative of Anders Loves Maria is, as you might imagine, a modern love story about the two titular characters. It begins with Maria finding out she is pregnant and though Anders is a spoiled, philanderer she decides to keep the baby. Over the course of the pregnancy and through many flashbacks we learn about the complicated love lives of Anders and Maria. Other characters come to the fore throughout the story such as Björn, Maria’s older ex boyfriend and Johan, Maria’s older brother among others. Of course it all gets very tangled and there’s a lot of crossed paths which leads to many awkward and hilarious moments but the focus is on revealing who these people are and why they make the choices they do. Oh, and I should mention it’s NSFW, there’s boobs and sex all over the place.

This year, Engström has thrown in another couple of flashbacks and thrown Anders in jail. All leading brilliantly to the impending conclusion of Maria giving birth. The most touching moment for me was finally seeing when Maria met Anders for the first time at Art College. She’s nervous and out of place, speaking in thick northern Swedish dialect (written excellently) but her cheeky, likeable character comes through, toying with Anders from the off. It feels like coming full circle as we near the end, witnessing the moment from which all the turmoil begins.

The art this year has been thoroughly gorgeous. Engström has become superb at the balancing her fluid linework with rich colours for the story in the present. For flashbacks she’s been creating full watercolour pages for some and overlaying drawings on paintings for others. And her layout and keen sense of composition has been staggeringly strong.

I’ll be sad to see the end of this comic and hope that she sends the characters off with a little of the security their lives have been lacking so far. I hear that there’s a book of the whole story being put together right now and I can’t wait to see how it comes out. There’s no other webcomic out there (that I’m aware of) which presents one long story as real, witty and as clever as ALM. It’s a treat to read such a well written and involving story, for FREE, and I feel privileged to have been along for the ride. Go and read it while you still can.