6 Essential Webcomics You Can Read In Print

Nimona, by Noelle Stevenson
Nimona is arguably more Homestuck than Homestuck. It starts with a slow series of seemingly thoughtless chapters, but quickly accelerates into an insane combination genres, packing in shapeshifting girls, scientist outlaws, flawed heroes, outsized propaganda, and dashing villains. Stevenson’s premiere comic offers a healthy serving of moral ambiguity as she follows Balister Blackheart in his quest to avenge the injustice dealt to him by the Institute and its hero, Abrosius Goldenloin, his former best friend/maybe more. Nimona, who appears to be a small girl, worms her way into Balister’s heart as she helps him topple the system with her insurmountable shape-shifting prowess. Nimona offers insightful commentary on the nature of identity and the vilification of minorities while showing off the same comedic shops fans of Stevenson’s later works have come to cherish. Plus, it totally made us cry, and the art is absolutely top notch. It’s a webcomic you can’t miss out on.

Dinosaur Comics, by Ryan North
Another staple of early webcomic culture, Dinosaur Comics is the brainchild of Ryan North. It began life in 2003 and has been consistently published ever since, along the way becoming a familiar meme recognizable even to non-readers. The premise is fiendishly simple: six panels, unchanging between strips, featuring two dinosaurs talking about a multitude of philosophical content. We’re not sure how North knew philosophy would be better with dinosaurs, but by Jove, he was right. The content is as varied as North’s other works, notably a Hamlet choose your own adventure novel (To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Adventure), the Adventure Time comic, and the wildly successful The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, but across the board they make us laugh and contemplate our short time under the stars. This volume has hand picked favorite strips from the early days of the comic.

Shadoweyes, by Sophie Campbell (published as Ross Campbell)
Shadoweyes is the story of Scout Montana, a girl who, through no fault of her own, gains incredible powers that enable her to save her city from danger. They also make her look like a literal monster which, okay, is less than ideal, but in fairness, they are especially cool powers. Campbell takes a careful look at Scout’s obligation to a society she can no longer safely live in, which is almost certainly allegorical, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a story that critically examines activism and ways to change a society, and it’s a story about friendship, and it’s a story about a cute monster girl in a dystopian nightmare world. We especially love that it does all this so succinctly; it won’t take nearly as long to consume as most entries on this list, and every minute will be filled with anticipation and delight.

Gunnerkrigg Court, by Thomas Siddell
Gunnerkrigg Court is a comic with a lot of critical acclaim but a smaller social media footprint than some of its fellows on this list. That’s honestly a shame, because it offers some of the most inventive writing in the wide world of online comics. Dabbling in traditional Gothic tropes like demonic possession, absurdly structured magical schools, and (for bonus points) an inversion of the untrustworthy institution trope, it manages to transcend the cliché pitfalls of its genre to provide a truly unique reading experience. Like early Homestuck, Gunnerkrigg Court is presented as a series of unrelated fetch quests and dalliances that build well-developed characters more than plot-heavy stories. Over the course of protagonist Antimony’s stay at Gunnerkrigg Court, we discover a precarious balance exists between the Court and the Woods surrounding it, and we’re privy to Antimony’s journey to learn to keep the peace between the two. The multitude of minor background plot threads contribute to a sense of constant intrigue. As for the healthy helping of teenage relationship drama in the mix? Well, it certainly doesn’t hurt.

The Private Eye, by Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin and Muntsa Vicente
Unlike the other comics on this list, The Private Eye didn’t originally run as a webcomic, at least in the regular meaning of the term. It was first published on Panel Syndicate, a downloadable comic publisher releasing pay-what-you-want comics. (Yes, that means you can get them for free.) That means it was highly accessible digitally, which is as good a definition of a webcomic as any. The story is a twist on the familiar pulp tale: beautiful woman comes to a private investigator’s office looking for help, with a cryptic reference to a troubled past in tow; woman dies; the P.I. takes it upon himself to investigate; a lot of people try to kill the P.I.; it turns out the case is way above his pay grade; P.I. figures out why the poor girl didn’t take it to the police in the first place. Private Eye does all of this, but it also dumps the poor characters in a post-internet world obsessed with psuedonyms and alternate identities, which makes everything about a million times harder for our paparazzo protagonist. The series is uniquely fitted to the medium, and a shining jewel in the crown of modern webcomics. You can now snag a deluxe version in print, and in our humble opinion, it’s probably the most beautiful book-shaped object we’ll see released this year.

Hark! A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton
Kate Beaton is a recognizable name to most in online comics communities, even those not solely focused on webcomics, and for good reason: she did a great stint on The Hawkeye Initiative, a project exploring feminism in comics by replacing hyper-sexualized women with Clint Barton. (We highly recommend you take a look; it offers great tongue in cheek humor, thoughtful commentary, and you get to see cute superhero butts. So many butts.) Thankfully, she’s equally well known (if often abysmally unaccredited) for her long-running strip comic Hark! A Vagrant! A combination of historical insight and social critique masked with a healthy dose of biting wit, Beaton’s delightful comic relies on short, black & white sketches and often obscure literary and historical references to bring readers to a satisfying conclusion. The strips vary in setup; some have an instantly explosive element of humor, while other are mildly humorous, at best, but become progressively funnier with contemplation. The episodic style makes it ideal for new readers, and the simple art combined with eclectic humor also make it a perfect read for Homestuck‘s forlorn fans.
What other webcomics do you recommend?