Comics, legally, on $0 a day. Part 2 - Finder

Closer to home but even more sci fi is Finder, my next recommendation. It's an actually genuinely surprising and deeply original far future science fiction epic. I'm going to come right out and admit that the Finder series is my favorite currently ongoing independent comic bar none. Happily, Carla Speed McNeil serializes her works in progress for free online!

The Finder series is about the various adventures of Jaeger Ayers, a man with a bit of the trickster to him who by vocation can't help but solve problems and make new ones wherever he goes, and his extended quasi-adopted family*. They tumble through McNeil's richly imagined landscape on fascinating adventures, creating dream-movies, fleeing angry monks, hiding terrible family secrets and barely noticing how strange and wonderful the world around them is.

Click to read more ...

Comics, legally, on $0 a day. Part 1 - Afterschool Charisma

So you want to get into comics and you don't have any money...

The subject came up with a friend who, basically, has read Kingdom Come and Watchmen and not much else, but was interested in getting a taste of a wider range of comics. I, like most comic readers, like matchmaking people with comics and telling the world why I think my favorites are awesome. But frankly, I didn't have much idea of her tastes, and this set me to thinking. So in this series of posts, I'm going to link a variety of great online comics that you don't need to already know comics to like. No in-jokes, no pop will eat itself mirrors reflect each other infinitely meta-commentary on the nature of comics as we know them.*

I'm very intentionally not including online comic strips. Comic strips are awesome, but generally a completely different thing than the graphic narrative form common to both comic books and graphic novels. I'm specifically highlighting online comics with stories, not one page gags.

And the first title on deck is...

Afterschool Charisma by Kumiko Suekane

Click to read more ...