What I read, Part 3

I have a roster of webcomics I go through regularly.

On Mondays and Thursdays, I check out The Seraph Inn to see if Sara Ellerton has posted another few pages of The Phoenix Requiem.

Monday through Friday, I hop on over to Wapsi Square for the webcomic equivalent of paranormal chick lit.

Then I pop over to Real Life, which is still funny after many years. I've since abandoned all of its video game webcomicy cohorts from years ago since they started to read like newspaper funnies - i.e. not funny at all.

Well, except for Penny Arcade, which isn't a daily. It's there MWF for me. However, the real treat isn't necessarily the comic there, it's the commentary. Tycho never ceases to provide pithy verbiage relevant to the topic of the day.

MWF also brings a new page of Candi, which is probably the most accurate "college slice of life" comic for undergrads. Its graduate school partner is PhD. Although I haven't gone to graduate school yet, I'm married to a doctor (and dated him during the 8 years he was in his doctorate program), and he can vouch for the authenticity of the latter.

Fey Winds only updates on occasional Tuesdays. It provides "farcical fantasy" to match the more serious fantasy of The Dreamland Chronicles, which is there most Mondays-Fridays. However, the Scott Christian Sava has managed to get his project turned into a movie (an amazing feat, even if he already was in the industry) and the updates have occasionally drizzled down to MWF in the last few months.

Rounding it off is the Monday-Sunday - yes, seven days a week - heretical viewpoint on religion that is Sinfest. Its polar opposite in art (aside from being in black and white) but its kindred spirit, XKCD, is there MWF.

The webcomics I read range from stick figures to beautiful CGI renders in full color. Some of the art is great, like Sara Ellerton's beautiful paintings (if I ever have any spare cash, I'm commissioning artwork from her). Some of it is cartoony, some of it doesn't even try.

What do they all have in common?

Superb writing. Of course. The best webcomics endure because of the writing, not because of the art.

What I read, Part 2

Another large staple of my literary diet is manga and Japanese light novels. (I watch anime too, but reading subtitles doesn't count.) The sources range from beautifully polished translations put out by Tokyopop and other publishing companies, to very rough, raw translations of unlicensed works put out on places like Baka Tsuki. Nothing gives me a happier thrill than learning my favorite light novels have been licensed for release in the US, because it means I'll 1. get a better story out of it 2. have a nice copy to keep on my bookshelf forever and ever and 2. have an excuse to reread the story.

Two good examples are The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and The Twelve Kingdoms. (Oh heck yeah, the fourth book was just released, time to go snag that!)

Light novels have no exact equivalent in Western publishing. I supposed they could be described as YA, but there is a length restriction to them (around 40,000 words a book), and a serialized expectation, that doesn't quite fit that category. Imagine all the depth and breadth of Harry Potter, but broken down into 200 page chunks, and released in 20 volumes. Zero no Tsukaima (unlicensed in the US, unfortunately) is approaching its 20th volume in Japan.

Manga, or Japanese comic books, tend to find more distributors in the US than their novel counterparts. I couldn't possibly list all the series I read, but the three I'm collecting these days are the shoujo (girls comic) series Ouran High School Host Club, Gakuen Alice, and Skip Beat. No mere comics for children, shoujo series deal with some very adult issues that would earn a serious R rating in the US - sex, drugs, sometimes rock and roll, but more likely teen pregnancy, homosexuality, incest, rape, death - the list goes on.

Sailor Moon was the classic shoujo introduced in the US during the late eighties and nineties, but even that show had to be severely stripped, chopped, and edited (even going so far as to change a lesbian couple over to "cousins" to avoid offending the tender English speaking girl's parent's sensibilities.)

But! The Sailor Moon manga was not censored at all, and you can still pick up some copies from bookstores if you know where to look.