READING BETWEEN THE PANELS

I’m big enough to admit it; I bit off more than I could chew this time. The whole plan for this month’s column was to take you through this diary-style tour chronicling my search for decent web comics. We’d go hour by hour, seeing where I was at, and even have some humorous interludes with stories about ham sandwiches.
However, halfway through the day I realized that there was so much stuff for me to wade through on this beast we call the Internet that my column would be horrendously long (it still is), and by that time, I would be totally mad! So, to forgo all that craziness, I’ll just give you some hints about comics I’ve seen and places I have yet to go to see more.
1. First and foremost, you need to truck your ass on over to madterroristpress.com, home of our friends "Eggplant" Stan Wenches, Corey Barba, Jose Garibaldi, and Scott Ruhl. Besides what you’ve seen in our own comic section, these talented bastards have some pretty crazy shit up on their site. Teen Heaven, Dreamsicle, and Phineas & Hombre are all excellent in story and artistic merit. In addition to their work, they have a links section that includes nearly the rest of the entire Internet.
2. crazyfish.net – the website of artist Scott Morse. Check out two online comics in his storytime section. (PLUG: We’ve also got an interview with Mr. Morse here done by our friend Jim Mahfood.)
3. mnftiu.cc (My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable) – These comics are funny. The use of clip art-- or a clip art-style-- adds to the campy, humorous qualities.
4. nuklearpower.com – The comic here is called 8-Bit Theatre. You may have seen it around. Brian Clevinger has taken classic Nintendo Final Fantasy characters and created a new and very funny world for them.
5. ctrlaltdel-online.com – This comic by Tim Buckley is steeped in the world of the computer gaming geek. If you get it, you get it. If you don’t, GO TO HELL, I’M NOT A FUCKING GEEK!!!
These next sites I’ve only scanned through, but I still think they’re worth checking out:
6. briworld.com is the home of Instant Classic by Brian Carroll.
7. robotstories.com looks like it has some kind of rotating creative team, but it's all quality.
8. dayfreepress.com is like a truck stop for web comics. You can find links to enough web comics to keep you busy for a year or so.
In fact, most of the sites I’ve listed all have a host of links to other comic sites. But beware: for every good comic I came across there were ten that were absolutely awful. Most of them were teenage girls trying to do a romance/vampire (or demon or robot or whatever) comic in a crappy pseudo-manga style. Consider yourself warned.
My only other disappointment in my searching is that I never found a decent action comic. I’m looking for something fresh with adventure. Or a film noir-ish detective comic-- that’d be cool, too. If any of you ungrateful bastards out there know of any, drop me a line. I’d be happy to hear from you. Hopefully, all of this information will keep you busy until I can figure out what to do for next month.