In the eternal struggle between "story comics" and "gag comics," I tend to come down on the side of the long form.  Yes, a little chuckle is good, but I'd rather follow characters through an adventure, even if that adventure is just them trying to return a library book or attending a "meet the tenants" party in their apartment building.

Michael Payne examines new examples of the "new cute" in comics: Dreamleak by Greg Fraser, Fuzzy Things by Jonathan Sario, and Ghost Farm by Jessica McLeod.  The "new cute" is using the tropes of "cute" to tell stories that are richer, deeper, and more heartfelt than anyone would've thought fluffy bunnies, towheaded kids, and smiling asparagus could support.

As the new year brushes away the crumbs left from devouring the old one, I find myself thinking of vanished webcomics: those that've come to the end of their storylines, those that've just stopped, and those that've disappeared altogether.

As the new year brushes away the crumbs left from devouring the old one, I find myself thinking of vanished webcomics: those that've come to the end of their storylines, those that've just stopped, and those that've disappeared altogether.

A friend of mine, reading my last article for ComixTalk ("A World of Fantasy"), wondered how I could write a whole piece on fantasy webcomics without mentioning Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio.

So I had to admit that it was only the artwork and some of the dialogue that got me through the very slow opening section of that comic. And just as I was finally gleaning enough information to get a feel for the character and the setting, they tear the character out of the setting and throw her down some place new. I've tried, but Girl Genius just isn't for me.

Thinking about it, though, and with this summer's Comic Con International still on my mind, I realized that several webcomics that I do read were also once published on paper. So here I am, writing about Girl Genius without actually writing about it so I can focus instead on Finder by Carla Speed MacNeil, Xeno's Arrow by Greg Beettam and Stephen Geigen-Miller, and Galaxion by Tara Tallan.

Fantasy webcomics this month, is it? A large topic.

And we can make it even bigger. I mean, depending on how technical you wanna get, all fiction is fantasy. It's stuff that never happened, at any rate, and that's as basic a definition of fantasy as I can think of.

"All-ages" means a story in which anyone who enjoys a little action, a little thought, and a little character interplay will find something to like, and where that enjoyment will only deepen as the reader gets older. The webcomic Tales of the Questor by Ralph Hayes, Jr. more than lives up to that definition.

Michael Payne reviews Alan Foreman long-running webcomic, S.S.D.D.,and finds it anything but cute. To the contrary, the sprawling, aggressive world of Foreman's imagination is like a Molotov cocktail thrown directly at your computer screen.