Comic books have come a long way over the past few years!

Traditional comics will probably always be the central focus of collectors and fans, however the dawn of the Online Comics has well and truly arrived.

No more must you be some crazy elite designer who has to know the ‘right people’ in the industry to get your comic designs out there.
The internet has given every single artist the opportunity to create their own comics and share them with the global community.

There are some truly amazing online comic artists out there who have pulled off some pretty amazing success stories!

One such online comic, which I have always loved, is Megatokyo .
This Western style Manga comic has legions of fans since it began in 2000 (yup thats a long time boys and girls)!
It started out as a comic for the relatively new emerging Western manga/anime set, but soon transformed into a full-on internet sensation loved by all sorts of comic fans. So much so that it was eventually published by first Darkhorse and then CMX .

I love the Japanese Manga style that the creator/writer/illustrator Fred Gallagher uses to create his memorable characters. Largo is one of my favorite comic characters of all time and never ceases to deliver a typhoon of insanity!

THANK YOU FRED!

Check out the Megatokyo archive page here.

Next up we Cyanide and Happiness .
There are very few people who work in the online environment that have not stumbled across the madness that is Cyanide and Happiness. It’s reputation for having wicked humour and disturbing themes is well noted and I regularly receive emails with compiled C and H comic strips.
This talented crew has four writers as well as the odd guest writers from time to time .

With supposedly a million people visiting the Explosm.net website every day, it’s easy to see how this is one of the hugest online comic strips around.

The last online comic I would like to mention is Flintlocke vs. The Horde .
This particular web comic is created by using the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft as the actual artwork.

The artist sets up various scenes by placing his characters in the game, taking screenshots and adding a bit of Adobe magic to the mix. The outcome is a comic strip for the new generation .
The idea of using videogames to create funny skits and comics is not new at all, but the concept has really begun to take flight since the MMO scene became more prominent .

Flintlocke vs. The Horde was created by Dave “Fargo” Kosak and hosted up on the Gamespy website.
Unfortunately we have seen the last of Flintlocke, the most disastrous excuse for a dwarf ever…everything he touches turns to BOOM!
This online comic ran its course and has since been put out to pasture. However, in my eyes, this is still the best videogame generated online comic ever!

I’m sure we will have plenty of peeps out there thinking I’m on crazy pills , but hey what can I say…it resonated with me :P

What are your favorite online comics?

There are so many awesome examples out there and so many talented designers who have yet to explode into the mainstream. Their efforts will be noticed more and more as time goes on through the brave new world of the online comic medium .

D