I’m a big fan of stories in any form, so today, I’m featuring some of my favorite visual storytellers.
A quick note to keep in mind about many webcomics is that the art improves drastically as the comics progress. This is fun to watch and it separates many webcomics from traditional graphic novels.
Sarah Ellerton was one of my first introductions to the world of webcomics. She’s the writer of Inverloch, which is a 700 something page epic involving elves, furry people (I have a weakness for fluffiness) and magic. It’s got a special place in my mind because it was my first webcomic. She also illustrated Dreamless, which I reviewed a while back. The art in Dreamless is a lot better since Inverloch was her first webcomic.
Chill13 is a friend of mine on DeviantART. She’s more of a mixed artist than a webcomic artist. She does a ton of illustrations of her characters and then writes stuff about them. Her main story is Hi Ho Hyperdrive, which is about the (mis)adventures of an amnesiac “cowboy” and his alien crew. She’s very good at depicting emotions in her art and each picture has a story behind it. (Most of the time, there’s a bit of a story posted with the picture.)
Alex VanArsdale is the writer and illustrator of the Super Strike 10 webcomic, which follows a crew of humans and aliens who run into trouble during a galactic war. Oh, and it’s got space Gryphons.
Note: This is the cover for the third book in the series, but I liked the third books cover the best.
Scurry is the most recent one I’ve found. It’s a webcomic about mice trying to survive a post-apocalyptic world full of feral cats and other terrifying predators. The art is really cool.
For the simply funny one-shot comics, try Little More Than Waitstaff, which is about the adventures of various characters in a restaurant. This one isn’t fantasy, but it’s funny.
A few others I follow are Strays, The Lost Nightmare, Flowerlark’s webcomics, and The Blackblood Alliance, which is just starting its reboot. I did follow Red’s Planet, but that’s now been turned into a book.
Jessi L. Roberts, author 
Cool! I’m definitely going to have to check out Scurry.
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It’s got some pretty good art, and a rather unique storyline. I’ve seen stories about dogs after an apocalypse, but never house mice.
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I might just have to look into some of those. I currently follow four webcomics: Namesake, Blindsprings, Grrl Power, and Always Human. (Plus Phoebe and Her Unicorn, but that one is also syndicated in some newspapers, so it’s not quite the same.)
Namesake is fairly long to catch up on, but it’s quite good. “When Emma lands in another world following a library fire, she discovers she’s a Namesake — one with the power to open portals to other worlds via the power of their name: strange, fantasy, and fairy-tale lands we know thanks to literature, cinema, and folks tales. The rules of Namesakes are quite clear – Alices always go to Wonderland. Wendys always go to Neverland. However, Emma finds herself in Oz, where she is expected to act as the latest in a long line of Dorothies. She instead unveils a magical conspiracy plot that’s more than 100 years in the making.
While Emma is stumbling down the Yellow Brick Road, her younger sister Elaine discovers she’s a Writer — one gifted with the power to make stories come to life. Will Elaine be her sister’s key back home?
Blindsprings is a gorgeously illustrated story about a girl named Tammy who is magically bound to the land and the spirits on it. When she somehow stumbles out of the woods 300 years after she left it, she discovers that her class of magic-users (Orphics) has been vilified by another (the Academists) and the magic she is used to is hidden.
Grrl Power is also a possible cause for archive panic, but is a fairly amusing story about a comic shop employee who develops powers. A bit too many off-color jokes for my taste, but still PG 13. Plus, a genre savvy superhero? Sign me up.
Always Human is set in a future society where ‘mods’ allow people to change their appearance. The main character is attracted to another girl who cannot use mods due to medical issues. (Yes, g/g, but PG level)
Phoebe and Her Unicorn is, as the title says, about a 4th grader named Phoebe who has a unicorn. The artist is a MLP:FIM friend, and it’s rather like Calvin and Hobbes.
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Thanks! I’ll have to look them up. There are a few other ones here that I like, but I didn’t list them since they had f-words.
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I love a good visual story! Some of these are familiar to me, and I’m happy to see them getting some attention.
One webcomic I enjoy is called Space Boy, by Stephen McCranie. It mostly takes place on a futuristic earth, although the main character comes from a mining colony in space. The themes, art, and characters are very well crafted.
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Sounds interesting. I’m looking that one up for sure.
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