Jay Hossler: Science Strips

Jay Hossler wrote and drew the fabulous Clan Apis, about a honeybee. Clan Apis is one of the most amazing science books I've ever read. Full of humor, pathos, and natural science. Hossler has put a few one-page strips on-line. They're strictly for science nerds. But if you ever read about natural science, you'll probably get a kick out of these short bits.

Jason Little: Bee

Jason Little has a great "clear-line" style and a masterful way of joining words and pictures. He's got an on-line version of his weekly Bee, a mystery story for which Little provides the following accurate description:
Bee is a new full-color cartoon strip for alternative newsweeklies. Bee (a plucky and insatiably curious young woman) works as a photo-finishing technician in a one-hour lab in lower Manhattan. To amuse herself, she duplicates -- for her own collection -- any titillating photos that happen to pass through her hands. When pictures of a naked corpse are left for processing, Bee's interest is piqued.

The on-line Bee is an engaging and intriguing mystery that is perfectly suited for comics. Bee has pictures, but no words or stories to give them meaning. Her search for meaning leads her to investigate the stories behind the pictures. This comic wasn't designed for web presentation, so the pages require vertical scrolling and didn't fit real well on my screen.

Little has some other comics on his site. One that is paticularly good is Man-Shy , where Little has stripped the artwork out of a 1970's era DC love comic and added his own artwork. In this amusing exercise, Little manages to completely change the meaning of the words by changing the story. Man-Shy is more than an exercise -- it stands as a humorous work on its own and the complete story is provided on-line.

Also on the site are excerpts from Little's fine Jack's Luck Runs Out, available from Top Shelf Publishing, and the three-page Safety Instructions from the Drawn and Quarterly 2000 anthology, where it is available in a large (tabloid-sized) format.

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Mark Martin: Crazy Boss

Mark Martin has been one of my favorite humor comics artists. His work is marked by a superficial parody that indicates a complete lack of subtlty, which, at it's worst moments can be a bit shrill. However, he has shown again and again that he can sustain a parody in a long-form improvisation that reveals a more satirical intent. Martin is one of the few comics humorists who consistently gets me to laugh out loud. This is because he deftly combines slapstick and parody, yet is also able to leave the reader with a few serious questions. His on-line comic, a work-in-progress called Crazy Boss starts out as a modern office parody which is more than mildly funny. But the story takes some strange turns, all of which up the stakes for the characters, writer, and readers.

The first three chapters of Crazy Boss are presented in greyscale, and tell the story of a small office of a start-up business with a fabric-softener product that just isn't taking off. It's a bizarre sitcom that's engaging, but turns out just to be a set-up for a more complex turn of events. The fourth chapter of Crazy Boss is in interlude featuring a parody of a soap opera "City Hospital" that pulls out all the stops to get its laughs. Full color graphics, animated GIF's, creative screen layouts and utilization of fonts -- this segment is a real technical marvel! The only thing missing is sound. As I mentioned above, there are moments where the parody gets a bit shrill, but that's more a matter of personal taste, and (getting philosophical, here) I have no problem filtering out parts that are too over-the-top for my personal tastes. In fact, I prefer that to having a story that ends up being lame for want of pushing the limits of the audience's expectations.

After the City Hospital segment, we return to the Crazy Boss storyline and the greyscale presentation. But the plot takes a metaphysical twist that turns out to be very well thought-out. In fact, the plot really left me hanging. Unfortunately, Martin has put Crazy Boss on temporary hiatus while he pursues paying work. Too bad, because this story has turned out to be a brilliant piece of web comics.

If you're the kind of person who doesn't want to be left hanging in the middle of a story, at the very least check out the "City Hospital" for a funny exploration of how the web can enhance the comics experience while remaining true to the artform (that is, without sliding down the slippery slope to animation/film). Note that the art style employed in "City Hospital" is quite different from that of Crazy Boss. It's another indication of Mark Martin's level of talent and skill.

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Scott McCloud: Zot!

Scott McCloud is the reigning brainiac of the comics world. His book Understanding Comics is a thrilling study of how comics work. That is to say, they are of great interest to anyone who would be thrilled by a rigorous inquiry into why comics are cool just for being comics. His latest book Reinventing Comics is a call for a move toward an on-line form of comics. McCloud's own early experiments with on-line comics are interesting. More recently, McCloud has brought back his intelligent and fun creation Zot! in a new adventure with an on-line (only) format. The result is a lot more engaging than his earlier experiments. The first two chapters are dreadfully slow, but worth reading as the story picks up greatly. It's now complete at sixteen chapters. Zot! On-Line can be viewed at its temporary home of ComicBookResources.com.

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