Completed Webcomics You'd Recommend II

[PoeticallyPsyco]

A couple of years ago, I opened a thread for completed webcomics I liked enough to recommend.

Since then, I've finished several more webcomics, and I'd recommend most of them, so I thought I'd restart the thread.

Schlock Mercenary - this one finished a while ago, but I didn't read it until last year. A fun sci-fi setting, following the often comical adventures of a mercenary company. Bearing in mind that they are still a mercenary company, this involves no small amount of violence and dark humor alongside the wacky shenanigans.

Bad Machinery - Follow the adventures of a group of mystery solving kids through the years as they grow up and mature.

Plume - "Revenge is like a plume of black smoke. It seems tangible, but when you reach for it, you're grasping nothing but air. But... it's not as if I'm going to stop trying." If I had a nickel for every time I got sucked into a revenge story in a setting that combined the wild west with the supernatural, I'd have three nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it keeps happening. Given its premise, Plume is surprisingly upbeat. Having what is essentially her own personal guardian angel has made the main character cocky, but also lets her enjoy her adventures without any real fear of personal harm.

Madame Outlaw - The second revenge Western on this list. Thaddeus murdered Estelle's brother, but only Estelle knows. When he convinces her family that they should be wed, Estelle goes through with the wedding only to steal Thaddeus' coveted map of the Oregon Trail, his horse-drawn carriage, and his stable boy. She then embarks on a nation-wide adventure with a growing band of criminals.

But I'm a Cat Person - Lot of ways to describe this one, but I think my favorite is from the About page: "BICP combines the struggle of modern-day underemployed geeky twentysomethings with the interspecies ethical dilemmas that you normally try not to think about while playing Pokémon."

Lucky Penny - A short comic that's part of the Johnny Wander collective. A girl is fired from her job, and has the bright idea of moving into her friend's storage unit to save on costs. Except there are a few weird things that aren't quite adding up.

Scurry - A story about a colony of mice surviving in the post apocalypse. A fairly straightforward story of exploring, escaping predators, and trying to beat the odds, but the art is downright gorgeous.

Anyway, what completed comics would you recommend?

[Gez]

Chirault is about a girl who got shrunk to Thumbelina size and convinces a monster hunter to get her back to normal. On the way they uncover a conspiracy that threatens the world, for a well-intended but poorly-thought-out motive.

Stick in the Mud is an adult comic (sex and drugs, on-panel nudity) about a jaded and somewhat depressive guy who gets drunk and ends up buying a bar that is actually a gateway to Hell, resulting in all sorts of monsters becoming his patrons.

Also it's old and honestly I mostly remember them because I'm following the recently-started comic Immaterial, but I liked Inverloch and Phoenix Requiem back then. (Dreamless, on the other hand, I found meh.)

It's actually pretty hard to think of webcomics that 1. actually completed, instead of hiatused to death, and 2. are still online. I'll echo Bad Machinery, and pretty much any other John Allison comic though; they're fun.

Also, stretching the meaning of completed a bit, Spacetrawler. I know it's ongoing, but that's the third series that's ongoing. The first two series are completed. (Each series represent a cohesive story with beginning and end.)

[Vinyadan]

Digger.

The Adventures of Dr McNinja.

[TeChameleon]

I'll second Schlock Mercenary quite heartily- it's a grand space opera with... hrm. Not sure how to put this, except maybe that the science is harder than you'd expect for a far-future space opera, which added to the fun for me. It also appeals to the mild anti-authoritarian streak in me; the leads, as noted, are mercenaries, and as such, those that hire them (which are frequently government bodies and suchlike, plausible deniability and all that) are given a bit of side-eye by the narrative.

One word of warning, the early art is a bare step above hot garbage, but it gets vastly better as time goes on.

Narbonic is another series that I thoroughly enjoyed back in the day, about mad science and madder scientists. It's intensely cynical about a lot of things, but has a surprising amount of heart.

[Dragonus45]

Misfile is a good one that is finished and has a sequel of sorts ongoing. It's trans allegory about a boy who due to a filing error in heaven wakes up one morning having been turned into a girl and everyone in his life just remembers him that way now. It's quite good.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Misfile is a good one that is finished and has a sequel of sorts ongoing. It's trans allegory about a boy who due to a filing error in heaven wakes up one morning having been turned into a girl and everyone in his life just remembers him that way now. It's quite good.

Misfile is one of my all-time favorites (in fact, I linked it in the first thread a few years ago). Which is weird, because I've found other slice of life and coming of age stories very boring, but Misfile I've reread multiple times. I think it's because it combines the very grounded stories of growing up and (essentially) being transgender with more high-octane street racing stories and like 10% urban fantasy. I found the blend highly compelling.

Also, I remembered a couple more I had forgotten about. I'll edit them into the OP, too.

Lucky Penny - A short comic that's part of the Johnny Wander collective. A girl is fired from her job, and has the bright idea of moving into her friend's storage unit to save on costs. Except there are a few weird things that aren't quite adding up.

Scurry - A story about a colony of mice surviving in the post apocalypse. A fairly straightforward story of exploring, escaping predators, and trying to beat the odds, but the art is downright gorgeous.

[tonberrian]

I always appreciated A Miracle of Science, a story about a cop where mad science is a memetic disease. It's a fun romp. He's more therapist than cop really, but he does have a gun because mad science is unpredictable.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Chirault is about a girl who got shrunk to Thumbelina size and convinces a monster hunter to get her back to normal. On the way they uncover a conspiracy that threatens the world, for a well-intended but poorly-thought-out motive.

Thanks for the rec; I quite liked this one.

It's actually pretty hard to think of webcomics that 1. actually completed, instead of hiatused to death, and 2. are still online.

Yeah, it's a sad truth that most webcomics slowly dwindle into nothing rather than finish. A danger of the format, I suppose.

Digger.

The Adventures of Dr McNinja.

Dr. McNinja's a classic. Haven't read Digger yet, but I've seen it come up a couple of times on TV Tropes.

I always appreciated A Miracle of Science, a story about a cop where mad science is a memetic disease. It's a fun romp. He's more therapist than cop really, but he does have a gun because mad science is unpredictable.

Another classic. It's a shame their next comic (Afterlife Blues) hiatused to death; I was interested in where that one was going.

EDIT:
I almost forgot. Just finished:

No Need For Bushido - Set in a slightly anachronistic feudal Japan, NN4B follows a princess running away from an arranged marriage, a wandering ronin with a secret (and perhaps a few screws loose), a blind kung-fu master Taoist monk, and the drunken survivor of an exterminated warrior clan, among many other colorful characters. Very entertaining; if I had to give a complaint, it would be that the ending is much faster paced than the rest of it, to the point that it feels a bit rushed.

Lady of the Shard - A pretty short webcomic with a minimalistic but cute style. An acolyte has fallen in love with her goddess. But with the goddess' return comes the return of her ancient enemy...

[Anarchic Fox]

Ozy and Millie: A long-running daily comic about two young foxes and their parents and friends, drawing heavy inspiration from Calvin and Hobbes. It has a lot of that strip's whimsical and observational humor, though with a bit less insight than Watterson.

Unicorn Jelly: Starts out as a simple fantasy comic, eventually becoming a harrowing mindf***. The pointillistic art style, although primitive at the start, is something whose like I haven't seen anywhere else; it's as though someone were publishing comics on an old Macintosh. This one's special to me.

Octopus Pie: A magical-realist slice-of-life comic about life in New York City. The humor, while sharp, is the most empathetic I know in comics, showing compassion even for its more ridiculous characters.

And some I've found via this forum:

Kaspall: A medium-length furry comic about a detective solving a serial murder in a cross-dimensional fantasy world. Its magic system is quite novel, and the plot develops at a brisk pace, a nice change from the (many) years-long comics I follow that meander all over.

Fresh Meat: A short furry comic about being in a mental hospital. It depicts how dehumanizing they can be (sadly, I know from experience).

Drop Out: By the same artist as the last one, a short comic about two lovers and their suicide pact.

I'll also second the recommendation for Dr. McNinja and Digger.

[Dragonus45]

Was reminded of a finished webcomic that was rather good at Momocon with weekend. But it's a bit of a heavy series so reader discretion is advised. It's called Genocide Man, and it's premise is in the future biotech became accessible enough that the average joe ******* could manage things like whipping up a plague meant to target everyone with red hair or build their own army of "better" humans for whatever value of better you can think of and by the time that dust settles something like 3 billion people are dead. Things get worse from there. Despite the heavy premise it actually goes for a sort of gallows humor laugh because the alternative is crying kind of tone and is about finding reasons to go on and live despite how bad things are. I would recommend it.

[Gez]

Kaspall: A medium-length furry comic about a detective solving a serial murder in a cross-dimensional fantasy world. Its magic system is quite novel, and the plot develops at a brisk pace, a nice change from the (many) years-long comics I follow that meander all over.

From the same author, I'd suggest Spare Keys for Strange Doors, a series of short stories about two paranormal specialists helping regular people with their supernatural problems.


Also, just remembered: I heartily recommend all of Oyvind Thorsby's comics. Yes, the stiff-looking, copy-pasted MS Paint art can be a bit hard to get into, but they're worth it.

[Squire Doodad]

One word of warning, the early art is a bare step above hot garbage, but it gets vastly better as time goes on.

I was...both in awe at how much better it got by book 3, but also very much appreciating that I started with a later book instead. There's some real beauties towards the end though.
This is my recommended starting page for anyone hoping to read Schlock Mercenary since it's fresh after a lackluster arc and dives right into a very important plotline that introduces you to a bit of everything. I think the author recommends Force Multiplication himself, since it's fairly self-contained, though I find that reading past that tends to involve a certain string of threads that started half a dozen or so books prior.

Moving on...
I'd like to heartily suggest Rice Boy and The Order of Tales from Evan Dahm. They're something of a mystical, esoteric fantasy story that is at times rather indescribable. Their sister series, Vattu, is almost completed and should be done within the year.

[Lapak]

Digger.

I'll back this; I can't recommend Digger enough. It's a marvelous story.

[Lord Torath]

Just started on Scurry from the recommendation up-thread (now ten pages in). It's beautifully drawn, and so far the story is interesting. Looks good!

Servants of the Imperium is an Order of the Stick set in the world of Warhammer 40k, complete with really crappy art at the beginning that gets much better as the comic goes on. The ending is rather abrupt, but the story is fully resolved (the author discovered he no longer had the time to work on it, so he quickly summarized the rest of the story in the last 8 pages). A very fun read, and much less Grim and Dark than your typical 40k story.

[Trixie_One]

I'll back this; I can't recommend Digger enough. It's a marvelous story.

Seconding this. It's the closest thing you're going to get to something on the level of one of the better Discworld novels as a webcomic and I don't say that lightly. It's really dang good, and it never felt padded as it led to a really solid satisfying conclusion.

A much more tentative reccomendation for Exterminatus Now.

It's not completed properly. However they did happen to end it around the end of an arc and so it's a satisfying enough end. Now a 40k/Sonic mashup should not work, you might even say it's heresy, but for what it was I remember having a good time with the thing. The art is still great, and when it grew out of trying to be another Penny Arcade or one of the legion of other lesser imitators it managed to have some solid writing in there with some legit grimdark 40k style arcs with some memorable villains.

[Sermil]

Rain just completed. It's a slice-of-life / teen comic, focused on Rain, a transwoman trying to pass during her final year of high school, where she becomes part of the school's LGBT click. Some drama, some comedy, lots of romance (if you're bi, you can get twice the romance drama!). Pretty well written, much of it taken from the life experiences of the author (also a transwoman). I liked it (even as a straight guy); I'm always a sucker for teen romance-drama.

[JeenLeen]

I can't remember the name, but there was a slice of life modern comic I liked... like a decade ago? Forget when it ended.
I remember one guy had a "Friend-Bat" and there a guy named Eustace who was nicknamed Useless. When it ended, the author started another comic in the same setting.

And one I remember: Sorcery 101. THe author also has other comics completed.

[InvisibleBison]

I can't remember the name, but there was a slice of life modern comic I liked... like a decade ago? Forget when it ended.
I remember one guy had a "Friend-Bat" and there a guy named Eustace who was nicknamed Useless. When it ended, the author started another comic in the same setting.

I believe you're thinking of Scary Go Round, which unfortunately is now only available by purchasing the PDF compilations.

[Floogal]

Casey and Andy
2002-2005. Author Andy Weir, author of The Martian. Focuses on two Mad Scientists, often gag-a-day comics, but with story arcs. They often die from their experiments failing, but are alive the next strip without explanation (although one of them dating Satan may be a factor). Lots of fun geeky jokes.

Kid Radd
2002-2004. Author Dan Miller. Characters in video games (original parody ones) escape from their games and form a society on the internet. Lots of exporing of interactions of different types of character traits interacting (e.g. NPC's having no attacks but no health bar, enemy sprites having a "touch of death", etc).

The site originally had fancy Javascript tricks to make it look like a single-frame comic, where you were advancing panel by panel with button clicks, many panels with animations. Original site is offline, but wouldn't work with modern browsers anyways, link is to a fan reupload that has been made to work in today's world.

Monster Pulse
2011-2021. Author Magnolia Porter. "A story about kids whose body parts turn into super-powered monsters". e.g. main character's heart is ejected from her body to form a loyal heart-monster. The story does get very heavy, the villian's descent into darkness is intriguing to watch, but don't worry it does have a generally happy ending.

Nodwick
First "daily"
First main comic issue
2001-2013. Author Aaron Williams. Classic comedic D&D adventuring comic, featuring a fighter, wizard, cleric, and ...henchman Nodwick, who is basically a commoner with a ridiculous carry capacity (for carrying the others' stuff). Often the target of traps and attacks, but usually comes up with the best ideas to save the day.

Problem Sleuth
2008-2009. Author Andrew Hussie. A parody of old adventure computer games, the gimmick is that commands are selected from those given by audience members in a forum (although author overruling started to happen near the end to get to a conclusion). Lots of crazy stuff, and parodies of other game tropes as well. Art is very raw, but gets the job done, and lots of animations.

Homestuck
2009-2016. Author Andrew Hussie. Some kids play a game together that affects their reality, for a dramatic end-goal. Story is quite dense, non-linear, and long. Stretches the definition of "webcomic": contains animated screens, basic screencap with a dialog transcript, animations with music, and even a few walkaround-type games.

[Squire Doodad]

Problem Sleuth
2008-2009. Author Andrew Hussie. A parody of old adventure computer games, the gimmick is that commands are selected from those given by audience members in a forum (although author overruling started to happen near the end to get to a conclusion). Lots of crazy stuff, and parodies of other game tropes as well. Art is very raw, but gets the job done, and lots of animations.

Wait, Problem Sleuth's commands were based off of forum commands? Does anyone have a link to screencaps of said forums or something? Would be interesting to see the arguments and discussions that led to it.

Great choice with Monster Pulse btw

[TeChameleon]

Big fan of Nodwick- the main character (Nodwick himself) even had a cameo on The Gamers (the movie, that is). Lots of fun, kind of screwball humour a lot of the time, but the plot ends up surprisingly in-depth after a while. Monster Pulse was also great, as was Homestuck (one of these days I'll have to get around to 'reading' Problem Sleuth). Seconding Kid Radd as well. Casey and Andy also, for that matter, albeit with mild reservations- it got weird in places...

[Floogal]

Wait, Problem Sleuth's commands were based off of forum commands? Does anyone have a link to screencaps of said forums or something? Would be interesting to see the arguments and discussions that led to it.

https://mspaintadventures.fandom.com/wiki/MSPA_Forums

Sadly, seems that the forum was corrupted and lost during a server transfer. A shame, there were lots of quality fan-comics/games on there.

Homestuck also was initially based on user-submitted commands, until the comic became too popular for that to be manageable. That, and the author had a more plot-focused story to tell.

[Fion MacCumhail]

All Night Laundry also had its fair share of reader interaction and is pretty funny for a horror comic.

[Dragonus45]

Rain just completed. It's a slice-of-life / teen comic, focused on Rain, a transwoman trying to pass during her final year of high school, where she becomes part of the school's LGBT click. Some drama, some comedy, lots of romance (if you're bi, you can get twice the romance drama!). Pretty well written, much of it taken from the life experiences of the author (also a transwoman). I liked it (even as a straight guy); I'm always a sucker for teen romance-drama.

Oh yea I had forgotten that was officially done so it qualified now. I have a lot of nostalgia for it and it's quite good, it meant a lot to me to read it when I did. It does suffer from being a bit contrived at times but really I can't recommend it enough.


EDIT I was just about to also recommend Pictures of You which is a magnificent story about stupid college kids becoming friends and forming bonds on the way to becoming the totally different people they eventually wound up as even if it meant those bonds went up in flames... but then I found out the entire thing just vanished from the internet and there appears to be no way to go back and read it. That's a shame, it's an absolute work of art.

[JeenLeen]

I believe you're thinking of Scary Go Round, which unfortunately is now only available by purchasing the PDF compilations.

Yeah, that's the one. Bummer to hear it's not online anymore.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Found another one, and having just finished it am prepared to recommend.

Earthsong - A sentient planet that teleports people from all over the universe to her to cure them of plague. However, the planet has been invaded by an outsider, and their stalemate has lasted for years. A newcomer may be about to shake things up, though...

[Anarchic Fox]

From the same author, I'd suggest Spare Keys for Strange Doors, a series of short stories about two paranormal specialists helping regular people with their supernatural problems.

Thanks for pointing that out! I'm currently engrossed with Chirault (thanks Gez), to the point where I was startled to notice I was 900 pages in. It felt more like 300. But I'll check out Spare Keys afterwards.

[The Patterner]

I will always recommend Errant story when stuff like this comes up.

Elves, time monks, gunslingers and mages.

Basically a story about a young half elf mage (who thinks she is the only half elf in the world) who is falling magic school and decides to go out in the world and amass power enough to force her teachers to let her graduate.

It's whacky, gory, vulgar, funny, exiting and the art is (at least in the later half) really, really good.

It has a black and gray morality were the lead elf and human are both professional killers with hearts of gold.

[theangelJean]

From the same author, I'd suggest Spare Keys for Strange Doors, a series of short stories about two paranormal specialists helping regular people with their supernatural problems.

Thanks Gez!

I read the first story, half the second, noticed there was a Kickstarter link to print in hard copy, and found that it is (for the next fourteen days) current.

Backed.

Going to read the rest after dinner.

[tonberrian]

I enjoyed Starslip Crisis for a bit, and it is ended, but i lost track of it and didn't follow it TO the end.