Thursday, March 17, 2011

Webcomic Review: Questionable Content

This one shouldn't come as a surprise to webcomic fans, almost everyone has heard of Questionable Content at one point or another. So it's a bit hard to give it an introduction, I remember marathoning through the comic last year and often running down the hallway to show pages to a friend/posting links on my FB page because I was that amused by the comic and that's a pretty good sign!


Questionable Content
QC starts out as a comic about Marten, a post-college, 20-something an indie-rock music lover, who lives a fairly normal life in his apartment with his AI robot Pintsize, and then runs into a young woman named Faye one day. Not long afterwards Faye's apartment burns down (think she had something to do with it as well) and moves in with him, I swear this isn't a magical girlfriend story. The cast quickly grows and by now Marten is the central character, not necessarily the main one since the comic likes focusing on the others just as much, and they're all living their slightly strange lives (romance, work, snarky conversations, nothing especially strange there). The story is a joke-a-page format (usually within some kind of arc) and in the realistic fiction genre, did I mention the robotic AIs, transforming vespas, and pizza delivery superheroes that populate the background of the story? It's a really fun comic to read (every time I visit the tvtropes page for the series I usually end up reading a dozen strips before I go back and click the other examples, it's really easy to get sucked into and no matter how many times I've seen the jokes I still laugh at them) despite the art. Jeeze, the next time I see someone complain about how their art sucks I will point them to this comic. Go look at the latest page and then look at the first page, it's the best example of an art shift I've got and it's pretty inspiring too, although the old art is so basic I'm not sure if I want to buy the book for it. Yes I would re-read the series and probably loan the book out to friends but the art in the beginning is just so basic (I know some of the strips have been re-drawn but I'm not sure how many, that would probably be the deciding factor for me). 



Despite the ultra-basic art it starts out with (since, as I just said, it gets much much better as the comic goes on) I heartily recommend this comic to pretty much everyone. As a quick note, the title is questionable content and there's nothing really bad in the comic itself but all the characters are adults so there are references to sex toys, sex, ect so if you don't want to see that you might want to give this one a pass. I hope people won't, I'm a bit of a prude yet I never minded any of the stuff in here, it's a really funny comic and one of my favorites, hope someone else enjoys it!